Score:
1 2 3 4 (5) 6 7 8 9 10
“Five outta ten!”
Pros:
short, small travel phrasebook; decent organization; index and table of contents; a couple basic cultural and travel bullet points at each section; English-Portuguese vocabulary list; helpful, if not gimmicky, pronunciation key alongside all words for those readers that “get it”
Cons:
if you don’t get the pronunciation symbols, this book offers nothing new; missing some phrases I’d want to use; I question some of the topics they address and others they don’t for Brazil; just a survival phrasebook; Brazilian only (a negative if you want to learn European Portuguese)
Outside of the quick pronunciation guide and tips at the beginning, Say It Right in Brazilian Portuguese does one thing: it lists Brazilian Portuguese phrases and gives a visual representation of how to say them.
This phrasebook represents Clyde Peters’ attempt to apply his pronunciation key to the Portuguese of Brazil. In this system, vowels are circled, simple consonants are capitalized, syllables are divided by hyphens, and accented syllables take a mark on the vowel. You can see an example right on the book’s cover with the word olá! (“hello!”).
Outside of this pronunciation system, the book is what you’d expect from a Portuguese travel phrasebook. There are sections for health, shopping, getting around, and the like. There are “phrasemaker” pages that help you combine the start of a phrase (“I would like to go…”) with possible options for ending it (“to the bank”, “to the hotel”, and so on). A very short English to Portuguese dictionary (glossary) lists words with the book’s signature pronunciation key. The last page has a quick index of topics, and the inside front and back covers double as a reference guide for pronouncing the symbols in the key.
If you don’t understand its somewhat unique symbolic pronunciation system, Say It Right in Brazilian Portuguese won’t appeal to you. If you do, it’s a decent survival Portuguese phrasebook. Either way, I’d prefer hearing real speakers on audio CDs or in person to decoding imperfect symbols (IPA is more accurate, for example). It’s not “the fastest way to correct pronunciation” as it claims, at least for most of us, but it might do the trick for your most basic phrase needs.