Cons:
for travelers to Portugal only!; very basic conversational phrases relevant to meet & greet, dining and where places are – beyond this, you’re out of luck; the interplay between the audio & booklet isn’t 100% intuitive and could use some tweaking

Teach Yourself One-Day Portuguese furnishes you with an audio CD and a short little booklet, with the goal of instilling in you 50 essential European Portuguese words and 20 ways to combine words into phrases.

You’ll start with a dialogue between two native Portuguese speakers, whose words and phrases are broken down and listed in the booklet (3 pages). Then, you’ll find the 50 words you’ll need to remember, and the 20 sentences you’ll memorize.

After that, the booklet challenges you with a “one-day quiz”, asking you how to say a selection of phrases. The author’s questions are pointed and relevant to situations you’ll find yourself in (“ask someone if the shops are far”). There’s a scoring and self-assessment grading guide, along with a certificate of completion on the last page.

If you’re off to Portugal and you need to gulp down a handful of essential phrases quickly, One-Day Portuguese provides a cheap, focused way of doing just that. If you arm yourself with other resources – a phrasebook or an introduction to Portuguese conversation & grammar – you’ll be ready to start speaking fairly quickly.

Auditory learners will get the most out of this course, but if you have the time and money, you might opt instead for a more robust audio course, like Pimsleur or even the less comprehensive Michel Thomas Portuguese. Such a lesson course often helps you learn more while memorizing less by rote.

Cons:
European Portuguese only (but sometimes covers Brazilian use without really explaining what’s going on); organization only so-so, especially study/grammar points; quality of activities and short length of dialogues may put off some learners; explanations often miss the mark, failing to connect the dots or explain grammar as well as they should

Sue Tyson-Ward’s Teach Yourself Beginner’s Portuguese attempts to break down and teach the basics of Portuguese to new students over the course of 19 lessons. The book & CD combo expose you to an array of conversational and grammar topics.

The book’s format is typical of a TY course (or most other conversational language courses). Chapters start with dialogues, then give grammar or language topic explanations over a few pages. You’ll do paragraph-long reading exercises, as well as practice activities. Readings, dialogs, explanations and activities are often interchanged, which adds variety at the expense of consistency.

The course opens with a short crash course in pronunciation, which is enough to get the ball rolling if you’re learning Continental European Portuguese. The CD or cassette tape follows along, pronouncing a few dozen words so you can get an ear for the language.

Each dialogue is fairly short, but believable. Dialogues and readings are quick and disjointed, so expect to use them for repetition practice, not for any engaging immersion to Portuguese. Unfortunately, not all dialogues are covered on the audio CDs.

The explanations of grammar and language topics sometimes throw verb tables or grammar rules your way without proper introduction, other times offer adequate instructions. Mostly, it’s disappointing that they build on each other mildly and bear minimal connection to the chapter topics or overall course organization. What’s worse, they’re sometimes misleading or conflicting.

Exercises give you a chance to do the typical fill-in-the-blanks or translation & repetition more than anything else. At times, you’ll stray from that formula by, say, picking out what’s going on in a cartoon drawing, or filling out a crossword puzzle.

The end of the book has answers to activities, a Portuguese-English vocabulary glossary and short index. The table of contents also lists chapters by title and summarizes the main points in each chapter.

If you’re looking to ease into conversational Portuguese, and can withstand some of the faults I found in this course, Teach Yourself Beginner’s Portuguese is one way of getting through the basics. But, personally, I recommend other of the many courses available to you.

Cons:
European Portuguese only; the barrage of pronunciation and conversation drills have no setting or context; exercises and explanations always point back to repetition drills; two-way conversation drills suggest this course is designed for partner or classroom use

Barron’s FSI Mastering Portuguese wraps the Foreign Service Institute’s language training program into a book and tape course for beginners. Over the course of 25 lessons (units), students will read, hear and repeat countless variations of words and phrases until learning to speak basic Portuguese.

Each unit begins by asking you to repeat along with the audio as it reads aloud words and parts of words. The text in the book focuses on troublesome sounds. For instance, one section asks you to practice a variety of words ending in -om, taking care not to pronounce the “final m” the way you would in English.

Then, you’ll charge ahead through conversation dialogues. These start out as simple, two or three line exchanges. Later, the exchanges become more intense. The book includes many of them, with many variations on a single theme to make sure you’ve nailed down a specific facet of Portuguese conversation.

Units spend some time introducing and explaining grammar topics, but you’ll always sense they play second fiddle to the ever-present conversation drills. Practice exercises are here, too, but they often involve repeating lists of Portuguese sentences, or creating slightly different versions of a single phrase. Additionally, some sections improve your Portuguese vocabulary building skills, encouraging you to recognize words related to English, avoid “false friends” (cognates with different meanings in English and Portuguese), and so on.

These lessons have a decent table of contents, listing units and section names and numbers, but no index. You’ll also find a Portuguese-English vocabulary glossary at the end of the book.

As a language learning course, Mastering Portuguese is either a repetitious and routine or exacting and practical coverage of conversational Portuguese for beginners. You’ll skip some important grammar points and miss out on more creative approaches by taking on this lesson program. Yet you’ll have plenty of practice with a wide range of Portuguese words and phrases, with nuanced variations of each. Dedicated students looking to gain some real conversational abilities in European Portuguese will appreciate this course. You certainly won’t be afraid to hear or read Portuguese anymore, and you may be a good deal more prepared to speak it.

Cons:
includes Brazilian words but is published in and focused on Portugal; must know Portuguese to get full use; many versions are older (I referenced one from the eighties); price; size (if need to use on the go); some potentially confusing variants still missing keyword cues

As you might have guessed by their names, the Dicionário Inglês-Português and Dicionário Português-Inglês are dictionaries published in O Porto, Portugal for Portuguese speakers. Because of that (and their large size and depth), let’s establish something before moving towards a review: intermediate and advanced learners of European Portuguese are the target audience, and should read on to see why I’ll recommend this dictionary. If you know enough Portuguese, this dictionary “não requer instruções prévias especiais”.

The English-Portuguese and Portuguese-English translations are split between two volumes. Each book is well over 1,000 pages, and almost every one of those 1,000+ pages is devoted to doing what a language dictionary should: they offer you translated words to look up.

Entries are in bold type, and set apart from the rest of the text by a reverse-indent. IPA phonetic spelling is listed to the right of each entry. Parts of speech are given as well, in abbreviated form (vt for transitive verb, s for sustantivo (noun), etc.).

Each word is covered by a robust number of translations, including variants. Where unclear, variants are accompanied by key terms in parentheses. For example, the use of dub includes the translation “dobrar (um filme)”, specific to dubbing a movie.

The top of each page includes page numbers and the first three letters of the first and last words on the page. Pages are divided into two columns, and the font is small enough to bother weaker eyes, but standard for a dictionary.

The sheer number of terms covered is unmatched by foreigner-targeted Portuguese dicitonaries, at least any that I’ve seen. The drawbacks I noticed in the copy I reviewed included its awkward size, its older date (1980s) and its lower relevance if you’re dealing with Brazil. If you need a serious European Portuguese and English language dictionary, these dicionários are my best recommendation so far.

Pros:
covers a lot of grammar; exposure to wide array of written Portuguese in ten lessons; good extra material; will have you reading large amount of Portuguese by the end; can be completed in three months if dedicated; lots of practice with the written language, including translation; audio cassettes help with pronunciation (Continental/European Portuguese dialect)

Cons:
expects a lot from beginning language students; tries to present Brazilian and European variants, but always favors European Portuguese; offers little learner-oriented guidance; long vocabulary lists to memorize; exercises are mainly translation drills without much variety; focus on grammar and vocabulary out of context is more rigid than a conversation-driven method

Hugo Language Courses’ Portuguese in Three Months promises that you’ll end up with a working knowledge of how to write and speak Portuguese after ninety days of hard work.

And the work is hard for beginners, unless you were fortunate enough to study another Romance language in the past. After the letter-by-letter guide to their “imitated pronunciation” system and a page of basic phrases to memorize, you’ll launch into ten lessons covering nearly every aspect of foundational Portuguese grammar. You will also be expected to keep up with numerous vocabulary lists (few too long, but quite a few without any context). You are expected to finish with the ability to read a story, a news article, an excerpt about Brazil and Portugal, and two letters.

Lessons are divided into numbered topics, most shorter than a page. Topics tend to revolve around grammar and language functions (like “the imperfect tense” or ” ‘if’ clauses”). Verb, pronoun, noun and article tables with bold endings and a handful of usage examples dominate these sections. Usage examples are Portuguese sentences demonstrating a particular grammar topic, accompanied by English translations.

Dialogues and readings stress repetition and exposure, while exercises emphasize translation. Apart from certain fill-in-the-blanks and questions to be answered in Portuguese, the exercises involve translating a list of sentences from English to Portuguese.

The book ends with reading selections, lists of Portuguese idioms and expressions, a good verb appendix with irregular verbs, answers to exercises, an English-Portuguese vocab glossary, and a very short index of language topics.

Portuguese in Three Months takes on a chunk of what meatier, more traditional grammar courses cover over a longer period of time. It builds up a language learning system of static exposure, memorization and practice, with only terse explanations to assist you. If you’re commited to working with this course, you certainly can master a good amount of Portuguese in a short time. But its rigidity will prove troublesome for less determined students (or those searching for more guidance). That’s especially true if you prefer a more contextualized conversational approach to learning Portuguese.

Cons:
Portugal-focused, leaving out info about Brazil and some Brazilian usage; no reference page numbers in the vocabulary/dictionary (needs quick search by word or phrase); learners: this is still just a survival Portuguese phrasebook!

Berlitz Portuguese Phrase Book is a little phrasebook with glossy pages, an attractive layout and clearly defined sections. The edges of each section are marked by different colors, and the section’s topic written in the upper right of each odd page. All this makes the book visually easy to flip through.

For such a small book, the range of phrases covered is commendable. The organization and layout is also useful. For example, English phrases are on the left unless the situation calls for translation from Portuguese, like reading a menu. Portuguese examples are given in red, with Brazilian variants bracketed (like comboios [trens] for “trains”). English translations are in black.

Blue and yellow “Essential” boxes focus your attention on key Portuguese phrases you need to know. “You May See” and “You May Hear” boxes give you an instant idea of other words you’ll encounter. Color photos visually enhance some sections.

A basic pronunciation key helps you speak the phrase aloud, but you can rely on the CD to actually listen to native Portuguese speakers read every phrase in the “Essentials” boxes.

This is clearly intended to be used as a survival travel phrasebook, not a way to learn Portuguese. In that light, it’s best suited to travelers heading to Portugal. Brazilian variants render the book multi-dialectal, but coverage of Brazil and Brazilianisms isn’t watertight by any means. It would be even more convenient to have audio examples for every phrase, but what’s here is enough to start getting by in Portuguese.

Cons:
sometimes uneven pacing; European (Portugal) Portuguese only; quick answer pauses might annoy students who need more time to think; students who have difficulty getting in to the instructor’s and native Portuguese speakers’ banter will struggle; no experience in writing the language means some students will have trouble visualizing word formation techniques

The late Michel Thomas presents us with his method tailored to Portuguese with the Michel Thomas Method: Speak Portuguese. The goal of this course is simply to get you to understand as much European Portuguese as possible as fast as possible.

This language learning method pinpoints word building techniques as the key to your linguistic success. If you’re able to understand how to build Portuguese words, phrases and sentences out of component parts, you can read any basic material in Portuguese, even with a very limited vocabulary.

The course contains 8 CDs of all-audio lessons. So, is it of the same ilk as audio-only methods like Pimsleur? Well, in its use of audio-only and the way it structures audio exercises, it’s fair to say that it is. But the Michel Thomas approach is quite different from Pimsleur.

In Michel Thomas’ Portuguese lessons, a teacher and native speakers engage each other in what sounds almost like a radio program. Throughout the course, the instructors address their audience (you) rather casually, with British accents, a touch of humor, and both helpful and fanciful linguistic musings. In many ways, this is the closest you’ll get to working with lively instructors rather than just listening to native speakers drill you with phrases and dialogues.

The course attempts to engage you directly. Along the way, you’re expected to follow along in Portuguese word building exercises. You’re even expected to do a bit of linguistic problem solving. The focus of this problem solving is to get you to understand patterns. Because of this technique, you’ll conquer what seems like complicated material early on.

I mentioned linguistic pattern-forming (what we in the biz call “analogy”). For example, you might learn that the Portuguese ending -ção is like -tion in English, so Portuguese words like situação and conversação are translated “situation” and “conversation”. You’ll be asked to form new words with that ending (how might you say “station”?).

During the audio exercises, the CD track will ask you to say something in Portuguese, beep, pause for an instant, and then give you the correct response in Portuguese. This is, I suppose, the best option for an audio learning environment. Still, the short pause isn’t enough for students confused by the exercise or those who take a bit longer to answer.

Unfortunately for Brazilian learners, this course is geared towards the European dialect. Still, if you like the method, the dialects are generally similar enough that you’ll be off to a good start, even if you’re headed to Brazil instead. If you enjoy audio courses, but aren’t looking to learn European Portuguese, try Pimsleur’s Brazilian courses instead.

I have an overall positive impression of the course after using it. I think that the instructive back-and-forth audio will definitely win over some students, and will even work for most. It’s great for auditory learners, especially if you’re looking for an experience obviously led by a teacher. I noted a few of the reasons I hesitate to consider the course perfect (see my “cons”), but I don’t see why it couldn’t be the best choice for some beginning learners.

The 90 glossy, illustrated, color pages of Conversational Portuguese present seven days worth of phrases, explanations and grammatical building blocks to get you started in Portuguese.

The phrasebook lays out phrases and side-notes for seven days (Monday through Sunday), with three parts to each day (for morning, afternoon and evening). As you can see, actually following this plan requires seven days of dedication. Each section tries to balance dialogues, vocabulary words and phrases and notes and explanations in a way that maximizes your exposure to and assimilation of the basics. The language used in the course is European Portuguese, but Brazilian variants are mentioned.

Short exercises help you grasp some of those words and phrases in context. They’re always quick and nearly always relevant. Accompanying color drawings and travel-book-like photos stimulate visual relations, too, but only to a limited extent.

The audio CDs offer some extra practice, allowing you to listen to the phrases, but they don’t present a complete conversational course approach like more expensive conversational audio packages. Unfortunately, I am currently unable to find the CD on Amazon, so I can only provide a link to the book.

A short Portuguese to English vocabulary glossary ends the book, but there are no page numbers here, and the book is missing an index, so yo can’t easily go back and find important phrases or topics you learned.

As a once-through survival introduction to Portuguese with some audio (if you manage to track down the CD or cassettes), this course is a good start. Skim exercises, no reusability or reference use (like as a tourist phrasebook), and odd day-to-day pacing keep this course from being anything more.

Portuguese: An Essential Grammar offers a more traditional approach to Portuguese grammar, complete with all the lists of noun and verb forms I’ve come to expect from such a resource. That said, it’s fairly light for such a grammatical approach – explanations are short and straightforward, and examples are ubiquitous and easily recognized by the bold text used to highlight Portuguese words.

This grammar reference handles European Portuguese grammar exclusively, so explanations will provide a smaller amount of help to Brazilian Portuguese learners not destined for Lisbon or Coimbra anytime soon.

The bulk of the chapters deal with the common categories of grammar, starting with a short intro to pronunciation, a chapter on nouns, one on articles, another on adjectives, then pronouns, a short chapter on numbers (“numerals”), a hefty verbs chapter, followed by adverbs, conjunctions and prepositions. The second part of the book details what it calls “language functions”, including many useful social and conversational words, expressions, phrases and how a Portuguese speaker uses them. A bibliography and index cap the book.

The approach works for a reference guide, and takes the language learner through the complexities of intermediate Portuguese grammar. Some learners, myself included, would like a bit more than one-line explanations of trickier grammatical features, but the ambient examples counterbalance that shortcoming.

Intermediate European Portuguese learners looking for an on-hand grammar reference will have something to gain from this text – if that describes you, this book may justify its price. Brazilian learners can still get a lot from this reference, but should remain cautious. No exercises and no learner-directed material will make this a no-sale for most casual students.