American Portuguese student speaks openly what he thinks about our language

What is your biggest difficulty when learning a new language? The pronunciation? Memorize vocabulary? Learn sentence structure? The most adequate answer to this question is usually: “it depends”.

For Brazilians, for example, the easiest part of learning the English language may be the pronunciation — since some of the most difficult phonemes in English are also present in the Portuguese language. In the case of Spanish, Portuguese speakers may find it easier to memorize words, due to the similar vocabulary. It is interesting, however, to analyze the opposite scenario: have you ever stopped to ask yourself what foreigners think about the Portuguese language?

On the social network Reddit, an American answered questions about the biggest difficulties he had in learning Portuguese. and the team of awesome.club, has separated the best answers for you. Check out!

In addition to Brazil, Portuguese is now spoken in former Portuguese colonies such as Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde and more. Despite being the sixth most spoken language in the world, it is common to find it strange when a foreigner wants to learn it. After all, because it also has a Latin origin, Spanish is very similar to Portuguese and has the second largest number of native speakers in the world (only “losing” to Mandarin).

And that’s exactly why a Reddit user wanted to know why the American had decided to learn Portuguese. He explained that he made the decision because he loves languages ​​and Spanish felt “too boring” — in his words.

What do good barbecue and sausage noodles have in common? In addition to being foods loved by most Brazilians, both are written in the “RR” digraph. And, according to the American, this is his biggest difficulty in relation to pronunciation.

In addition to this digraph, foreigners often have difficulty reproducing the nasal sound TO and memorize the different ways of pronouncing the X🇧🇷

Who is regular at awesome.club You may have noticed that our team loves to study the differences between European and Brazilian Portuguese. Did you know that the Portuguese answer the phone saying “I am” and that the word biberão means bottle?

In certain cases, the Portuguese way of speaking confuses Brazilians. And for those who are learning the language, which is the easiest? For the American, European Portuguese is more difficult to learn and he had an easier time finding materials that teach Portuguese spoken in Brazil.

oops Perhaps the illustration above has already given a spoiler, is not? But, that’s right: the American proved to be a fan of the word “do”. It may seem funny to Brazilians, but he gives a great explanation: “Yes, I really like the simplicity of the word ‘do’. In English we say of and make to do’. Using a word is easier.”

The internet is an important source of knowledge, where you can learn a little bit of everything, including new languages. Today, we have digital language teaching platforms where you can learn German, Japanese, French and many other languages ​​without leaving your home.

That’s exactly what the American did. He learned Portuguese through Duolingo and “exchanging an idea” with native speakers — as he has friends who are from Bahia.

Learning the accent differences of different regions of the country is fascinating and fun. Brazilians, of course, find it easier to identify a person’s origin within the country because of the accent, but foreigners may have a certain difficulty in differentiating.

On Reddit, the American said he couldn’t tell if a person comes from Rio de Janeiro or São Paulo, for example. Unless you say the word “cookie”.

Did you know that Latin had masculine, feminine and neuter genders, but that, in the transition to Portuguese, the neuter gender ended up disappearing? It is precisely for this reason that even today objects have a gender in Portuguese — contrary to what happens in English. For example, we say The chair, not O chair, a notebook and not a notebook. All nouns ended up gaining a gender, either feminine or masculine.

As this phenomenon does not occur in the English language, a Reddit user wanted to know more about the difficulty in learning the genres. The American said that it is sometimes complicated, but that he had already learned the basic concept by having studied Spanish before.

One of the first verbs that English learners learn is the ‘to be’, which, in Portuguese, can mean to be or to be. This can be a source of doubt for English speakers and that’s exactly what Reddit users wanted to know.

“(In English,) we use context to understand the difference between verbs (ser and estar). Sometimes it’s easy for me, like in phrases like ‘I’m American’ and ‘I’m fine’. But sometimes it’s hard, as in ‘it’s confusing to me’. I am 75% sure that this sentence It is correct”, revealed the American.

From the answer, we realize that it is normal for this confusion to occur between “being” and “being” — since the most usual thing would be to say “that sentence it is correct” and not “It is correct”.

It’s interesting to know what foreigners think about our language, don’t you agree? Do you also love learning new languages? What are your biggest difficulties? tell the awesome.club in the comments.