This intensive course is for language learners striving toward the B1 level. The language of instruction is Portuguese. I will speak in English only if needed.
My suggestion* for these two weeks is to focus on:
*There's always room to adjust the course according to the group's preferences:
After this course, you'll have come closer to the B1 level and have the tools and strategies to get there and beyond.
Not sure if you should enroll in the A2 or B1 course?
Geared toward Absolute Beginners, this course gives you a solid start and foundation to build upon. The language of instruction is almost entirely in English.
This is an introductory course to the Portuguese language as spoken in Portugal. Throughout the course, we will focus on the Portuguese sound system and basic Portuguese grammar.
You will also learn how to introduce yourself and day-to-day, useful phrases. Finally, we will discuss learning resources and strategies to support your learning journey.
After the course, you will have a basic understanding of European Portuguese pronunciation and grammar. You will also be capable of engaging in simple, short oral interactions. Last but not least, you will be aware of a variety of learning resources and strategies to help you succeed at learning the language.
Can't you attend any courses this season? Fill up this form and I will keep you posted on upcoming Intensive Courses.
This intensive course is for language learners striving toward the A2 level. The language of instruction is English/Portuguese, typically in a 35/65 ratio.
My suggestion* for these two weeks is to focus on:
*There's always room to adjust the course according to the group's preferences:
After this course, you'll have come closer to the A2 level and have the tools and strategies to get there and beyond.
Not sure if you should enroll in the A2 or B1 course?
This intensive course is for language learners striving toward the A1 level. The language of instruction is English/Portuguese, typically in a 70/30 ratio.
If you've just started your learning journey, it may be that you will find this course a bit challenging. Nothing wrong with that.
However, if you think you'd have trouble coping with a challenging learning environment, consider enrolling for the Clean Slate A0 instead (if available).
This is an all-round course, meaning that we’ll work on all aspects of language learning (at the A1 level):
After this course, you'll have come closer to the A1 level and have the tools and strategies to get there and beyond.
Not sure if you should enroll in the A1 or A2 course?
Being a Romance language, why does Portuguese – in specific European Portuguese – sound so Slavic?!
Despite being geographically distant and belonging to different language families, Portuguese seems to share certain phonological features with Slavic languages, which leads to the question: what are those features exactly?
In this blog post, I will point out four phonological traits of European Portuguese that help explain its resemblance to Slavic languages. Read on.
Like several Slavic languages, closed vowel sounds are a prominent feature of European Portuguese.
Being a stressed-time language (as opposed to syllable-timed like other Romance languages), Portuguese produces fairly consistent time gaps between stressed syllables.
That, in turn, implies vowel reduction in unstressed syllables so they can fit into those relatively fixed time slots between stressed ones.
Vowel reduction?
It’s more simple than it sounds. Vowel reduction means that vowels become hastily pronounced, thus leading to closed vowel sounds (to allow unstressed syllables to fit into those fixed time slots mentioned above).
Like Portuguese, Slavic languages are dominantly stressed-timed and, therefore, have a high frequency of damped, closed vowel sounds.
Portuguese and Slavic languages share a rich vowel system that includes nasalized vowels (note that nasal vowels are uncommon in other Romance languages).
This nasalization gives the Portuguese language a distinctive, resonant quality setting it apart from other Romance languages. Accordingly, such nasal quality adds to the resemblance between Portuguese and Slavic languages.
European Portuguese is rich in fricative sounds, namely the /ʃ/ and /ʒ/ sounds, as in shade 또는 measure respectively.
(Fricative sounds are produced when the airflow passing through one’s vocal tract is constrained by a narrow passage. For the examples above, that narrow canal is formed by your tongue being pushed up against your hard palate.)
What’s more, these sounds are also a hallmark of Slavic languages. Thus, one more reason why Portuguese resembles the latter.
Finally, the so-called dark L is salient in Portuguese and Slavic languages.
You must be wondering what the dark L sounds like, right?
Well, the dark L is thicker than the “normal” L-sound. For instance, compare the L-sounds in the words Lisbon 그리고 malware. Can you hear the difference? That’s exactly right: Lisbon has the “normal” one, whereas malware renders a fatter, darker sound – the dark L.
In sum, the similarity between Portuguese and Slavic languages can be attributed to a few shared phonological features. In this short post, I briefly touched on four of them, that is, the noticeable presence of closed vowel sounds, nasal sounds, fricative sounds, and the dark L.
If you want to dive deeper into this topic, I highly recommend this article.
Stay tuned for upcoming courses, reads, and other novelties.
