0-1 brazilian portuguese for spanish speakers

Written By Matt Muldavin

If you want to do business, or just travel, across Latin America, you can’t avoid Brazil

Portuguese is the native language for around 250M people across 7 countries. Brazil is by far the country with the most Portuguese speakers, with a population of over 210M. Brazil is by far the most populous country in South America, and accounts for 49% of South America's population and 52% of its' GDP. Brazil borders 10 South American countries, yet remains strangely disconnected in a lot of people’s minds because it isn’t part of Spanish Speaking Latin America. 


“It’s close enough to spanish, I’ll be able to get by”

There's truth to the idea that Spanish and Portuguese are similar, which is both a huge advantage and a dangerous trap. Portuguese speakers generally understand Spanish much better than Spanish speakers understand Portuguese. If you speak slow, clear Spanish to a Brazilian, they'll probably get the gist. The inverse isn't true.


Here’s my pitch: if you already speak Spanish and English and want to work or travel across all of Latin America, learning Portuguese is one of the best investments you can make.


My slightly harsher pitch to the same audience: your excuse not to learn decent Portuguese isn't a good one.


I say this is because:

  1. I used to have the same bad excuses for not learning Portuguese 

  2. It doesn’t take 10,000 hours of practice to learn decent Portuguese.  

  3. It’s really rewarding. 


My 2 cents: Speaking should always be the goal

If your goal is to actually speak Portuguese, then you need to actually speak it. Duolingo can be ok for vocab and secondary practice, but I’ve never met anyone who learned how to speak a language from Duolingo. 


You need some basic grammar, vocab and pronunciation knowledge before you can start speaking. But as a Spanish speaker you need way less practice than you think.


I recommend studying the least amount possible to get to a level where you can jump into real conversations or read or listen to real Portuguese. 


Find what you’re interested in and find real articles, videos, podcasts, movies, etc in Portuguese that talk about those topics.  


This is what I did and would recommend doing to go from zero to understanding most everything in Portuguese and being able to speak at least Portuñol. 


4 month plan, assuming you have 2-3 hours a week

Weeks 1-2: studying on your own time

  • 50% listening and reading to real Brazilian Portuguese 

  • 50% studying basic verb conjugations + common vocabulary (start with my guide below)

Weeks 3-4: studying on your own time + finding a tutor you like

1:1 tutor: I recommend getting a 1:1 tutor versus doing a group class. They are affordable and you can improve much faster

  • I’d prioritize speaking as early as possible, after about 2 weeks of learning on your own. I tried to learn the basic conjugations for the top 20 verbs, and then started doing 1:1 tutoring with a Brazilian teacher who also speaks spanish

  • I found a tutor in CDMX to help me, but there are good tutors on italki, Preply, Verbling, etc. 

Weeks 5-16:

After you have the basics, talk as much as possible. If your goal is to be able to speak, you need to practice speaking. I did 3, 1 hour sessions a week for a bit, then reduced down to 2, 1 hour sessions with my tutor.

Start here! Tips and Resources

Below are the basics that I think you should learn to start. It’s a combination of some tips, and links to the best resources I used.

Verbs:

Learn the basic conjugations for -ar, -ir, -er, verbs in: presente, preterito perfeito, and preterito imperfeito.

  1. Use this or print it out to test yourself: Tabela de verbos.pdf

Memorize the irregular but commonly used verbs

  1. Use this or print it out to test yourself: The life-saver verb sheet 2-compound tenses.pdf

The 4 high level things to know about Portuguese verbs are:

  1. they don’t use “tu”, and only use “você” which is the equivalent of “usted” in Spanish. 

  2. Most people don’t use “nós” when talking, which is the spanish equivalent of “nosotros.” They typically use “a gente” which means “us” but is conjugated in the 3rd person singular tense

    1. For example it’s more common to say: “a gente fala” instead of “nós falamos” to say “nosotros hablamos”

  3. When doing the informal future tense, in spanish you say “ir + a + verb.” In Portuguese, you use “ir + verb” 

    1. For example: Spanish “voy a hablar con él” is “vou falar com ele” in Portuguese. 

  4. The order of sentences is mostly the same in Spanish and Portuguese, except for one exception: where you put the indirect subject. For example:

    1. “te voy a hablar” is “vou te falar” in portuguese. “te vou falar” is incorrect 

    2. “Tú me puedes hablar” becomes “você pode me falar?” “você me pode falar” is incorrect

The verbs listed in both PDFs are the most commonly used verbs in Portuguese. I also like this website to check conjugations on the fly: https://www.conjugacao.com.br/ 

Vocabulary:

Spanish and Portuguese have 90% lexical similarity. This means that even if you don’t know a word in Portuguese, you can probably guess what it is.

I’d recommend making flashcards or starting to memorize the most commonly used words, which are in lists like this one: https://portuguesewithcarla.com/1000-most-common-portuguese-words/ 

I use Flashcard Hero as a flashcard app, because it’s synced with both my Mac and iPhone. If i read an article on my laptop, I can type it in on the app there, and then quiz myself on my phone. 

But first, I recommend starting by memorizing these patterns: 

1. -ción / -sión → -ção 

Spanish -ción always becomes -ção. Ção has a nasal sound which you’ll have to learn how to pronounce over time, but to start just pronounce it like “ao” in spanish or “ow” in english.

Spanish Portuguese

información informação

nación nação

educación educação

situación situação

comunicación comunicação

civilización civilização

decisión decisão

televisión televisão
profesión profissão

2. -ad → -ade 

Most of the time, any word that ends in -ad in spanish you can just add an “e”. Sometimes, the base of the word slightly changes. The pronunciation is different, any time you have a “ade” at the end of a word you pronounce it like “ji” in english.  

Spanish Portuguese

verdad verdade

sociedad sociedade

universidad universidade

capacidad capacidade

actividad atividade

libertad liberdade


3. -ble → -vel

Spanish Portuguese

posible possível

increíble incrível

estable estável

responsable responsável

visible visível

4. -mente stays -mente, but sounds different

You pronounce the “mente” more like “MAIN-chee”. There’s a nasal sound in there that you’ll learn, but if you pronounce it like “main-chee” you’re 80% of the way there

Spanish Portuguese

realmente realmente

fácilmente facilmente

normalmente normalmente

rápidamente rapidamente

Pronunciation: 

Vowel + M/N/L:

Any time a vowel is before an M, N, or L, it becomes a nasal sound. You don’t pronounce the m, n, or l. You pronounce it more like the vowel + “u”

For example: 

Escritura Pronunciación aproximada

mal máu

Brasil Bra-zíu

animal a-ni-máu

papel pa-péu

Portuguese Rs

Any time you’d roll an R in Spanish, you make a “j” sound in Spanish. 

For example: 

  • “rio” becomes “jio”

  • “carro” becomes “cáju”

  • “Rafa” becomes “Jafa” 

Listening: 

Once you learn the main rules of pronunciation, it’s pretty easy to understand the majority of what Brazilians say. Here are some Youtube channels, podcasts, etc that I listen to:

Easy:

Medium:


Advanced: 

  • 123 segundos podcast: Daily podcast that is 123 seconds long about the most relevant news of the day. I listen to this most days

  • Ted Talks in Portuguese

  • Pequenas empresas & Grandes Negocios 

  • Youtube Interviews: when first learning, I watched a lot of interviews with people I was interested in (Neymar, Pele, Ronaldinho, Leandro Barbosa, Wagner Moura, etc). I’d listen to every interview a couple times, once to try and understand as much as possible. Second with subtitles to really listen to their accents and how they talk, and to mimic how they talk

Reading: 

Tech/Startups:

Good online books and resources:

Final tips

Record daily voice notes talking about what you did that day, or what you will do in the day ahead in Portuguese. I use the Journal app on the iPhone but you can use any voice diary app 

  • If you don’t know a word, say it in english/spanish. Then write down that word in your flashcard app and look up what the word is in Portuguese

  • Most people do very similar things everyday. If you keep doing audios every day, you’ll be surprised at how quickly you’ll be able to say most things that are important to you on a daily basis

Nowadays the problem isn’t finding good/enough content, it’s sticking to and following through with what you choose to do. Instead of finding 50 books/blogs/podcasts in Portuguese, just start with a couple and stick to them.

There is obviously a bunch more to learn to become fluent in Portuguese. But if you follow this guide, you’ll get to a level where you can use Portuguese more, and you’ll learn the more difficult verb tenses, more vocab, phrases, etc.


Matt Muldavin
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