501 Portuguese Verbs (Barron's 501 Portuguese Verbs) Review

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(More customer reviews)Arm yourself with verbs. The nouns will come in time,
and adjectives and adverbs are a more advanced tool that you
will naturally acquire through extensive reading and speaking.
No, to gain fluency and functionality, you need verbs.
This book is a collection of 501 Portuguese verbs, with full
conjugations listed and some very informative usage examples below each listing. Each verb takes up a page, has the English definition at the top, and lists the usage examples at the bottom.
The index at the end of the book lists verbs in English, then in Portuguese, providing an excellent method for finding your verb choice even if you are a Portueguse student learning English. Yes, I meant exactly that: in learning Portuguese, I have found it helpful and enlightening to see what English words a Portuguese-speaker might choose, as it gives me insight into what a native might feel is the best translation of an idea.
The best feature of this book, however, is the front matter. It explains each conjugation in depth, because if you are anything like me, you've forgotten exactly what a future subjunctive is. Heck, I don't even know if I've used a grammatical term there or not; good thing I bought this book though, because it'll tell me in plain terms what I need to know.
This is truly a five-star reference. A comprehensive dictionary would surpass it in coverage, but from the perspective of learning Portuguese, this book has no peer.

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Here is an ideal supplement to classroom textbooks for students learning Portuguese. The most frequently-used Portuguese verbs are presented alphabetically in table form, one verb per page. Each verb is completely conjugated in all tenses with English translations. A new index in this edition lists an additional 1,000 verbs with English translations, cross-referenced to verbs that are similarly conjugated in the main text. Language students will find additional material covering idiomatic verb usage, grammatical construction, and more.

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The Everything Learning Brazilian Portuguese Book: Speak, Write, and Understand Basic Portuguese in No Time (Everything: Language and Literature) Review

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(More customer reviews)It's nice that there actually is an affordable and effective book for a beginner to learn quite a bit of Brazilian Portuguese. I thought this book was really well organized and a solid introduction to the language. There are exercises throughout the book as well to practice what you learned. There is also an audio CD which is helpful (A native Brazilian speaker repeats words and phrases which are also written in the book). The chapters are:
1)Introducing the Portuguese Language (Why learn it, similarities to Spanish, European Portuguese vs. Brazilian Portuguese, tips on learning Portuguese, recognizing what you already know)
2)The Sounds of Portuguese (Portuguese alphabet, accent marks, listening practice, consonants, stress pattern in Portuguese, oral and nasal vowels, typing in Portuguese)
3)Beginning Conversation (Greetings, talking on the phone, saying goodbye, etc)
4)Nouns, Articles, and Contractions
5)Introducing "ser" (the verb "to be")
6)Introducing "estar" (the other verb meaning "to be")
7)Describing People and Things in Portuguese
8)The Vocabulary of Numbers
9)First Conjugation Verbs
10)Second Conjugation Verbs
11)Important Verbs to Know
12)Verb Tenses: an Overview
13)More Verbs
14)Negative Words and Constructions
15)Questions and Exclamations
16)The Future and Other Tenses
17)Imperative and Subjunctive Constructions
18)Carnaval, Samba, Feijoada, and Futebol (Brazilian culture!)
19)Means of Communication (In person, by mail, making phone calls)
20)Traveling to Samba-Land (getting papers in order, hotel reservations, currency, a bit of information about the most popular cities...)
I was mostly looking to learn the language, not the culture, and this book is indeed mostly teaching the language. I liked the bits of information about the culture though in this book and found it interesting.
I definitely recommend this as a book to start off with to anyone serious about learning the language. I went through this while going through Pimsleur lessons for Portuguese and found it to be a great supplement to my learning (In my opinion, Pimsleur goes at quite a slow pace and this book helped me learn more about grammar in a shorter amount of time, as well as expressions, etc, without going at too fast a pace). I recommend it to travelers only if they want to spend some extra time learning a bit more than they absolutely "need".

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"The Everything[registered] Learning Brazilian Portuguese Book with CD" makes Brazilian Portuguese easy to grasp. Author Fernanda L. Ferreira, Ph.D., provides readers with step-by-step instruction in vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. Readers learn how to: understand Portuguese grammar; improve pronunciation; and, have basic conversations when travelling, dining out, conducting business, and shopping. This helpful guide includes an audio CD with pronunciation guides, extensive vocabulary lists, and interactive exercises. Packed with dialogue examples, self-tests, and English-to-Portuguese and Portuguese-to-English dictionaries, "The Everything[registered] Learning Brazilian Portuguese Book with CD" will have readers speaking - and understanding - Portuguese in no time.

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