Is Portuguese difficult to learn?

Alphabetically speaking, Portuguese uses 26 Latin letters (first of all, it is easier to use than many languages with their own alphabet), among which K, W, Y, W and Y belong to foreign letters and are hardly used in Portuguese. In terms of pronunciation, except for the trill R that you can't escape when learning Latin and the NHA and LHA sounds that some people may find difficult, as long as you learn English international phonetic symbols, there are almost no obstacles. The vowels with strange hats you see are all bluffing, and the difference between them is not very big (perfectionists can ignore it, because Portuguese, like English, can emit different phonetic symbols according to different situations). In the sentence structure, except for a few special cases, almost all of them are in SVO (subject-predicate-object) format, which is much simpler than Japanese, Korean and Turkish. Grammatically, although tense shift may be a bit complicated for English or Nordic language users, Slavic language has no various inverted cases, and it is easy to distinguish the yin and yang of words (German is typed when it comes out). It can be said that Portuguese is very friendly to English users all over the world, and the widely circulated difficulty coefficient map can prove this point, so I won't repeat it here.

Even compared with other Latin languages, Portuguese is one of the best languages to learn.

1. In Brazilian Portuguese, use você instead of tu, and the form of inflectional verbs to remember is-1:

Generally speaking, Brazilians use a pronoun to mean "you" and "you", which may not feel much to English users, because they are both "you", but in Latin, which is famous for its complex displacement, one less person's displacement is equivalent to reducing the difficulty of the whole verb part by one sixth!

Second, you can use a gente instead of nos, and the form of the modifier to remember is-1:

Nos is the personal pronoun of "we", but it can be replaced by gente in the third person singular, so we need to remember that if we want to be lazy, we will lose a form of displacement. Intuitively, some irregular verbs in Portuguese are modified as follows:

But if you use Brazilian Portuguese, the lines tu and nos are directly crossed out and you don't remember them. Doesn't it smell good? Spanish and Italian learners don't have such benefits. As long as they appear on the displacement table, they have to remember that they are miserable.

3. Compared with Italian and Romanian in the East, Portugal and Britain have a long history of communication and a closer geographical location, so they are more influenced by English. The following are some examples of words directly copied from English in Portuguese, and these words have corresponding Italian translations in Italian.

1.beef (English) -bife (Portugal) 2. Team (English)-Time (Portugal) 3. Volleyball (English)-Volleyball (Portugal)

There are many similar examples, so I won't mention them one by one. Compared with France, Spain and Italy, which belong to the Latin language family, the Portuguese probably have the best English penetration rate and average level.

Then there is how long it will take to reach the level of being able to complete daily life and dialogue. This question varies from person to person and can be answered in three aspects.

I. Personal language foundation and ability Generally speaking, as long as you are used to using Latin letters, whether it is English or Hungarian from another world, you will have an advantage in learning Portuguese. As mentioned above, Portuguese is relatively simple, and English, unlike Germanic German next door, borrows many words with Latin roots from French, making it easier for English learners to learn Portuguese. But as far as Latin native speakers are concerned, this advantage will expand sharply with the deepening of learning, just as China learns Japanese. The more advanced Chinese characters are, the more obvious their advantages are compared with Europeans and Americans.

For Spanish speakers (Castilian), Portuguese is more like the dialect of a small town 100 kilometers away from home. According to langfocus channel on YouTube, 89% of the words in the two languages are interchangeable (there is no guarantee that the interchangeable words will be commonly used, for example, achar is used in Portuguese instead of pensar in Spanish etymology, and achar's Spanish equivalent hallar has no meaning of "Xiang" at all). False friends are also a point to pay attention to. These two words are almost identical in etymology, but their meanings are quite different: una cena exquisita in Spanish is a delicious dinner, while Umcena Esquisita in Portuguese means "a strange scene" at first glance. Apart from these confusing points and some subtle grammatical differences, Spanish and Portuguese are like twin sisters. Their acquired habits and preferences may be different, but they can all be found in the same background.

Native speakers of Spanish and Portuguese can communicate without using each other's languages, but people who are similar to French and Italian need to study hard. It is true that the Latin department is just like the dialect of Wu dialect. If you learn one language, you can master others. Even if the pronunciation gap is too big to understand at all, you will understand it when you write it, so you should learn it quickly. But the reality is that there are not a few Italians who are good at French and Spanish (the number of people who learn Portuguese is not enough), but the time required to achieve fluency is not less than that of students majoring in minority languages in China-this leads to the latter two factors, especially the first one.

Second, personal learning methods, goals and efforts (internal factors in the learning process)

No matter in which field, the motivation to promote learning is always the most important. People who study because they love it generally make the fastest progress, because they can devote all their leisure time to learning as a hobby. It would be faster if I had a foundation in Latin. I can read the news within one month without any obstacles (I can actually do this directly by learning Spanish, but some common words will still be very nerve-racking and may be misunderstood), reaching the level of daily communication with Brazilians. Students in Portuguese majors/training courses who only have basic knowledge of English may need longer time, but after systematic practice, the foundation will be more solid. Please refer to other answers. Like ordinary Italians, because the mother tongue Latin is closely related to other languages, you can use Italian in your life, even if you type two sentences in another language every day, you have practiced it. In addition, the training courses in Milan are usually once a week, and the water is likely to be large (everyone has their own main business, and when they are tired of class, they start chatting in Italian). So the progress really depends on one's performance in his spare time.

Third, how many Portuguese resources can be used for learning (external factors in the learning process) According to the data survey of 20 19, Brazilian netizens spend an average of 3 hours and 45 minutes on social media every day, which can be said to be beyond the imagination of 996 office workers and junior high school students struggling in the ocean of problems. Therefore, it may be easier to find and match a Brazilian netizen than to find a Portuguese article. Moreover, due to the small language status of Portuguese in the world, Brazilians are often enthusiastic about teaching Portuguese learners, which also makes the spread of Brazilian Portuguese far exceed Portuguese.

In the case that Portuguese is limited as a small language resource and I can't go out at home because of the Italian epidemic, my personal study is almost linked to several mobile apps. Some have been introduced in detail in another answer before, and here are a few important ones to share briefly.

1, Teacher Lu speaks a foreign language /Lingodeer

As an introductory Portuguese app, Teacher Lu solved the problem that I don't want to spend money on a pdf textbook, because its functions are very comprehensive, which can help me improve my ability from listening, speaking, reading and writing.

Listen: This app is in Brazilian Portuguese. Every recording in each unit is basically made by Brazilians, and the reading is full of pictures.

Say: Each unit has the function of after-class video dubbing. By constantly comparing your own recording with the original video, you can find and correct your pronunciation, and naturally you can overcome your shyness when speaking a foreign language.

Reading: The course covers almost everything from 0 to b2. The unit summary at the beginning of each class can be used as a grammar book, and then targeted exercises are carried out immediately. The effect is 100%.

Writing: Translation questions and conjunctions account for a large proportion of unit learning, but app also has its own limitations. If you want to practice writing seriously, you still need to find a teacher or a native speaker to correct it.

Because the app can accurately count the time I spent studying Portuguese, I know that it took me 20 hours to clear all the courses (it may take longer if I don't have a Spanish foundation), so I will make good use of the app and other resources to review.

2. Simple Portuguese (Youtube channel)

Yi language series can be said to be the most recommended language learning channel on YouTube. Each issue will have a theme, and the host will extend the topic as much as possible by interviewing passers-by in the street, so that the audience can learn more vocabulary and expressions, learn a lot of spoken language that can't be learned in textbooks, and learn more about the customs of Portuguese-speaking countries. Now Easy Brazilian Portuguese has been done for 56 times, which is a must-see channel for youtube every time ~ Easy Portuguese from Portugal is also available, but it has only been done for three times because of the epidemic.

3. TV movies

Glob's website is used to watch movies and follow dramas, similar to the Brazilian version of Netflix. It provides a 30-day free trial period to watch all the content, and then about 50 yuan RMB every month, and you can cancel your subscription at any time. The problem is that there is only Brazilian drama in it. I don't know which is worth seeing. If you want to watch other Chinese dramas at the same time, you can directly subscribe to Netflix or use the daily news (free, some Brazilian dramas, but some episodes may not be complete).

As for the employment prospects, as a non-Portuguese major, I am not qualified to give advice and have no friends who have passed the Portuguese certificate. Most of the Portuguese positions seen on domestic job websites require a Portuguese degree. If Portuguese is used as a second foreign language just because of hobbies, it may be difficult to find relevant jobs in China. After all, the economies of Portugal and Brazil are not very prosperous, so we should be prepared to send abroad to Brazil or Africa for a long time. Finally, Chinese education in Brazil is very popular, and Brazilians who speak fluent Mandarin may compete for Portuguese posts in the future.

Finally, I hope I can help you and wish you find your goal as soon as possible!