In Portuguese ; in some cases D is pronouced more like a G in English. When it is followed by a E or I this is the case.

So a normal Spanish word like ?de? is pronouced ?ge? is portuguese. Note that the ?e? is a non-accented e. so it sounds like a yankee would say it.

This makes understanding Portuguese (even if you know some Spanish) more difficult than you might think.

The portuguese verb for understand is the same as Spanish ?entender?. In Portuguese, it does not change stems so you have

Eo entendo
Voce entende

Which is very similar to Spanish. But the pronuciation difference between the 1st person and the 3rd person (voce) is significant. The 1st person (Eo) is as one would guess but the 3rd person (Voce entende) is actually pronounced more like ?Voce entenge?.

Until you figer out this pronunciation difference one?s Spanish doesn?t help. Here are some of the words that are the same in portuguese and spanish but sound very different because of this.

My understanding is that the ?tu? person is not used in Rio. Você is the slightly more formal ?you? that is normally used. Você is pronounced like ?Vose? and the e is accented as in Spanish.

E is only emphasized when explicitly marked with some kind of pronunciation symbol.

T is similar to D in that when it is followed either by a E or I then it is pronounced more like

Che
Chi

Ei in Portuguese is pronouced like a normal accented E is Spanish.

So one of the interesting fall outs of all this is that milk in Spanish (leche) & Portuguese (leite) are pronounced also most the same despite very different spellings. The only difference is that the final E in Portuguese is a non-accented E.

I'm sure anyone that has been to Rio knows that "R" is pronounced differently. Generally at the start of a word it is pronouced like a "H". So the correct pronunciation of real is "Real". And don't ask me why but the plural of real is actually reais which is pronouced something like "He-Ice".

I meant to mention this when I started this thread but I don't speak Portuguese. I have some of the Pimsleur tapes and all my comments are based on my observations listening to them. Hopefully there is a patient, wise man out there that speaks Portuguese that can guide those of us that are interested in learning Portuguese down the difficult road of learning a new language.

In cases, when a "m" is that last letter in a word it is pronouced like a "n". If it isn't the last letter, then it is prounced as you would expect as a "m".

For example,

Bem - Ben (Good)
Voce Tem - Voce Ten ( You have)
um - Un but in uma the m is distinct uma
ontem - onten (tomorrow)

I think that Sim might be an exception or something (I believe that the m is silent here).

Hopefully some Portuguese speaking folks can jump in here and set us straight.

"V" are pronouced like "V"s as in English. They don't sound like "B"s as in Spanish.

Obviously I made a typo above in regards to the correct pronunciation of real. It sounds more like "Heal".

Brazilian Portuguese is a little different than Portuguese, say from Portugal. Hopefully the tapes you got will point that out (I have seen them do it in the text parts of the series). I have a few notes (my personal observations):

1. I have found Portuguese to be closer to Italian than Spanish. Once you have mastered one the other is easy, but not the same with Spanish and Portuguese. The good news is you will pick up Italian fast after you learn Portuguese.

2. Brazilian Portuguese tends to be more "slurred". And there is dialect difference between Rio and Sao Paulo. I speak Brazilian Portuguese, but as from Rio. The difference between the two is like in the states where inflections make the difference (the southern drawl is applied to Rio, not Sao Paulo). Adds a bit more to the confusion. Ever talk to someone from New Hampshire after living your life in Dallas say? Sao Paulo was more formal (having done business there).

Some words have even more casual endings, like "real". I have heard some pronounce it "HE AWl" with the "l" almost silent.

I love Rio. Another thing that is different is attitude. There is always a bit of "passionade" thrown into their conversation. Do not be afraid to "get excited" when talking. I found this to be a significant difference between tourists and locals. After I adapted that last "style", the locals thought I was from Rio. It sure made making friends really easy and I was able to get the vendors away with a quick "Agora nao!" They just smile and say "Brasileira sim?" to which I answer "Sim!"


-W

Wanderinphx - I managed to get the Brazilan version of the Portuguese tapes so hopefully that will help minimize my confusion in my attempt to learn a bit of Portuguese. Wanderinphx, hopefully you can help set us newbies straight as we attempt to learn the Rio version of Portuguese.

It is funny that you mention Italian; I was down in Mexico a week or so ago & I was watching an American movie about an Italian family in New York. For the most part, it was all spoken in English but there were a few points where the guys were speaking in Italian & both the spoken words and the "spanish" subtitles reflected that. Both were identical; it is interesting to see the similarities between different languages.

YT
Good thread just started, the only change up I'd make is word ending in 'm' is not really replaced by 'n' but by a nasal sound applying a tilde on vowel and eliminating m altogether.
So bom becomes "bo(tilde)n", no such thing in English but other latin languages do have this nasal stuff.

I have to disagree with some pronuciations. Bom & Bem (Good) are pronounced more like Bong (Long O) and Bang. Sim (Yes) is pronounced like sing.

In words ending in ao (Tilta over the a) the ao basically replaces the ion in spanish.

I do have a bachelors degree in portugues and lived in Brazil for almost 2 years. Some great pussy.

Does anybody know any websites offer free Portuguese lessons?

The best and cheapest thing to learn Portuguese was a book I found at Costco. Portuguese in 10 minutes a day $11.50. I have been to Rio 8 times over the last year and a half.While it will not make you fluent , it will help in general conversation.

There is another thread with the same parent as this one called "Books to Learn Portuguese". It lists a few links for web sites. One of these discusses differences with Spanish.

Couple of questions about the above:

Não = nion ?

YT,

You refered to voce(you) as the third person. Is this because there is no conjugated second person ?

I find this thread interesting, but start a Spanish class on Monday night.

Gitano
No Nao is more like now in English.

I'm not sure if referring to Você as the 3rd person is the correct terminology. Você is conguated the same as he/ele and she/ela though.

There is a "tu" version of you in Portuguese but from what I can tell "tu" isn't used in Brazil.

In my six weeks in Brazil, speaking Portuguese the whole time, I never heard the form "tu" used - it may well be that it's reserved for animals and children as it is in Spanish in parts of Central America; even love songs use the voce form, as in "Preciso de Voce".

Hint of the day: don't use necesito as you might be tempted to in Spanish for 'I need' - it has a very strong sexual context and could get you in a lot of trouble - or fun, depending on your luck.

Preciso de voce is 'I need you'; 'necesito voce' means 'I need the pink. Now.'

Some important verbs that differ between Portuguese & Spanish

English	Spanish	Portuguese
To make or do	hacer	fazer
To speak	hablar	falar
To think	pensar	achar
To stay	quedar	ficar
To like	gustar	gostar de
There is	hay	ha
To need	necesitar	precisar
To look for	buscar	procurar
to have	Tener	ter
To come	venir	vir
to close	cerrar	fechar
to dance	bailar	dancar
to sign	firmar	assinar

YT,
My understanding of the verb ficar is that it is one of the three forms of the verb "to be". It is used with placement. For example, if you asked: where is Brazil, the translation would be: onde fica Brasil. Another example: it is near would be: fica perto. It gets a little confusing to decide when to use estar or ficar. The other "to be" verb "ser" seems to be easier to use as you would be trying to describe a permanent state of being such as "I am saj" would be in this case: eu sou stayawayjoe and not eu estou stayawayjoe.
Hope this didn't confuse.

Ficar can also be used in the verb form
"to stay". You could use it for "stay here" or "where are you staying?" I would use estar and ficar together, since estar also means "am". So you could say I am(estou) staying(ficando) in Rio.

The verbs that confuse the hell out of me are buscar, olhar, ver, and procurar. They all mean "to look", "to see", "to watch". Even my portugese teacher had a very difficult time trying to explain when you use one verb over another.

I had the same problem when I tried to explain to my Brasilian girlfriend when to use the english verbs "see, look, watch, view".
I basically stick to buscar and ver to express what I mean when I am in Brasil.

I have pretty extensive notes on the things I heard spoken in Brazil, kept in a custom dictionary I maintain in my computer, and I've rubbed elbows with 8 languages in my time. So let me see if I can shed a little light.

StayAwayJoe:

Ficar: as Youngtom stated, works for to stay (as at a hotel, or as a condition); also, in a psychological sense, one can 'ficar atento a' ie, stay attentive to, keep an eye out for. And ficar is used to indicate the physical location of something or somebody, as mentioned in the posts.

Its relationship to estar in the sense of 'to be in a temporary state of...' is: freely interchangeable - more or less set phrases probably dictate which to use in a given situation, which is why instructors have trouble defining exactly when to use what. (Try explaining to a non-English speaker the difference between 'How's it goin'? vs. 'How ya doin'? vs 'What's goin' on?' as a greeting which doesn't really want a full reply: living langauge doesn't always have mathematical-style rules.

Eg, you can say 'estou alto' or 'fico alto' to mean 'I am high' [on drugs of course, temporary condition]. Therefore, if you've got estar in its stand-alone form wired for Spanish, you're free to use ficar or estar in its place in Portuguese. 'Esta perto' is replaceable by 'fica perto'. So don't sweat it, just listen hard and repeat what you hear people saying.

FYI: I did find this one subtle difference, however, when 'com' is part of the phrase - my notes say:

'I am thirsty' [with no specific cause] is 'estou com sede'; but 'I'm becoming thirsty'[as the result of a specific action] takes 'fico com sede', and that there is a grammatical rule governing this: non-specific causes take 'estar com', specific causes use 'fico com'. This is so trivial, rare and still understable if a mistake is made that I'd forget it. There are more useful things to get confused about.

The verb 'Ser' is used as in Spanish (yes, it's difficult working out estar vs ser in Spanish, but once you've got it, it applies to Portuguese).


Thumper, message 1:

Your combination of estar and ficar as in 'estou ficando no Rio' shows the use of estar as an auxiliary verb (for continuous action). That's legit...up to this point, though, we've been talking about estar and ficar as stand-alone verbs. And guess what: I've got examples of ficar taking the place of estar as the auxiliary verb in this case too (as in 'fico fazendo').

Thumper, message 2:

'Buscar' and 'Procurar' share one definition, the idea of 'to look for'; buscar is given a second usage - 'to go for'. 'Procurar is richer in that it has the additional sense - if you want it - of to try. I mentioned that the dictionary that comes with the Living Language course emphasizes the 1000 'essential'words. 'Procurar' is designated as essential, buscar is not; furthermore I don't have a single mention of the use of buscar in speech I've heard (and I would have noted it because of its usage in Spanish - a free word!). So I would say just forget 'buscar' entirely. It's subsumed by procurar. But I notice you've elected to do the opposite. To me it's something I'll understand when I hear it, but I won't use it because no-one else seems to.

OK - vision stuff:

Look = watch when the visual action is deliberate ("I couldn't stop looking at her"; "it was horrible but I couldn't help looking"; "I looked and looked and looked - mas nada"). I can't think of a single case where looking isn't a deliberate action. Hence 'I watched a TV show' = 'I looked at a TV show'.

The difference between 'look'and 'see' is generally equivalent to the difference between 'to listen' and 'to hear' - one is basically active, the other basically passive ("I [deliberately]looked down the alley and [happened to] see her there"; "Did you [passively, again] see the lightning?")

Procurar is not to look in the simple visual sense, but 'to look for' or 'seek' ("I'm looking for my jacket")[note the subtle 'try' concept built into procurar - you're really saying "I'm trying to find my jacket."]

Finally, olhar is marked as 'essential', but is effectively synonymous with watch = look. You're 'casting an eye' on something, again deliberately, but generally in a short-term way, as in 'to glance'.

For what it's worth.

Youngtom- Have the Pimsleur tapes helped you on your trip this time?

Layne87
If you know Spanish, Pimsleur helps tremendously for Portuguese as you learn the proper accent. After figuring out the accentuation, Portuguese is very similar to Spanish.
Level 1 is equivalent to taking beginner's class in JC except you have right accent instead of gringo accent.

The tu form is used in Brazil, especially in the southern states, so of Sao Paulo. Also, you'll even hear it as far north as Fortaleza, and as when speaking to someone as follows: Eu te amo, or Eu te mando.

no hablo espanol..?only east tn country hick..

The Pimsleur tapes really did help especially with helping me understand the girls (I speak some Spanish). I would agree 100% with Athos' comments. Check out the "Books to learn a little Portuguese" thread; there is some really good advice over there. You might want to start with one of the other series that Koro or WilmaFlint mention then progress to Pimsleur later.

One can have a great time in Rio without speaking a word of Portuguese but if you speak some Portuguese you will have an even better time (if that is possible).

I have recently started studying Portuguese. I have 2 different audio tapes series and each is helpful in it's own way.

I do find that my knowledge of spanish is helpful at times even with the different pronunciation in portuguese. I guess it depends on your level of spanish skill and the manner in which you learned spanish. Like everything else in life YMMV.

I would strongly recommend a book entitled "portuguese in 10 minutes a day". The presentation is simple and childish but it does a great job of explaining things from A to Z and systematically progessing you from one step to another.

Give it a try I think it only cost $12.

YoungTom

ontem = yesterday

amanha = tomorrow (it has a ~ over the final a)

Good catch amigo

Well I just finished Pimsleur level 1, 15 hours worth of tapes, listening to them 2 to 3 times, took me well over 2 months.
Portuguese is very similar to Spanish after you figure out the preposition and how they combine words together.
Level 1 is equivalent to taking Beginners class at school but you pick up better accent but grammar is a bit limited.
So now I speak Spanish/Portuguese/American dialect. Should be good enough to BS my way while in Rio.
I did like the Pimsleur as no need to go to school and no need to write or read anything, just listen and repeat.

Athos - I tell you, you are ready. You'll definitely get laid this trip

Seriously, you'll have an even better time in Mayo.

I'm having a heck of time with the verb "to find". I originally wanted to use "achar" but the Brazilians use this verb more to express "to think or believe". So for those who are fluent what verb should I use.
Also, what does "ta" mean. I can't find it in any dictionary. It has an accent mark above the "a". They usually use it at the beginning of a sentence.
Thanks

StayAwayJoe:

Achar is indeed to think or believe (I think so: "Acho que si"); 'find' in its normal (physical) sense, ie of finding an object, person or place, is covered by encontrar, just as in Spanish. It also works for 'I find that impossible to believe.'

As for a possible source of confusion, note that you could reword that last sentence as 'I think that that's impossible'...so some very loose translations, or certain constructs, might use 'achar' and 'encontrar' to mean roughly the same thing...with encontrar moving from the physical to the conceptual plane.

But if you stick to achar for 'think' and 'encontrar' for 'find', translating directly and literally from your English, you'll be understood clearly.

Stayaway:

Am I allowed a wild guess? This isn't science, but I'm willing to bet that ta' (with an accent mark) is street for esta', third person singular of estar, a mighty common verb, easy to see it starting gazillions of sentences.

Many variants of Spanish drop the letter 's' in similar fashion (in Brazilian Portuguese that would be 'sh', but the same 'logic' applies).

No Koro,
Ta' is an idiomatic expression in Brazilian Portuguese...one of the meaning is like " Right?" in English after you ask somebody a question and want an immediate confirmation..

I'm a Portuguese newbie, but I've struggled with the same problems you have; "ta" (with the accent over the a) can be a shortening of "esta:" "ta bom?" = was it good? (mulheres may say this after sex or a sex act). A colloquial meaning of "ta" is "OK." I use "ta" to say "OK." "Ta bom," can also mean, "OK, good." I think this is a more colloquial way of saying "esta bem." For awhile, I thought people were saying "tabon," which isn't in any Portuguese dictionary.

This is my (typically) long-winded way of saying that I think Koro is correct. Desculpe.

Rock3times:

I be's ignorant, maybe, but I think we're all correct in our own ways (Me, you and W). Ta' *is* idiomatic, but it probably derives from chopping the first syllable off of 'esta', as Wilmaflint and I suggest. Idioms don't come from nowhere.

For it to mean 'Right?' as you pointed out, you're probably looking at a much-shortened form of "Esta' correcto?" or "Esta' bom?" / "Esta bem?". W's other example of 'OK' is right up this alley... the "bom" or "bem" isn't spoken, only implied, and the ta' is still the short form for "esta", the (minimal) remainder of a longer and grammatically correct sentence.

In English, we might let slip "Kay, I'll do it" in place of "Okay, I'll do it." Same chop-off phenomenon. Or we might say "What the...?" and leave it at that, implying the unspoken 'fuck' or 'hell' that would properly (improperly?) finish the sentence.

My guess is that you won't find "ta'" or "tabom" or anything of this kind in a standard dictionary simply because it's street-idiomatic. My library in San Diego has an idiomatic Brazilian Portuguese dictionary, by the way, you might check for one wherever you are.

Aside, and just for the record: when you learn a language, you have to decide what sub-dialect you're going to learn. I personally prefer to go the TV-announcer route, being able to speak in a very proper way so that I don't sound street or low-class when talking to a policeman who's trying to shake me down or a bank officer who's questioning the authenticity of my traveller's checks. I then travel, and pick up the street variants for use when they're appropriate.

Common problem in Asia...a lot of guys learn their Thai, say, from provincial, uneducated bar-girls, and then use their language 'power' at the hotel desk or with other Thais, causing no end of (politely hidden)laughter on the part of the native listeners. The worst case is guys who pick up the polite 'kha' tag for the end of sentences, which is spoken by women only ('khrap' is the equivalent for men)...so some guy who's been listening to his girl say "Kobkhun, kha" for 'thank you' consistently, will think that's how you say it, and use it at a store or someplace instead of 'Kobkhun khrap', effectively identifying himself as a lady-boy. You can imagine the effect that has, especially if he's six feet tall, weighs 220 pounds and balding.

So street has its place, but I like to move it to second-tier learning, getting a firm grip on good grammar etc. first.

Hey, Wilmaflint, have I out-long-winded you? (Idiomatic expression coined on the spot...not in dictionaries!)

The last time I was in Rio, I bought some Brazilian movie and show DVDs. Most of the movies have English sub-titles, but some don't. Watching the movies are a great way to learn Portuguese, and you can measure how much you are learning by how much more you are understanding with each successive viewing. Unfortunately, stores sell more US movies than Brazilian movies.

I mentioned somewhere one of my favorite movies, Gemeas, which won Melhor Filme and Melhor Atriz in 1999. It's just a bit over an hour long, so you can easily see it again and again. You will certainly want to see it at least 2 or 3 times, because not understanding much dialogue, you will need multiple viewings in order to catch everything that happens.

However, the one DVD that I watch over and over is a compilation of six episodes (and the ever present bonus materials) of a television program, Os Normais. This show is hilarious, and each episode is just 25 minutes long. One episode, Fazer as Pazes e Normal, is the funniest half hour of television I've ever seen. I've seen this one at least ten times, and I still LOL.

Wilmafint
Your portuguese must be pretty good to understand a movie.
I am just happy to figure out how to say "in" in Portuguese:
en, na, no, nas, nos, num, nums, numa, numas.

just tell the girls "Quero ti comer"

StayAwayJoe

According to Pimsleur:
Eu asho que sim (I think so)
Eu posso ashar un banco (I can find a bank)
Ashar is used for both think and find
Pensar means also think

Athos:

Good researching. Made me get up and look at my dictionaries...I'd been referring to my computer files, in which I sedulously [word for the day] write down every phrase or construct I hear when travelling, or read when studying if I have a suspicion it's going to be useful. Your post said to me 'Time to Read The Fucking Manual'.

I have a "Cardinal" paperback dictionary from 1956 which has "achar" under 'find' (as well as encontrar, of course) [might be Europe=oriented, can't tell]; my Living Language course 'Brazilian Portuguese', bought in 1994 (and highly recommended BTW), also lists the two verbs exactly as Athos' Pimsleur quotes do; my "Hippocrene Handy Dictionary: Portuguese", which appears to be oriented to European Portuguese and printed in 1986, however, lists only 'encontrar'.

My custom computer dictionary, which as I say is culled from experience studying and travelling, very consistently uses 'encontrar' for 'find' and 'achar' for 'think'. No exceptions.

So the interlace, according to the dictionaries, is real, and the problem is what to do about it. My policy is to find a word that apparently works in all cases, but keep alert to alternatives heard or written. Hence my advice to stick with 'encontrar' for find, and 'achar' for think when struggling to express your ideas, but pay attention to Brazilian speakers who might use achar for 'find'... You'll know what they're talking about and vice=versa. Using this technique I didn't have major problems being understood in Brazil, and I didn't speak English at all for the six weeks I spent around the northeast.

So I say, 'OK, the problem exists, but we have a fix.' Pelo menos, acho que sim. I wonder if achar is used in literature more than in speech...it's often the case that formal written language has distinct differences and a preferred vocabulary distinct from colloquial speech, of course.

As to pensar, it seems to deal with active, grinding thought that is seeking a solution..."I'll have to think about it", or "Deixa me pensar" ... let me think! ("Deixa me achar" sounds really strange.) Achar feels more passive, or less driven, leaning toward 'well my opinion is...' or 'I believe that...' or 'I can't tell for sure, but I think that "girl" is actually a ladyboy.' "Voce acha ela bonita?", etc.

And Athos, thanks for the direct quotes (although I think you missed the spelling on achar)...showed me I'd misspelled 'sim', reverting to the Spanish 'si' in my earlier post today. It gave me pause as I wrote it, now I know why. So much for perfect recall after 8 years of not speaking.

Wilmaflint:

With your DVD's in Portuguese subtitled with English you're really on to something. But I'd turn it around: look for movies in English with Portuguese subtitles. That way you have a perfect understanding of what's going on...because the action and speech is in English, and you have a written guide on how to express the ideas in Portuguese, by virtue of the subtitles. Furthermore, using movies typically means you won't end up learning a stilted, academic form of speech...movies aren't totally "street", typically, but they're colloquial, and that's what you want.

And I learned that lesson on Varig airlines! The movies were that way, Hollywood junk with Portuguese subtitles, and I was just taking notes furiously. I'd done my grammar study but had never spoken. Now whenever I'm wrestling with a language (I can get by in 8, four of them Asian), I look for exactly this: English speech for comprehension, foreign language subtitles for expressing ideas colloquially. I don't mind adding that this technique is utterly useless for Thai and Cambodian, both of which use a Sanskrit=based script all their own (and different from each other!). But for languages using Roman script, you'll jump levels quickly.

Here's a tip: unless you've got a top=notch VHS unit with perfect freeze=frame, DVD is a better way to go than tape. Because whenever I stop my tape to write down the foreign=language equivalent on the screen, I get video noise all over the bottom of my screen, wiping out the text. That's on a GO Video deck, the dubbing kind, it's no bottom=end US$100 player.

I agree with Athos that you've got to be pretty advanced to just go with an unsubtitled movie. I can't usually get more than 50% out of Spanish and French movies, and I've had those languages almost fluently for normal conversation for decades.

Powerslave:

I see you're using the 'tu' form. Anybody have any idea when to use that? I never did, heard all these love songs using the voce form ("Preciso de Voce"), and have snippets like "I miss you" (pretty intimate, there) as "Estou com saudades de voce".

This is another case where I learn one form that handles what I believe are all the cases (ie voce), then keep my ear tuned to alternatives (tu). I have no notes saying I ever heard the 'tu' form used. It frightens me, actually, like it might be used for animals and children, ie only when looking down the social strata or in only the tightest of relationships (man and wife?)...so its use might be construed as disrespect (as is the case with 'tu' in Guatemalan Spanish). I haven't any idea of when it's appropriate to use it with a girl. It was always 'voce' that I heard, and I spent long periods with some of the girls I met. And it's in the love songs, as I've mentioned.

Good thread. It would be interesting as a linguistic exercise (no, I don't have time either) to research how achar came to have two distinctly different meanings. (Maybe "I find her attractive" points to a key.)

I (and many Brazilians) use "tu" in the second person objective. Quero te ver (i wanna see you) sounds better than Quero lhe ver or quero ver voce. In the subjective I would say "Voce quer me dar um presente" (you want to give me a present) rather than use tu.
My experiences in Sampa, Rio and Bahia were that Tu appears frequently in the objective, among friends and acquaintances, of course. You won't find the "tu" subjective much outside of Rio Grande do Sul.

Incidently, have you all noticed that in Spanish you "querer" your novia, but in Portuguese you "amar" your namorada...

Koro
You're the professor.
Indeed I am learning with Pimsleur so forgive my spelling.
Another example of words having different meaning:
A um banco? (Is there a bank?)
Tem um banco? (Is there a bank?)

Powerslave:

Tu: So maybe frequent and easy use of the 'tu' form is a southern regionalism? I mentioned that I was in the Northeast exclusively (Recife to Manaus) and never heard it.

Your point noted, but I'm confused now as to why the love songs use voce, as in the title I quoted ('Preciso de Voce', big hit in the early/mid 90's).

On amar vs querer: Two of my three Portuguese dictionaries allow querer to be used for love; it's also used in Spanish, as you say. But I agree, in Brazil it appears to be used almost exclusively for 'wish', 'want', 'desire', i.e. non-personal contexts. But possibly an outdated use of it as a 'love verb' exists in the noun 'querida'(darling or beloved in P, mistress among other things in S).

And Spanish isn't strict...you can use both verbs, depending on what message you're trying to get across. The Spanish "Te amo con todo mi corazon" is perfectly acceptable, and very polite/respectful. Same-same "Te amo, mami" [mommy] from a child. But a novia brings more than respect into the picture...it's buceta time! So "Te quiero" in Spanish can be quite suggestive in context (I desire you). (I can just hear her saying 'Es obvio que me quieres, pero me amas, tu?' as he's trying to get into her pants.)

Then there's the flame-thrower, by the way, of necesitar, which in Brazil is basically the equivalent of "curame mamacita" in Spanish: "Gimme the pink"! A lot of Spanish-first speakers don't know about that one, and use the verb because it exists in Spanish. Precisar is the normal verb for 'to need' in Portuguese; necesitar is "I have to have you...and right now!" Dangerous but useful verb.

(It's not unusual for languages to borrow and alter the meaning and usage of words...in Norwegian 'dyr' means any animal, but by the time it got down to English, it became a very specific kind: deer. In Filipino, they took Spanish 'seguro' and changed it from certainty to the word 'maybe'.)


Athos:

Could you check the spelling of 'A'? That's the feminine pronoun, as in 'a garota' or 'a semana'. Should it be 'Ha', third person singular of haver?

I'm going to assume so.

'Ha' is from haver = haber in Spanish (note the b/v switch, commonly seen), and look at how close to Spanish 'Hay' the Portuguese 'Ha' is. Both come from the same verbs in their respective languages, and it's the same in French (Est-ce qu'il y a une banque?).

These verbs - in S, P and F - mean 'to have'. So does ter (P) = tener (S) = tenir (F); we have it in English in the word 'tenacious'...the Latin root is the verb 'to hold'. Well, to hold something you've got to have it.

Portuguese went a bit adrift using ter the way it does, I mean it seems they got a bit creative. 'Ter' shows up as the auxiliary verb marking the past tense, which is different from S, F and E, all of which use 'haber' / 'avoir' / 'have'.

As in 'El no ha hecho nada' (S), 'Il n'a rien fait' (F) and 'He has done nothing'. One of the harder things to get used to in P is to slip ter in as the past tense auxiliary verb (tenho visto vs he' visto (S), j'ai vu (F), I have seen.

But I think what you're seeing with 'Ha um banco' vs 'Tem um banco' is a language in transition...it's moving away from haver in favor of ter, so at this point in time both forms exist. Or maybe it's just a permanent result of being in some weird blender that picked up influences from the past and then added some spice of its own.

Of interest only because they're on the other side of the world, Thai, Cambo, VN and Tagalog/Filipino also say 'Have bank' for 'There is a bank', just like S, F and E. Portuguese is definitely the oddball.

BTW, is your Pimsleur course Brazil-specific, or European Portuguese?

Koro: Switching the language of DVDs to Portuguese and watching those crappy inflight movies in Portuguese are great ideas.

As you correctly guessed, I listen to the Portuguese in Brazilian movies for help with my pronunication and the use of slang. My pronunication is horrible. I think I can write Portuguese better than speak it.

Athos: Since you can speak Spanish, you are a lot better than I am with Portuguese. I get tongue cramps attempting to say some words properly. I can barely understand 5% of the DVDs without subtitles, but you can figure out what is happening: especially, if you watch them multiple times. I wonder how much more funny "Os Normais" could be, if I could understand more of the verbal humor. Interestingly, you can tell who the Carioca actors are by hearing their accent--their tendency to tack the "sh" sound onto the ends of words that end with "z" or "s."

A relatively recent Brazilian film that is on DVD and that can be bought or rented in the US is "Bossa Nova." It was popular in Brazil and includes some of Brazil's top actors plus a middle-aged Amy Irving, who is married to the Brazilian director of the film. It's an enjoyable comedy/love story, and about a quarter of it is spoken in English. Rio is gorgeous and is consciously portrayed by the director as an idyllic paradise. (From the English commentary of the movie on the DVD; to paraphrase, "The beauty of Rio is useless if you don't have someone that you love to share it with, which is the point of the Tom Jobim song that inspired the film.") Of course, the Tom Jobim oriented soundtrack is fantastic.

I like the DVD idea. I'm going to check out some video stores next trip to Rio & buy a few movies to practice with.

I'd like to put in another plug for the Pimsleur tapes. They are a great way to acquire some conversational skills in just a few months (especially if you already speak some Spanish). As Dood pointed out, the 3rd Brazilan Portuguese set is coming out later this month.