Here is what I learned tonight:

1. do you like Brazil? (familiar) - você gosta do Brasil?
2. I am going to buy something - eu vou comprar alguma coisa
3. what are you going to buy? - o que você vai comprar?
4. I don't know what I am going to buy - Eu não sei o que eu vou comprar
5. things - coisas
6. many things - muitas coisas
7. I buy - Eu compro
8. I buy things - Eu compro coisas
9. You buy - você compra
10. You buy many things - você compra muitas coisas
11. What do you speak? - o que você fala?
12. I can - Eu posso
13. I can buy - Eu posso comprar
14. You can buy things - Você pode comprar coisas
15. What can you buy - o que você pode comprar?
16. You can - você pode
17. I like to pay - Eu gosto de pagar
18. twelve - doze
19. there are twelve reals here - há doze reais aqui
20. thirteen - treze
21. good things - coisas boas
22. very good things - coisas muito boas
23. There are good things over there - Há coisas boas lá
24. They beer is very good - a cerveja é muito boa
25. And the money is very good - e o dinheiro é muito bom

Out of morbid curiosity, how good is learning Pimsleur portuguese for acutally speaking/understnding in Rio? In other words, are the locals generally able to understan your Pimsleur portuguese? Are YOU able to understand their portuguese?

After all, just like a native american speaker would never say "The book is on the table" (they'd say "da bookzon d'table") or any other language-school nonsense, a native Brazilian would never say (#24) "a cerveja é muito boa", but rahter something like "a cerva é boa" or some other mixture of local slang, slurred words, and fast talking...

Just curious,

BS

Badseed
I learned what Portuguese I know from Pimsleur and your assumption is correct. I am fairly well understood when I speak Portuguese in Rio, but have a lot of difficulty understanding what I hear. Just like in the U.S. phrases, slang, and accents vary greatly from location to location. For me spending a lot of time with one garota helped as she began to know my vocabulary and used words I was familiar with. We now have understandable phone conversations. The best way to learn is to get some basis for the language and then spend as much time possible talking to a native speaker (IMHO).

Xenono, or anyone else, in Lesson 9 we learned the word for time. Tempo. I am hearing it pronounced as if there was an i in the word like the Spanish version. Tee-m-po. Same with the word understand. Entendo. N-tee-n-dough. Is there actually an i sound there or is it just my poor hearing? Also, I thought the te combination in a word had a che sound like in the word for night. Noite. Or restaurante. Restaurante.

Also, where are you getting the spelling for these words? My reading lessons are just a bit of vocabulary and sometimes there is no reading material at all for a particular oral lesson.

Tight_Fit,

From my personal hearing I don't hear the i in the words like the Spanish version. I am hearing them as tem-po and en-ten-do.

As for the spelling, I use world.altavista.com and freetranslation.com.

I type in the English and ask it to translate to Portuguese so I know how to spell the words I am pronouncing. I find it helps with pronunciation, too. Sometimes it comes up with a different word so you have to try different combinations and different things. I also go "back" to English from the Portuguese version to double-check and make sure I am in the ballpark.

Tight_fit:

There is no i sound, but the e in both cases is nasalized. This is what happens when the e is followed by m or n. The pronunciation is exactly the same whether it is m or n (the difference is only a writing convention), and the m and n themselves are completely silent. They just nasalize the e before them.

Thus, tempo is pronounced te~po and entendo is pronounced e~te~du, where the ~ denotes the nasalization. Pronounce it as if you were going to pronounce the m or n, but stop short of that.

The chi sound is for t followed by a closed e. You can consider the nasalized e as a different vowel.

OK, is there some place where you actually hear this nasalized sound just on its own?

The first tape of Mastering Portuguese has lots of it.