Portuguese is the sixth most natively spoken language worldwide and one of the most in-demand languages for translation. The majority of the people who speak Portuguese (over 205 million of them) live in Brazil. It is one of the wonderful foreign languages to learn. Learning Portuguese could be fun by knowing that it is one of the romance languages, along with Spanish, French, Italian, and Romanian. This means learning Portuguese could be a gateway to make it easier to learn another romance language.

Now if you have decided to take up on the Portuguese, there is much more to discover while on the path of achieving fluency. For English speakers, there are some unique challenges that one should be aware of. One of the main issues English speakers face when learning Portuguese is conquering the right Portuguese pronunciation.

• Start with the Alphabet:

Portuguese has 26 letters in its alphabet in total and those 26 letters are the same as they are in English. To be more specific, Portuguese comprised of 23 letters that historically were part of this language, while three more additional letters – K, W, and Y – were introduced into the official Portuguese alphabet in the year 2009. Before you can set about acquiring Portuguese pronunciation, you will certainly have to learn the Portuguese alphabet. Memorizing the alphabet will help you in getting to know the exact pronunciation of each letter. It would be better to also learn how the combination of letters is pronounced as to how it’s in English. Some of the common letter combinations are, CH, LH, and RR. Knowledge of these sounds will help in improving your overall Portuguese-speaking skills.

 

• Read aloud:

Reading aloud will help you in improving your fluency in the language. Reading aloud gives you clarity in your voice. Reading out loud helps you in maintaining a base level of practice for your vocal cords even if you don’t get enough opportunity to speak to anyone in Portuguese on some days. It may also act as a base for practicing other components of your speech like when to pause, attention to intonations, your pace, and so on. Try to read it soft, emote and put some inflection on the sentences. Reading aloud helps you to train the muscles of your mouth and lets you produce unfamiliar words and sounds with ease in a course of time.

 

• Use shadowing techniques:

The shadowing technique is little known which is quite deceptive in nature. It’s a speak-along way to achieve fluency by taking any suitable native audio recording, along with a transcript, and you speak along as close to the same time as you can. Just this and you practice for fluency. It will help you in practicing the pronunciation of single words and phrases. It trains you to achieve the native way of intonation by trying to pronounce words or phrases as in the audio. When starting to practice Portuguese fluency, first work with a short audio recording of about a minute or two with transcription in English or maybe your mother tongue. Work word by word. Practice regularly to get acquainted with the text. Once the practicing content is familiar to you, with experience you may be able to achieve an approximate to the same level of synchronization, without the transcript, that you may achieve when the text is open right in front of you.

 

• Repeat what you learn:

At any time when you are learning a new word, and you look it up, make sure to also listen to its pronunciation audio or if possible video and repeat it out loud a few times till you feel the accuracy is achieved. This will assist you with profound memorization, language comprehension, and better pronunciation.

 

Each kind of learning resource will expose you to a different style of Portuguese, from newspaper articles to the cheeky dialogue of a pop-fiction book and much more.

Now everything in the palm of your hand! Play around with these study ways to come up with your own, maybe by combining them, using your strengths and weaknesses to guide your practice. With a proper routine and a variety of techniques, you will be able to improve your Portuguese-speaking skills in very little time.

 

All the best!