Portuguese (Brazilian) : 2nd Ed. Rev.

Rating:
Summary: Quick, Simple, and Effective
Review: About a month before my trip to Salvador, Brazil, I purchased the Pimsleur CDs. I found them to be very effective in learning some important phrases in Brazilian Portuguese.

With the Pimsleur method of listening and repeating, the phrases were easy to learn and difficult to forget. If I missed a few days of practice, I still recalled most of what I had learned in previous sessions.

The content is presented in both male and female voices, and with slightly different accents. Native speakers were quite able to understand the pronunciation that I learned while using these recordings.

I recommend this product for the traveller much more than a phrase book, because it teaches the unique pronunciation of Portuguese. Brazilian Portuguese looks a little bit like Spanish in writing, but much of the time the correct pronunciation is very different. You need to hear it in order to learn it.

This product includes the first 8 lessons of a much longer series. So while it is effective, it is not perfectly optimized for quick learning for the traveller. For example, it is not until lesson 8, the last provided in this product, that you learn the phrase "Where is the bathroom?"

Pimsleur purposely does not include written study materials with the recordings, as a feature of their learning method. Personally, I would have liked to see all of the phrases that I learned in writing.

Rating:
Summary: GREAT!
Review: Dr.Paul Pimsleur's method of learning Portuguese is absolutely great! Instead of having to practice and repeat words over and over, or reading a difficult book, you learn by listening. Great to use while driving!

Rating:
Summary: Good...but really should have an accompanying book....
Review: I thought the CD's were done very well and they DO help you learn the language. However, they really need to offer a book to compliment the CD's. Although you learn to say things and communicate with others speaking the language, there is no substitute for "seeing" the words they have you repeating. I often found myself hearing a word and thinking it was spelled one way only to find out later from a Brazilian friend that I was not even close to the correct spelling. Knowing how the words are spelled is very important, in my mind, to truly understand the language. Although the speakers are very clear on the tape, there is just no way to discern every little syllable and syntax of the sentences without an accompanying book! I wound up buying another book that I could reference which was helpful in putting a "picture" of the words together with the "sound" on the CD's. This made the language much easier to understand.

Rating:
Summary: Bait and switch!
Review: I thought the first eight lessons were great and really enjoyed learning from them. Based on that alone, I would have given them a 5-start rating. However, I became extremely frustrated and felt "tricked" when I looked up the remaining lessons and discovered they cost [a lot]... I felt like the inexpensive introductory lessons ... were luring you into buying their more advanced and overpriced products. I also don't understand why their CD-sets are almost 20% more expensive than their cassette-tape sets. I really want to learn Portuguese, but I certainly cannot afford to spend [that much money].

Rating:
Summary: Very Good
Review: These tapes really helped me to start off well and with the right pronunciation. Made a big difference!

Rating:
Summary: A good but limited start
Review: This tape or CD set is a nice introduction to Brazilian portuguese at a nice low price. You will learn the correct pronounication and, since vocabulary is introduced gradually with lots of review, you will not forgot what you have learned. Since it is all audio (no book) you can easily use this while driving. But you really don't learn that much material and will not be able to say more than some basic sentences when finished. Also, you will have no idea what the language looks like on paper - and when you do see it, you might be very surprised. This beginning set continues with a full 30 lesson Pimsleur series that is very expensive and not really worth it if the same rate of progress occurs over the 30 lesson series as with this set. I suggest you try this introduction to learn some basics, and then move on to other materials to build on what you have learned.

Rating:
Summary: You get what you pay for.....
Review: With already achieving fluency in Spanish, I bought this looking to get a beginning foundation in Portuguese for a cheap price. After the 24 hours it took me to go through the entire series with no problems, I realized this definitely wasn't the purchase for me. This is for people who want to go to Brazil for a week and say "where is the hotel, ma'am?" and not for people who actually want to learn the language. But if that's what you want, it should be satisfactory.