Com Licencia!: Brazilian Portuguese for Spanish Speakers (Special Publication)

Rating:
Summary: Very poor Brazilian Portuguese textbook
Review: I bought this textbook with the expectation that it would faciltate me in learning Brazilian Portuguese in combination with my Spanish, and despite the mediocre reviews, being the only "Portuguese for Spanish Speakers" book on the market, I purchased it. Please do not repeat my mistake! Avoid this book at all costs.

While it is certainly not the worst textbook imaginable, it merits a $1 price tag, nothing more. Some problems offhand: the grammar explanations are poor and do not get into enough depth (I felt that through my highly limited study of Portuguese I knew everything the book covered before even starting with it, except perhaps vocabulary); the organization of the book is confusing and not "user-friendly"; even the print/typeface used look cheap and make reading the book annoying; my biggest complaint, many of the book's exercises revolve around transcribing Portuguese sentences into the book's own system of transcription, (**NOT** IPA, if you're familiar with it) which I felt was a complete waste of space, time, and simply disconcerted me.

There are a very few number of useful tips/"pointers" etc. in the book, and the numerous vocabulary lists may help you if you don't like dictionaries. All in all, however, I strongly advise you against buying this book and I plan to get rid of my copy as soon as possible.

NOTE: The actual title of the book IS spelled correctly, it is Amazon's mistake ["Com Licenca!" (with the proper cedilha) and not "Com Licencia!", so don't let that put you off].

Rating:
Summary: Why start at square 1 when you can buy this?
Review: If you are a fluent in English and Spanish, and wish to learn Portuguese (especially Brazilian Portuguese), this is the book for you. It can get you up to speed quickly because the book skips over the differences between English and Potuguese, and concentrates on the relatively smaller differences between Spanish and Portuguese.

I found myself somewhat frustrated by a lack of tapes with the book because some of the pronunciations are difficult to imagine if you haven't heard Brazilian Portuguese spoken. That is significant, but I still recommend this book. Perfect pronunciation will take time anyway, and tapes wouldn't help as much as an actual instructor.

Boa sorte.

Rating:
Summary: Beats a poke in the eye, but....
Review: This is the only book of its kind in existence--a textbook of Portuguese for those who already know Spanish. It does a good job highlighting the differences between the two languages, and wastes little time on concepts which are identical.
That said, this book is a very poor guide to learning Portuguese. The organization is terrible, with some irregular verbs in the beginning, more later, and a few more splashed in here and there. The vocabulary doesn't follow any sort of progression throughout the book, either.
This book was the text in a course "Portuguese for Spanish Speakers" at CU-Boulder. The only reason I can hack it in Portuguese is because of my instructor. The book works much better in a classroom setting, but even then it confused my whole class.