Learn Brazilian Portuguese by speaking it

Portuguese is not Spanish with a different accent

A great many English speakers arrive at Portuguese having studied some Spanish, and the resemblance is close enough to be actively misleading. The vocabulary overlaps, the structures rhyme, and the result is a learner who is understood in Brazil while never actually speaking Portuguese — a habit that hardens fast and is unpleasant to undo later.

The differences that matter are not exotic. Contractions are constant and obligatory in speech: «no», «na», «pelo», «dum». Pronouns sit before the verb in Brazilian usage rather than after it. Ser and estar split the same way as in Spanish but not always at the same points. The personal infinitive has no English counterpart at all and never appears by intuition.

Every one of those is a production problem rather than a comprehension problem, which is why reading about them does so little. They shift when something interrupts you in the moment you get one wrong and makes you say it again.

What actually gets in the way, and where you drill it

Prepositions

Portuguese contractions are constant in speech and are the first thing dropped by anyone routing through Spanish or English. Own exercise, closed list.

Articles and pronouns

Brazilian pronoun placement, and the article before possessives and proper names — normal in Portuguese, and counter-intuitive coming from English.

Verbs

300 verbs in the syllabus. The personal infinitive and the preterite are asked out loud, which is where the habits from other languages show.

Vocabulary

787 concepts asked out loud and reviewed in silent games afterwards — including the false friends that Spanish makes worse rather than better.

What a session looks like

There are no lessons and no syllabus to get through. You hold a button, you speak, and the agent answers in about two seconds — six to seven turns a minute.

1. 1

   You say which language you think in and which you want to speak

   All seven languages work as a native language. As a target language, for now Spanish, English, French, German and Italian; Portuguese and Turkish are still in development. You pick the pair when you start. The native language can be changed later from your profile; the one you are learning cannot.

2. 2

   Hold to talk, release when you are done

   Agnetia listens, corrects your last attempt if it needed correcting, and asks the next question. That is the whole loop, and it does not pause.

3. 3

   You choose what to drill

   Seven spoken exercises — Vocabulary, Numbers, Verbs, Prepositions, Articles and pronouns, Conditionals, and Conversation at four levels — plus about forty-eight review games in the browser to fix what already came out right.

4. 4

   You see where you stand

   In Conversation, an indicative CEFR band (A1-C2) recalculated every five answers. And when you want a proper measure, the spoken level test, paid for separately.

Frequently asked questions

Start speaking today

A monthly fee, with no minimum term, covering voice practice, Lingo Ascent and exam prep. The level test is paid for separately.