How I Learnt Portuguese in 30 Days (PART I)

Why Portuguese? Why in 30 Days?

“Spanish in 30 days” type of challenges are quite popular in the Internet and in summer of 2021 someone suggested I should give it a try. Usually, unless I am taking an exam or moving to a foreign country in the near future, I am not a fan of deadlines and I take my time with language learning. However, I am not the type of man who backs down from a challenge either.  

My reasons for picking Portuguese were many. I had never tried learning it before, while at the same time I expected it to be relatively easy for a native Spanish speaker (according to some sources, there’s an almost 90% lexical similarity between Spanish and Portuguese). Additionally, both Brazil and Portugal are highly appealing destinations for future trips.

All this, together with the hundreds of millions of native Portuguese speakers I would be able to speak with in their own language and the quantity and quality of content available, made Portuguese the best option for my 30 days challenge. 

My Portuguese learning routine

My approach was different from others I have seen, clearly less intensive (work, fitness and relationships require some serious time too), but effective nevertheless. Also, I consider it more sustainable long term than “taking language learning as a full time job, 8 hours a day”. You could do this for 6 months or a year with a little bit of discipline.

This is what my language learning routine looked like for 30 days:

1. 30 minutes of listening while reading, then listening and repeating. I used LingQ Mini Stories and Assimil for this. The goal here is to learn basic grammar and vocabulary, as well as the correct pronunciation.
2. Around 2-3 hours of listening a day, while I was driving, cooking, going for walks, etc. For this I used a playlist with the audio files of the previous exercise, as well as original podcasts in Portuguese.
3. Conversation practice 3 or 4 times a week with an Italki tutor, 30 minutes each. 
4. Reading books in Portuguese in the evening. I always read at the end of the day, and doing it in Portuguese was not particularly difficult. I only recommend doing this if you understand the text without much trouble though. Reading is great to learn grammar and vocabulary, but you do not want stress and effort right before bed. 

How can you use this?

Feel free to try my language learning routine with Portuguese or any other language. If you stay consistent with it, you should see results relatively quickly. If Portuguese is not as easy for you because you don’t speak Spanish, you should concentrate on the first stage until you know the basics. Listen and read the Assimil and LingQ stories as many times as necessary, until you understand everything in them; then move on to the books, podcasts and speaking practice.  

Conclusions

After doing this on a daily basis for a month, I was definitely not proficient in Portuguese, but I was able to have long conversations and understand any book I read or podcast I listened to. And that's already pretty good.

However, I knew it could be improved, so in 2022 I decided to do another month of Portuguese, this time in a much more intensive manner, focusing on perfecting my speaking skills...