Quantum Forest

I am planning a short trip to Brazil later this year, so one of my ‘resolutions’ is to learn basic Portuguese.

I bought a couple of books to help me on this:

• Portuguese on 10 minutes a day, which is an easy and (very) gentle introduction to the language. It comes with stickers to stick on everything — including on ‘o computador’, flashcards and a detachable menu. I am using this one to learn the language.
• Brazilian Portuguese: Lonely Planet Phrasebook, which I will carry, but not really use much before the trip. I haven’t read this one much.

Both of them have the same problem for me, the pronunciation guide is for English speakers, which means that I have to think of the phonetics in English and then take it in my head to Spanish before getting the pronunciation. For example, the word ‘quanto’ is presented as ‘kwahntoo’, which I then interpret as ‘cuantu’.

Looking for a good, simple site and free site for learning the language I stumbled upon Sonia Portuguese: worth a look.