Learn Portuguese
Portuguese is most often started by people who already have some Spanish, and the place they come unstuck is the sound rather than the grammar. iLexiBox puts the nose first: Portuguese sends a great many of its vowels through it, the spelling signals that in three different ways, and not one of them is obvious from Spanish or from English.
Start at the alphabet
The Portuguese on-ramp is written by hand, not generated, and it is 200 cards long. Every card is spoken in a recorded Portuguese voice, and what you get right is scheduled for review rather than shown again at random. This is the shorter, starter size of on-ramp; most languages here have about 480 cards.
- 26letters
- 10digits
- 24pronunciation rules
- 100core words
- 20everyday phrases
- 20sentences
Three of the pronunciation cards, exactly as the on-ramp teaches them:
- m — an m at the END of a word is not an m at all — you never close your lips. It just sends the vowel out through your nose: bom, sim, comontem — yesterday
- n — the same thing happens to an n inside a word before another consonant — in canto, ponte and mundo the vowel goes nasal and the n itself vanishesmundo — world
- ão — the ending you will meet more than any other: “ow” as in “now”, through the nose, finished with a hum. Never say the o and the n as two thingsirmão — brother
Your first Portuguese phrases
The first phrase and sentence cards of the on-ramp, each spoken in a recorded voice:
- Tudo bem? TU-du BENG — how are you? (literally “all well?”) — also the answer
- Tudo bem, obrigado. TU-du BENG, o-bri-GA-du — I’m fine, thank you
- Como você se chama? KO-mu vo-SEH si SHA-ma — what is your name?
- Eu sou brasileiro. ew SO bra-zi-LEY-ru — I am Brazilian.
- Meu nome é Ana. MEW NO-mi eh A-na — My name is Ana.
Then material that does not run out
Above the on-ramp sit the practice path (A1 to C2), Make a text at your level and the album: more than 2,700 photographs, each captioned and spoken in Portuguese. Portuguese has practice and tools, not lessons — the only course on iLexiBox is the full English course (how each part works).
What Portuguese actually costs a beginner
An m at the end of a word is not an m at all — the lips never close, and the vowel goes out through the nose instead. The same happens to an n inside a word before another consonant, in canto and mundo, where the n itself disappears. And ão, the ending you will meet more than any other, is an ow through the nose finished with a hum, never an o and an n said one after the other. Nasality is not something a page can teach, so each of these is a card with a recorded Brazilian voice — the same voice the album is spoken in.
The full English course, A1–C1 →