Learn to speak Brazilian Portuguese  

Brazilian Portuguese Language

Brazilian Portuguese CD-ROM
RRP: £24.95
Our Price: £19.99
with FREE P&P

Where does Brazilian Portuguese come from?
Portuguese is one of the large family of Indo-European languages.

How many people speak Brazilian Portuguese?
Over 200 million people speak Portuguese throughout the world today.

In how many countries?
Apart from Portugal, it is the official language of seven countries, including Brazil, almost all of whose population of 172 million speak it. There are some variations in the pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary between the countries.

Brazilian Portuguese Culture

A spot of Culture
The Portuguese, the country's native Indians, the considerable African population and other settlers from Europe, the Middle East and Asia have all shaped Brazilian culture.

Brazilian Portuguese Music and Dance
Brazilian music has always been characterised by great diversity and shaped by musical influences from around the world.

The Bumba-meu-boi is a traditional and dramatic dance that tells the story of the death and resurrection of an ox and originated at the end of the 18th century in the coastal sugar plantations and cattle ranches of North-Eastern Brazil. The samba (1930s mixture of Spanish bolero and African music), bossa nova (influenced by American jazz in the 1950s) and the lambada (influenced by Caribbean rhythms in the 1980s) are all associated with Brazil.

Carnival
Every year, seven weeks before Easter, Brazil stops. It's Carnival time! This festivity was introduced in Brazil as entrudo, a Portuguese celebration in which people would dance along the streets. Today it's evolved into an overwhelming experience, with dazzling floats, outlandish costumes, and thousands of dancers who perform on the streets.

Brazilian Portuguese Food and Drink
The Brazilian diet is largely based on white rice, black beans and manioc flour usually mixed with steak, chicken or fish. Moqueca (a seafood stew) and caruru (vegetables mixed with shrimps) are Brazilian specialities.

The traditional Brazilian dish is 'feijoada' - a combination of Indian, Portuguese and African influences. Today, feijoada is comprised of black beans with a lot of different types of meat all well seasoned with salt, garlic and onion. It is accompanied by white rice and collard green cut into fine strips, fried mandioc flour and pieces of orange.

Feijoada is often accompanied by Caipirinha, a tasty, strong traditional Brazilian drink made out of cachaca (sugar-cane alcohol), sugar, limes and ice.

Brazilian Portuguese Attractions
The River Amazon; a huge river system which covers half of Brazil with many of its tributaries still unexplored. Its tropical rain forests are home to thousands of plants and animals not found elsewhere, but the forests and their inhabitants are at risk from commercial development.

Other natural sights to see include The Pantanal - a vast area of wetlands in the West rich in wild life, the Iguacu Falls (3km wide and 80m high) on the border with Argentina and Paraguay, Parc Nacional da Serra da Chapada dos Veadeiros - in the Central West with its waterfalls and huge variety of wild life.

Rio de Janeiro: world famous city of 7 million inhabitants (known as Cariocas) in probably the most beautiful setting in the world and where visitors are greeted by the dominant statue of Christ the Redeemer on the peak of Corcovado. But it's a city where shanty-town favelas contrast with a wealthier lifestyle epitomised by the famous chic Ipanema and Copacabana Beaches. Rio is also home to the fantastic Carnaval.

Brasilia: Brazil's purpose built modern capital since 1960. However, some think it's a city designed more for cars than people and less good to live in than its planners intended.

Sao Paulo: the largest city in South America (20 million). An exciting city with a vibrant nightlife and a great deal of cultural diversity.

About Talk Now! Language CD-ROMs
This is an excitingly different language learning series. Talk Now! uses games and quizzes as a basis for making the learning process fun, easy and relaxing. There is no better way to teach an old dog new tricks and this fun element of the program means that your fears are forgotten as you absorb words and phrases without even realising you are learning them.

Talk Now! is the world's best selling language learning CD-ROM series for beginners, used by more than three million people to date. It's ideal for travellers, holidaymakers, business people, schoolchildren, students and families.

Anyone over 10 years of age will find the disc indispensable for improving listening, understanding and spoken language skills. There are nine topics: first words, food, colours, phrases, parts of the body, numbers, time, shopping and countries.

The games and quizzes included on the disc ensure that users have fun whilst using the disc, without realising that they're learning. The "intelligent" software feature remembers words you get wrong and targets your weak points.

"This is an excitingly different language learning series. Talk Now! Uses games and quizzes as a basis for making the learning process fun and relaxing." - PC Answers

"I bought your Learn Malay CD today - I've only just begun, but I wanted to say how much I am enjoying it. I studied Malay from a book all day yesterday, making some 25 pages of notes on grammar and vocab, but I remember more from your CD from just an hour!" - James Bryce