How to learn Portuguese by reading

Portuguese is spoken on four continents, and Brazil alone has more speakers than all the other Portuguese-speaking countries combined. Lexo’s Portuguese is Brazilian. For a reader the difference from European Portuguese is modest: the written languages are close, and a page from São Paulo reads perfectly well in Lisbon.

Portuguese is also a language that rewards reading for a particular reason. Its spelling and its sound part company more than you’d expect from a Romance language. On the page, a sentence can look almost like Spanish; spoken, it sounds like nothing else. Reading with the audio running is how the two come together.

What makes Portuguese hard to read, and to hear

• Nasal vowels. Pão, mãe, não, bom, sim: the tilde, or a following m or n, sends the vowel through your nose. Easy to see, harder to hear until you’ve listened a lot.
• Brazilian sounds. In much of Brazil, t and d before an “ee” sound become “ch” and “j,” and a final unstressed -e sounds like “ee”: leite, “milk,” sounds roughly like “LAY-chee,” and dia, “day,” like “JEE-ah.” A final -l sounds like a w, so Brasil ends in “zeew.” You’ll read words correctly long before you recognize them in speech.
• Pronouns and where they go. Brazilians mostly say você, with a third-person verb, for “you,” and a gente, literally “the people,” often means “we.” In writing, Brazilian Portuguese tends to put object pronouns before the verb (ele me disse, “he told me”) where Portugal says ele disse-me.
• Contractions. Prepositions merge with articles and pronouns: de + o is do, em + a is na, por + o is pelo, em + ele is nele. Ninguém acredita nele: “nobody believes him.”
• The personal infinitive. Portuguese can conjugate an infinitive: para eles saberem, “for them to know.” Few languages do this, and it looks like a mistake the first time you see it.
• The future subjunctive. Quando você chegar, “when you arrive”; se puder, “if you can.” Spanish has largely abandoned this tense; Portuguese uses it every day.
• False friends for Spanish speakers. Polvo is an octopus, not dust; esquisito means strange, not exquisite; borracha is an eraser, not a drunk.

Portuguese reading at each level

How the CEFR levels look in Portuguese text:

• A2, elementary. Short sentences in the present and the pretérito perfeito (falou, comeu, saiu), with ir + infinitive for plans (vou viajar). High-frequency words and simple dialogue.
• B1, intermediate. The perfeito and the imperfeito side by side, the present subjunctive in common frames (espero que, para que) and the future subjunctive after quando and se. Object pronouns and contractions everywhere.
• B2, upper intermediate. The imperfect subjunctive (se eu soubesse, “if I knew”), the personal infinitive, compound tenses like tinha feito, and a broader vocabulary. Literary narration may use the simple pluperfect (fizera, dissera), a form you’ll rarely hear in speech.
• C1, advanced. Close to the original, with some passages condensed. C2 is the complete novel.

For the scale in general, see CEFR levels explained.

The Lost World at A2 and at B2

Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World sends an expedition up the Amazon in search of living dinosaurs, so it suits Brazilian Portuguese well. Two moments, written for this page:

A2

O professor Challenger diz que ainda existem dinossauros na América do Sul. Ninguém acredita nele. Então uma expedição vai à Amazônia para descobrir a verdade.

Professor Challenger says that dinosaurs still exist in South America. Nobody believes him. So an expedition goes to the Amazon to find out the truth.

B2

Mal chegaram ao alto do platô, os exploradores perceberam que a árvore que tinham usado como ponte havia caído no abismo e que, se quisessem voltar para casa, teriam que encontrar outro caminho.

No sooner had they reached the top of the plateau than the explorers realized that the tree they had used as a bridge had fallen into the chasm, and that if they wanted to get home, they would have to find another way.

The A2 text is in the present, with three short sentences and four contractions: na (em + a) and do (de + o) in na América do Sul, nele (em + ele) and à (a + a). It also shows a Brazilian spelling: Amazônia, where Portugal writes Amazónia. The B2 sentence opens with mal, “no sooner,” and then layers the past: two pluperfects (tinham usado, havia caído), an imperfect subjunctive (quisessem) and a conditional (teriam que).

Your daily Portuguese reading, in four steps

1. Read along with the narration. Start a section and follow the highlighted words as they’re spoken. For Brazilian Portuguese this is the heart of the routine, because spelling and sound part company so often.
2. Reread without audio. Go over the same pages at your own pace, and let the new words settle.
3. Tap only what blocks you. If a sentence makes sense, move on, even if one word is new. Our guide to dictionary or context explains why that works.
4. Say a few sentences aloud. Pick two or three lines of dialogue and repeat them after the narrator. It’s the quickest way to get your mouth around the nasal vowels.

Why read at your level rather than plunging into originals? Paul Nation (2006, “How large a vocabulary is needed for reading and listening?”) put the vocabulary needed for unsimplified English novels at around 8,000 to 9,000 word families. Portuguese will differ in the details, but the lesson carries over: an original novel asks for far more words than a learner has, which is why reading at your level and moving up gradually works. See how many words you need to read a novel, extensive reading and, for the listening half of the routine, reading while listening.

Classics to start with

• The Lost World takes you up the Amazon to a plateau where time stopped. A fast, funny adventure at B1 or B2.
• Robinson Crusoe has a Brazilian chapter: before his shipwreck, Crusoe spends several years as a planter in Brazil. The island chapters are concrete and practical, good at A2 and B1.
• Around the World in Eighty Days is an ideal first book: short chapters, a clear goal, a new country every few pages.
• Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea fills your vocabulary with the ocean, at B1 or B2.
• Treasure Island is all plot and dialogue, a perfect A2 or B1 read.

How Lexo helps with Brazilian Portuguese

Lexo’s Portuguese is Brazilian, and so is its narration, which is exactly what you need when spelling and sound part company. The whole book is read aloud, with different voices for different characters, and each word lights up as it’s spoken, so reduced vowels and the soft t and d of Brazilian speech attach to the words on the page. Any word can be played on its own.

Tap a word and a card shows its meaning in that sentence, its base form and its part of speech: saberem leads to saber, and nele gets the meaning it has right there. Phrases and idioms are explained as a whole, every sentence has a translation into English, and words worth keeping go into your Words list. For hard passages, sentence-by-sentence mode slows things down to a single sentence, with its audio and translation.

You pick the level for each book, from A2 to C2. If nobody has asked for a book in Portuguese at your level yet, Lexo writes it for you: chapter 1 is ready in a few minutes, you can close the app and be notified when it is, the rest follows while you read, and you keep a dated “First edition” mark. Books work offline once downloaded, and there’s no account to create.

Reading Spanish too? See Spanish, and for more Romance languages, Italian and French.

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