So as part of Portuguese citizenship, I have to pass a language test. I am American but speak multiple languages so learning won’t be an issue. My wife …
Most software out there is Brazilian. Is this an any issue? What do people recommend? Rosetta Stone? Duolingo?
You might want to avoid Brazilian Portuguese if you’re taking the Portuguese exam as they might want Portuguese-Portuguese to be spoken.
I came across this one which is a free online course run by the Portuguese government. You sign up, and that’s it (has vocabulary and pronunciation):
I would recommend you take a look at Babbel. I have been using it for a few weeks; it’s very user-friendly and effective. Good luck!
Hi Michael. It is good to know you will come to Portugal as an investor. Congratulation on your wise decision! You can try Portuguese lab on youtube. A lot of learning stuff is free on youtube. Can I ask what part of Portugal are you choosing to invest/live in? We will relocate to Portugal, too. Probably will choose Silver coast. Feel free to ask if any.
Not sure. As part of the GV, we have to visit for a week a year. We will use the time to explore the country. I want to stay below a house price of 600K Euros to avoid the higher real estate taxes.
Hi Michael. Portugal is a big country. Very beautiful! It is not expensive properties there, but you as an investor must to invest a lot. Maybe it is wise to choose a house in need of renovation? In this case you will save some money. Have you been in Portugal before or just randomly chose this destination? If you find cheaper tickets via Oslo, inform me. You can stay with us in Norway and then fly directly to Portugal. I used to live in CT, USA and know how difficult traveling to Europe can be. Corona makes it even more difficult. Good luck with your plans.
@AlamoMustang It’s indeed annoying that most software is Brazilian Portuguese 
. Not sure if it would matter on the Portuguese test (there’s an agreement between Portugal and Brazil that has standardized the spelling of words, etc—although pronunciation and which words are actually used often differ).
Anyway, I’d recommend checking out Memrise. It’s my favorite app for learning Portuguese 
and they have recordings of Portuguese locals pronouncing different words and sentences. Most importantly, my Portuguese GF approves 
There’s also Drops 
. It’s a bit simpler and is more useful for improving your vocabulary than actually becoming fluent, but it’s a very nice app.
Today, I discovered ''Talk the streets ‘’ videos on youtube. Teacher Liz Sharma. She is British living in Lisbon. Teaches English and Portuguese. She also advises to use apps as Memrise, Drops and other.
Thanks @tkrunning and @milda392 I will look into memrise. I speak Japanese and Russian, so learning Portuguese should not be hard. Learned them both after age 13. Once the pandemic is over, I will start to find the local Portuguese club to practice.
I’ve been using Drops to build the vocabulary. It’s a simple program that you can choose different categories of words and phrases or do the Dojo to review what you’ve learned. I’ve also had https://www.practiceportuguese.com/ recommended on a facebook group and separately by someone who lives in my area.
I would suggest Busuu iOs and Android App. I’ve used it for three years, and have significant progress in Italian, and some results in Portuguese.
Hope this helps.
Thanks Alex. Will look into it.
I have been using Babel for the past few days. It has user interface and interactive learning. I am not sure if it’s enough to pass the language test though.
I will try it out.
I after spending a few days on Babel, I realized that it’s Brazilian Portuguese that’s being taught in Babel. I have no idea on the differences between Brazilian version of Portuguese and Portugal version of Portuguese.
I have the exact same problem with duolingo
I researched online and it appears that the difference between brazilian and portugal portuguese are not all that different
I guess we will find out when the time comes for the actual test 
I chose to use an European Portuguese teacher from italki.com and after a few lessons she noticed changes in my writing and pronunciation. While studying language by myself, I used Google translate which translates from/ to Brazilian Portuguese, not European. I began to use Brasilian. Teacher corrects me, explains differences and I get better understanding of differences between 2 languages. It is not easy to differentiate Brazilian and European Portuguese.
I have used Duolingo and found it most helpful and also used HUGO👏🏻
The South American Latin is more melodic and the Brazilians have different terminologies so it can be confusing🙊 ie; Pinapple Ananás Abacaxi
The language you will be examined on will be Portugal Portuguese.
Pimsleur is the best. It beats out any of the newer systems…even after all of this time. I became fluent in Portugues with Pimsleur. Once she gets to the intermediate level, she should move to podcasts. I was never imptessed with Rossetta Stone…lots of marketing, but sub par to Pimsleur.
Good luck!
I use Memrise. The yearly fee is quite reasonable. I tried Duolingo but found that I was learning Brazilian which turned out to be problematic when travelling there. In a couple of years I got my vocabulary up to 2500 words while not actually cramming just learning a few new words a day. If you are getting close to taking the test CAPLE has a practice test. I would suggest downloading it as it shows you that there is a written as well as oral component to the test.
Boa sorte,
Chin