Hi Nicole, When I started my Portuguese studies in it was with a Brazilian who teaches Portuguese here at NYU and I was able to make the transition from Brazilian to Iberian Portuguese without much difficulty for my first visit to the Azores and the mainland (although people often asked me if I was Brazilian). One of the major distinctions between the two (aside from idioms) is pronunciation and the use or non-use of the verb conjugation in tu or voce. In Brazil tu is not used - everyone is voce but in Portugal and the Azores it's more complicated and I never fully understood the nuances in usage of tu vs. voce. I've been told that sometimes siblings from the upper classes will use voce when talking to each other.
And then there's the pronunciation and it's much easier to understand Brazilian than Iberian portuguese because in the latter a lot of the vowels are "swallowed" and syllables elided. For example, the city of Setubal looks fairly easy to pronounce but my Portuguese friends say something like "shtubal". That said, I still think if you can only begin studying the language with a Brazilian teacher that's okay. You may want to look into the Classical University in Lisbon. They may still offer a 1 month summer program for "estrangeiros" to learn the language, history, culture of Portugal at beginning, intermediate and advanced levels. I studied there in 1996 and learned so much it was fantastic! I was pretty much the oldest student because most are young adults of portuguese extraction whose parents left Portugal and settled primarily in France, Germany or the UK. I have the information about this program at home and will look it up tonight and forward it to you if you're interested. There is also a summer program offered by the University of Massachusetts/Dartmouth here's the link: http://www.portstudies.umassd.edu/summer/summer.htm Now that might be something you'd like because you would be near New Bedford and Fall River and the FHC is located in South Dartmouth and they have all the films for the Azores! Mary Ann On Sep 17, 2008, at 9:28 PM, Nicole Rodriques wrote: > > This is not just to sate my appetite, but also because I want to go to > the Azores someday and would like to speak the language. I've been > trying to learn Portuguese for years, but bookstores only carry > resources to learn the Brazilian Dialect (This includes the Rosetta > Stone software I see in commercials all the time). I looked at the > catalogs for every college in Florida I could think of, those that > teach Portuguese, all teach the Brazilian dialect. I know the dialects > are different enough I should try to learn the European variety. So I > found a website online that lists teachers of all sorts of different > languages and found some that taught purely online....I found a man in > Texas, but he said that since I was more interested in the > archipelagos, they have their own dialect and I'd be better off trying > to find someone who speaks that dialect if possible! (this was news to > me). So, does anyone here teach Portuguese or know a Portuguese > teacher or at the very least the name of books that teach something > other than Brazilian? > > I'm a product of a family that strongly believed in totally > americanizing. Portuguese was only spoken to other speakers, and never > when someone who didn't understand it was around. My grandparents knew > it because their parents didn't know english so well, but the next > generation wasn't taught at all and so on. > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Follow the confirmation directions when they arrive. For more options, such as changing to List, Digest, Abridged, or No Mail (vacation) mode, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/Azores. Click in the blue area on the right that says "Join this group" and it will take you to "Edit my membership." -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
