A Great Website for Portuguese for Spanish Speakers

If you know Spanish, learning Portuguese is really great! You get a ton of vocabulary and grammatical structures for free, which you can use very soon after learning some basics on the pronunciation. (If you have not heard much Portuguese yet, you may try just reading some text first, to start appreciating the similarities)... but it is not all easy: since the languages are so similar, it is very easy to get confused where they do differ. It can be really tricky to separate them (to have an idea on the types of differences you can have a look here (written in Spanish)).

Because of that, it is very useful for Spanish speakers to learn through a program especially for them, focusing on speeding up on the similarities and giving you a lot of practice on the differences. This is exactly what you can find at Tá Falado, an excellent resource including podcast lessons and notes put up by the University of Texas Language Technology Center... and it is all free too. Definitely worth a try for the Spanish speakers.

A final note before you start: I find from observing myself and my students that the hard part is not to understand what the differences are. The real challenge is to remember them when you are speaking. So don't just read the notes at Tá Falado and consider yourself done: really practice each lesson extensively so that it becames part of your speech.

'Ter' versus 'estar com'

We have seen the difference between ser and estar... Ter and estar com form another pair that can be confusing, this time for both English and Spanish speaking learners.

Like in Spanish, to say you are cold, hungry, sleepy etc., in formal Portuguese you use ter (have):

Tenho frio/ calor/ fome/ sono. (Written Portuguese)
Tengo frio/ calor/ hambre/ sueño. (Spanish)
I am cold/hot/hungry/tired.

... though we sometimes see this in written text, it sounds very unnatural. In spoken Brazilian Portuguese, it is much more natural to use estar com to say these things:

Eu estou com frio/calor/fome/sono.

[Suggestion: At this point, you may try to make simple phrases on your own now using estar com with different persons (você, a gente, eles...) and different words you may know (frio, medo, sede, raiva, muita pressa, vontade de comer chocolate)... If that is easy, try making up small dialogues using other expressions you may know, e.g.:

João: Você quer água?
Maria: Quero sim. Eu estou com muita sede.]

The main difference between the two is very similar to the difference between ser and estar: In general, Ter is more appropriate to express conditions that are somewhat permanent, whereas estar com is best for temporary states. (... so since frio/calor/fome/sono above are things that are normally temporary, estar com is the best form to be used with them). We can see this more clearly from the following examples:

Eu tenho medo de cachorro.
I am (always/permanently) afraid of dogs.

Eu estou com medo daquele cachorro.
I am afraid of that dog (right now).

Ele tem raiva de todos os politicos.
He is (permanetly) angry at all politicians. ( since he hates all politicians)

Ele está com raiva da Maria, mas vai passar.
He is angry at Maria, but it will pass.

This can also happen in cases indicating possession:

Eu tenho um carro importado.
I have/own an imported car.

Eu estou com um carro importado hoje, emprestado do meu chefe.
I have (temporarily) an imported car today, borrowed from my boss.

Did you get the difference? Now, you could practice by trying to make sentences that emphasize the difference (like the ones immediately above)... or you could do search for estar com to see how people use it on the Internet... Meanwhile, eu já vou: estou com fome!