I am proud to say I have officially completed my beginners Portuguese class with the best teacher ever, Anita!! 🇵🇹🥳 The fact that I was able to learn Portuguese online at an A1 proficiency level BEFORE arriving in Portugal has made our move more stress-free than just about everyone I know here. Plus, it’s actually fun to learn this historic European language.Â
Speaking of European languages…
Is Portuguese different in Brazil and Portugal?
Yes, and don’t make the mistake of studying Brazilian Portuguese if you’re coming to Portugal!
Coming from the US and living in countries in Central and South America, I had primarily been exposed to Brazilian Portuguese. I honestly didn’t understand just how different European and Brazilian Portuguese are until I moved here. Most online Portuguese classes (like Duolingo) focus on the Brazilian version of the language, so finding an online and self-paced European Portuguese class for adults took a ton of research. After months of looking, I discovered Portuguese with Anita!Â
My mom actually bought Anita’s course for me for Christmas of 2022 (yep, that’s how long we’ve been wanting to move here!). Thankfully, Anita offers lifetime access and her course is self-paced, so I didn’t start to actually learn Portuguese online until about a month before we started the immigration process. I’d say a month or two before your immigration appointment in your home country is the perfect time to start learning so that it’s fresh and you’ll be super motivated by your upcoming move!Â
I honestly can’t list all the ways that learning Portuguese online has helped our move in one article, but here are a few of the top benefits that impact my life every single day.
Why Learn Portuguese Online Before Moving Abroad
1. Learning about places around us
Portuguese has some similarities to Spanish when it comes to vocab and sentence structure. As a Spanish speaker, I could read Portuguese at a fairly high level before arriving in Portugal, but I wouldn’t be able to understand or pronounce names of places without starting the beginners course with Portuguese with Anita. Asking for directions and getting recommendations from locals became immediately easier after just the first couple of lessons where she covers the basics of pronunciation.Â
For example, we live in Lagos, Portugal. This town is pronounced LAH-goosh (not LAH-gohs). Knowing how to pronounce common city names that are frequently mis-pronounced by tourists helps you feel and sound like a local when traveling around Portugal!Â
2. Eating all the foods
Anita not only teaches the language, she also has several lessons on the culture of Portugal, including foods and holidays. This helped us navigate when to eat certain foods during celebrations, how people typically order foods, and what the BEST things are to try in each region. We have now eaten our way through 4 of Portugal’s regions.
I even celebrated my 32nd birthday with Portugal’s most famous treat, a pastel de nata!
3. Getting around town
We don’t have a car in Portugal, and we’re very happy that we don’t even need one. That means we rely heavily on public transit and exploring places by foot. From our experience, many people that work in the public transit system (especially buses) do not speak English. Our travels around Portugal have been exponentially easier simply by being able to communicate with the team of people that take us from place to place.
Because I’m able to learn Portuguese online, I’ve even completed some of Anita’s modules on the bus or train as we’re traveling!Â
4. Making friends
We quickly learned that many immigrants (especially Americans and Canadians) choose to not learn Portuguese or give up after a few lessons. It’s pretty common to see people sign up for in-person Portuguese classes, but life happens and it becomes too difficult to attend. This is especially true for expats who sign up for in-person courses immediately upon arriving in Portugal; all you’ll want to do is explore everything around you instead of being in a classroom!
I am SO grateful that Anita’s course is self-paced because it allowed us to take lessons around our very hectic schedule. The reality is that by moving to a new country and not knowing the language, you miss out on so many wonderful people and experiences along the way. Because we know basic Portuguese, we are able to make Portuguese friends much more easily. We now have a nice blend of Portuñolish (Portuguese, Spanish, English) that we speak with our local friends.
And let me tell you… Portuguese people have the best food recommendations, so making friends is one of our favorite ways to discover local spots that most non-Portuguese speakers wouldn’t find.
5. House maintenance
This month alone, we replaced our toilet, washing machine, and internet. Each time involved maintenance people coming to our home that did not speak English. Sometimes, Portuguese was the second language for both us and the person coming to work, so it was a kind of funny communication of broken Portuguese. I wasn’t perfect, and definitely need to study more words relating to machines, but all our appliances are now working. So… it was an overall success.
Stuff happens. Knowing basic Portuguese has allowed us to at least talk to the right people when it does.
6. IMMIGRATION APPOINTMENTS
We’ll do a YouTube on our entire immigration experience because it is A LOT… it has involved 10+ appointments, the majority of which were in Portugal. My husband, Mike, and I both traveled solo across Portugal for our major appointments. I went to a smaller town with very few English speakers (some people told me I was the first American they’d met). I heavily relied on Portuguese to get around and communicate with the AIMA agents. I truly can’t imagine what it would’ve been like if I went in knowing zero Portuguese.
Anita now offers a Portuguese Daily Conversations Mastercourse that focuses on daily interactions like government appointments and communicating with maintenance workers and Portuguese sayings. It basically takes you to that next level to help you understand people you’ll be communicating with on the daily.
7. Securing housing
Most landlords in Portugal are *insert fake shock* Portuguese! If you are already looking at places to live in Portugal, you know how quickly things are rented or sold here in Portugal. Although some people speak English on apps like Idealista, most do not (at least not fluently). Reading through the listings in Portuguese and sending messages in Portuguese often helps your chances of getting a place simply because communication is more seamless.
We have rented about 6 places here in Portugal since moving here (5 short term and 1 long term). The open house and listing for our long-term rental in Lagos was held in Portguese. I was SO grateful we decided to learn Portuguese online with Anita because I could pull up the vocab about houses and refer back to her handouts as I was searching for hours each day for the perfect place to live. Once we found it, we were so happy we were able to communicate with the realtor and our landlord to lock down the details, submitting our letter of intent in Portuguese!Â
One of my favorite things I get to do when I learn Portuguese online is practice Anita’s tongue twisters (trava-lÃnguas in Portuguese):
Could we live here and not know any Portuguese? Yes. Would it be the life we have now? No.
ObrigadÃssima to Anita who has been an amazing teacher and guide. Now… onto the Intermediate Course!
Join me in learning Portuguese online with Anita!Â
Note: this is not a sponsored blog. I truly love Anita and her course that much. We’ve since become friends and collaborate on different projects together (like hosting a Swiftie Portuguese class for people visiting Lisboa for The Eras Tour). This is an honest review of Portuguese with Anita and all the benefits we’ve gained by learning Portuguese from her.Â
I wrote this post in an effort to encourage people to learn Portuguese before moving to Portugal to help make their transition as smooth as possible. This blog was actually expanded upon from a Facebook post I made that went viral! This post does, however, contain affiliate links to Anita’s course. That means that I receive a commission for each course you buy from this link at NO extra cost to you (in fact, the links offer bundle discounts to you actually)! I just want to be as transparent as possible!