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11 Portuguese Blogs That’ll Skyrocket Your Motivation [2024]

Having a few great Portuguese culture and education blogs in your bookmarks can provide key tips for language improvement.

In this post, you’ll get 11 great Portuguese blogs selected from the plethora that are out there.

Contents

1. Hacking Portuguese

learn portuguese blog

Type of Portuguese: Brazilian

Enter the world of Lauren, who—like anyone with sense—was hooked on Brazilian choro music from the moment she heard it.

This obsession with one of the world’s greatest music styles eventually led her to study the Portuguese language.

She doesn’t claim to be the world’s foremost expert on the language. What she does do is provide guidance on Portuguese language issues (a.k.a. “language hacks”) from the perspective of a learner, as well as her two cents on the many resources she’s used to study the language.

In particular, she’s penned solid book recommendations, software reviews and an incredibly thorough guide to the trickiest of pronunciation problems: the Portuguese “r” (and all of its variants).

Spending some time in the weeds on that facet of the language is worthwhile and fascinating.

2. Street Smart Brazil

learn portuguese blog

Type of Portuguese: Brazilian

The online language school Street Smart Brazil was founded by Luciana Lage, an experienced university-level Portuguese teacher. This is the school’s blog.

It’s particularly valuable for learners looking who want approachable coverage of narrow grammar topics.

You might enjoy, for example, their take on the vast array of usages of the diminutive in Portuguese. It covers the straightforward usage of the diminutive (describing something of a small size) but also how it can be used to express sarcasm, irony, affection and more. 

There are also a number of great posts on culture and the complications of using the language in everyday life in Brazil.

3. Brazilian Gringo

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Type of Portuguese: Brazilian

This blog comes from Josh Plotkin and Jairet Crum, two expats from California who landed in Brazil. A few grammar topics are covered, but the blog is stronger in preparing you for the “just go there” learning style, and getting you over the annoyances and cultural hurdles of daily Brazilian life.

It has short essays on teaching English in Brazil, adapting to Brazilian customs, being a foreigner in Florianópolis and more.

The blog also covers niche topics that are important to anyone who wants to converse with native speakers, such as how you shouldn’t hesitate to interrupt and talk over Brazilians.

4. Slipcue

learn portuguese blog

Type of Portuguese: Brazilian

This site dates back to when bloggers used to cobble together their own HTML just to build a couple of web pages (the same era that I was starting my Portuguese-learning adventures in). 

Slipcue merges learning with Portuguese and learning with Portuguese music into one beautiful (though visually dated) resource. 

Joe Sixpack, a San Francisco DJ, covers every Portuguese-speaking area from a musical point of view, so he can set you on voyages well beyond the Rio-based samba and bossa nova you may have already heard, to expose you to all sorts of accents and rhythms.

I’d recommend that most learners start with his picks of the best Brazilian albums. Then explore the rest of Brazil and the Portuguese-speaking world.

The emphasis here tends to be on really strong, funky tunes, without much weight given to the quality or artistry of the lyrics. This is actually a positive for Portuguese learners.

Slipcue tends to urge you towards lush and funky songs with approachable lyrics, which can be motivating for language students.

5. Learn Portuguese with Rafa

learn portuguese blog

Type of Portuguese: Brazilian

Rafael Tavares, a.k.a. Rafa, is a Portuguese guy with degrees in language acquisition and modern foreign language education. He’s taught at the university level and coached in the private sector. In other words, he knows what he’s talking about and he’s good at getting it across to his readers.

He offers a good overview of some important European Portuguese topics for learners, though this site is definitely worthwhile for those focusing on Brazilian Portuguese, too.

To give one example, if you’re learning a new tense, you might take a break from your workbook and come to Rafa’s page about verbs to get a very digestible overview of what all the different tenses are in Portuguese and what functions they serve in communication.

He also covers important cultural topics that you’ll want to have a handle on, such as the lovely Portuguese breakfast.

6. Portuguese Connection

learn portuguese blog

Type of Portuguese: European

This blog of a Lisbon language school has content on all kinds of practical and motivational issues for learners of European Portuguese.

It’s a bit difficult to browse or search for specific subjects but you can navigate by date and you’ll chance across useful posts, such as very common false friends to watch out for and fun bad words.

There’s also coverage of the culture of Portugal, including its music.

7. Practice Portuguese

Type of Portuguese: European

Practice Portuguese logo Practice Portuguese stands out as one of the limited platforms dedicated to European Portuguese. Founded by Rui Coimbra and Joel Rendall, it emerged from the realization of the scarcity of engaging and practical resources for learning European Portuguese.

Initially, it started as a website offering an audio podcast accompanied by transcripts. Over time, it has expanded to discussion forums, addressing challenging queries about the Portuguese language.

Additionally, it now features a long-form podcast and a section dedicated to verbs, offering the most commonly used verbs in various conjugations along with audio support.

The blog covers diverse categories including maintaining motivation for learning Portuguese, offering learning strategies, vocabulary building, grammar insights, and insights on living in Portugal.

8. PortuguesePod101

portuguesepod101 logo Type of Portuguese: Brazilian

PortuguesePod101 is a YouTube channel with hundreds of free videos that meets every need of anyone starting to learn Portuguese.

On the PortuguesePod101 website you can find tons of supplementary material like additional lessons, transcripts and grammar notes.

PortuguesePod101 Blog is the place for anyone looking for easy, beginner lessons to learn Portuguese and Portuguese culture. 

9. Transparent Language 

transparent language logo Type of Portuguese: Brazilian

Unique Transparent Language blog posts will help you learn practical vocab and grammar to build on the basics and communicate with native speakers. 

The purpose of learning a language is to actually use that language, and in order to be able to use language in a real, natural way, learners need to be exposed to more than what’s taught in the typical classroom or online course.

The Language and Culture Portuguese Blog, authored by teams of native speakers, educators, and other language learners, discusses current events, as well as more everyday speaking language, cultural, or unconventional topics.

10. Sonia-Portuguese Blog

sonia portuguese blog logo Type of Portuguese: Brazilian

Sonia is a fully qualified and certified Portuguese language teacher from Brazil, who has been teaching Portuguese for over 20 years. As a teacher, she couldn’t find study materials available on Brazilian Portuguese and decided to produce her own!

Since then she has published a Portuguese Grammar book and several e-Books: Airport & Air Travel Vocabulary, Brazilian Portuguese Phrases, Word of the Day, Portuguese Grammar, Portuguese Verbs and 50 Essential Portuguese Verbs & Tenses. 

On her blog you can find a dedicated section for words of the day, learn about Portuguese numbers, fruits, greetings and many more for free! 

11. Really Learn Portuguese 

rlp logo Type of Portuguese: Brazilian

Really Learn Portuguese (RLP) was created back in 2015 by André Barbosa with a mission to help people learn Brazilian Portuguese in innovative and effective ways

A team behind RLP will teach you Portuguese with free simple, to-the-point blog posts, flashcards, podcasts and courses.

With every blog post that you read, they promise you’ll learn something new and interesting! 

 

By now, you should have a good set of bookmarks in your browser to provide motivation and insight for your language-learning adventure by learning Portuguese with blogs.

If you’re learning Brazilian Portuguese, you should also check out this post on some great Brazilian bloggers

As you get more comfortable with the language, you can of course also search out subjects that are of interest to you in Portuguese and start to read blogs written in the language itself.

And if you get really inspired, you might eventually join the blogger universe yourself and share what you’ve discovered as you learn the language.

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