Portuguese - 20 April

I love Portuguese. I don't know why, but for some reason I feel that it fits like a glove. It seems even easier than Spanish. 

So I was quite happy, initially, to work my way through the teach yourself text I picked up somewhere. But after exactly one month, I'm having second thoughts.

The problem is the text book. The people who write them have next to no knowledge of how language acquisition works. They believe that explanation is required. And completeness. And that you can internalize isolated bodies of grammar one bit at a time.

For example: The book begins with 12 pages of fine print all to do with pronunciation. As if it would be harmful to concentrate on a few basics, and then gradually build up from there. 

Thereafter follow a couple of useful dialogues, but then there's too much about courtesy language, then too much about giving directions, then a heap about definite articles and how to use them, then the three verb conjugations, then a bunch of stuff about forming plurals, plus all of the cardinal and ordinal numbers.

Look, beginners don't need all that stuff at the beginning. Build it up gradually with some more of those dialogues, why don't you?

I fancy that I'll skim through the text very quickly and then head over to an actual book