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Basically something with a lot minimal pairs drills, recordings, mouth/tongue placement, IPA, and so on. Could be a paid or free resource.

Equivalent of books such as Phonetik Aktuell or Christopher Hall's Modern German Pronunciation for the German language. Perhaps Der kleine Hey. Or FSI's Introduction to French Phonology for the French language. Or Ann Baker's Ship or Sheep? for the English language. That sort of thing.

I get that the best way is probably taking a (phonetic) course in person and/or living in Portugal. But I don't live there and I'm looking for something for self-study. I don't think anyone teaches the language in person around me. No Instituto Camões either.

Possibly will record myself and ask for feedback on reddit or discord.

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  • Welcome to the site. We've had a discussion whether resource requests and language learning guidance should be asked here on main or on the meta site. Some of the resources you're asking for are posted there, but I'm not sure if a single book having pronunciation, exercises, etc.. like you ask has been posted before. Also, I suppose we would have to think how to frame this question, since the way it's being asked seems to hint at a language learner with some experience who's likely looking for resources with some theoretical depth.
    – bad_coder
    Commented Jul 15, 2022 at 15:48
  • Hi, thanks for the comment. Feel free to edit, move, close, or delete the question. I feel that despite having a lot of speakers, Portuguese is not exactly a popular language to learn. That may explain the lack of certain resources, even in Portuguese.
    – dictum
    Commented Jul 15, 2022 at 20:44
  • I think the best solution will be posting this on the meta site. Then there's this: you need 5 reputation to post on meta. The easiest way to get the reputation (since answering questions would be hard because you don't speak the language) is either editing 2 questions in English (use common English words in search) or asking a specific question that can be answered to get upvotes. A little bit of effort here will likely be necessary.
    – bad_coder
    Commented Jul 15, 2022 at 20:54
  • It's kind of hard knowing if there are a lot or few resources for natives, because we follow the usual school bibliographies (which I didn't like very much to be honest). For learners of Portuguese as a foreign language there's certain to be specific materials. Brasil has the Celpe-Bras exame which is very popular and will certainly have tons of resource materials. We'd have to look into what you're after more specifically.
    – bad_coder
    Commented Jul 15, 2022 at 20:59
  • Not for native. I mean textbook for language learners. Completely in Portuguese. Like Phonetik Aktuell I mentioned in my question for the German language. I personally don't agree with pushing all of the resource questions to meta. But I'm new, so can't comment much on it.
    – dictum
    Commented Jul 15, 2022 at 21:41

1 Answer 1

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As a German native speaker I would recommend you practiceportuguese.com which I used some years ago to improve my European Portuguese, too.

When I was subscribed at Practiceportuguese (about 2015/16) they offered only podcasts episodes in conjunction with PDF transcripts. Some of the podcasts are made for absolute beginners, some are harder. Most of them are available for free on YouTube and on their website. The podcasts for beginners are slowly speaken and often explain the correct pronunciation (and of course meaning) of difficult words. You get access to the transcripts of the podcasts when you make a subscription. (My method was harder: Just listen to the podcasts and trying to make a transcript for myself without the help of the transcript of the website. This was very hard at the beginning but it really helped me a lot.)

Now, Practiceportuguese has improved their website with "shorties" (short audio dialogues) and transcripts of the podcasts, where you can click on different terms to listen how words are pronounced correctly. In addition they have a so called "Learning Studio" which I did not used because it did not exists at 2016.

BTW I just tried a sample chapter from the Learning Studio which covers your topic correct pronounciation.

BTW I used babbel.de to improve my vocabulary, too. Despite the fact that Babbel is "talking" Brasilian Portuguese... It worked, too! ;-)

Thorsten

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    While there isn't a set rule on recommending payed resources (or asking for such recommendations as is the case in the above question), these are generally not well received by the community when there are free alternatives. This does not mean such sites aren't good, legitimate businesses, or that they don't offer value to the subscribers. (The site does look good.) The problem is that by allowing recommendations to payed resources there's no way the SE community can ascertain legitimacy or quality of those resources and there's a risk the site will start being used for advertising.
    – bad_coder
    Commented Jul 22, 2022 at 14:40
  • Personal testimonies and experiences in answers are valuable and accepted, however the above problematic cannot be solved unless by removing references to payed resources. I'll ask the moderators what this site's policy on this kind of issue is.
    – bad_coder
    Commented Jul 22, 2022 at 14:43
  • I understand your concerns and I have thought some minutes about this issue before writing my recommendation. Two points: 1. In this special case you can ascertain the quality of the site Practice Portuguese with ease. Just watch the about 150 (free) videos on YouTube [1] to evaluate them. Some of them are made already with subtitles IIRC. It's possible to learn the right pronunciation just by listen to the short stories or dialogues. Most were orginally made as audio podcasts, but some of them were "extended" with animation (try [2]).
    – Thorsten Albrecht
    Commented Aug 4, 2022 at 14:49
  • Personally, most of the time I really payed nothing because I did not want to be able to look at the transcriptions (I tried to make them on my own for control). But as an acknowledgement for the work of the two owners I subscribed for one year some months later. 2. I am not aware of any open source website which offers similar quality for European Portuguese. Do you know of any? [1] youtube.com/c/PracticePortuguese/videos [2] youtube.com/watch?v=q_1mVfmRvLM
    – Thorsten Albrecht
    Commented Aug 4, 2022 at 14:50

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