Status Updates From Basic Portuguese

Unit 25 - relative pronouns que, quem, onde

Possessives part 1 - basic object possession. Straightforward, similar to French, except:
1. In Portugal the article is used before the possessive pronoun
2. Mine/yours etc does NOT use the article - just the pronoun. In French this would be le mien/la mienne etc.

Unit 21 - demonstratives. Unit 22 - nonchanging demonstratives (e.g. that thing/this thing that I don’t know a name for). In both cases there are different “that” words depending on location of the item. That thing over there, or that thing by the 3rd party in the convo.

Unit 19 - adjectives. Some new stuff in here beyond a/o endings - like the weirdness with ês endings to describe gender + number of nationality.

Unit 18 - nouns and forming plurals

Unit 17 - indefinite articles and when not to use them. The book refrained from teaching “more advanced” exclusion rules… would have preferred having them mentioned here.

Unit 16 - definite articles and places they’re used. Dates, holidays, some cities, people’s names, and some countries are weird and inconsistent but I had mostly figured it out anyway. This unit should have been introduced much earlier IMO.

Unit 14 (I think) - saber vs conhecer. Mostly the same as French but a few specific phrases. “Saber” by heart, but “conhecer” by name/by sight.

Unit 14 - forming future tense using “ir” + infinitive. I’m now grammatically (and unintentionally) caught up with the Duo course.

Unit 13 - reflexive verbs. This makes a lot of sense coming from French, although putting the pronoun after the verb feels weird. The hardest part was remembering all the main verb conjugation rules… time to go back and practice I guess.

Unit 12 - haver (há - there is/are) and haver de (will happen with emphasis). The haver de + infinitive form was good to know, but the biggest surprise was New York == Nova Iorque.

The many uses of ter. O que tem a ver com (what has it got to do with) was the hardest for me to figure out.

Unit 10 - 4 categories of -ir verbs that change spelling in the 1st person present singular but are otherwise regular. More fodder for flashcards I guess.

Unit 9 - irregular -ir verbs pedir, ouvir, dormir, subir, ir, vir, sair, cair. The hardest part is keeping the conjugations of ir and vir straight.

Unit 7 - More common irregular verbs: poder, querer, perder, pôr

Unit 6 - irregular verbs ler, ver, trazer, fazer. Just like other languages, repetition is going to be the best bet here.

Regular -er verbs - rinse lather repeat from -ar verbs.

Unit 4 - Regular -ar verbs, present tense conjugations. Hobby-related vocabulary.

Unit 3 - estar. Would probably help if I was coming from a Spanish background here, but it’s still mostly intuitive. The construction of estar + a + infinitive for ongoing actions seems like it will be useful! (But different in Brazilian PT)

Unit 2 - Ser (to be, permanent/lasting state)

Unit 1 - Subject pronouns. Pretty easy so far - just directly translating between PT and EN for all the exercises. The various forms of formal 2nd person address were new to me, though, so at least I'm learning even if the exercises are too simple.