One comment we hear from many of our members is that they are having trouble finding opportunities to practice conversation in Portuguese out in the real world. They get off to a great start: eagerly working through the units, doing regular reviews, memorizing verb conjugations, and spending time studying Shorties and Podcasts. Then, when they work up the courage to speak Portuguese, they are completely crushed to hear the listener respond in English.
Many wonder if they said something wrong and feel too embarrassed to try to continue the conversation in Portuguese. They immediately switch to English and remain stuck in this pattern of learning Portuguese quietly at home, but not putting it into use. They start to feel discouraged that they can’t integrate more into Portuguese life.
If this sounds like you, don’t worry! We have some suggestions that will help you get past this barrier.
Be Insistent
It all starts with advocating for yourself. Don’t be afraid to ask for what you need. There may be situations in which it’s not possible for someone to patiently work through a conversation with you. Most of the time, however, people will be happy to help and appreciate you putting in the effort. All you have to do is ask!
Pode falar em português comigo, por favor?Can you speak to me in Portuguese, please?First, let the listener know that you are trying to improve. They may think they are doing you a favour by speaking in English, so just politely tell them why you want to use Portuguese:
Estou a aprender a língua e preciso praticarI'm learning the language and I need to practiceIf you’re worried you’re not making sense, you could even ask:
Consegue compreender-me?Can you understand me?
Managing Communication Breakdowns Without Switching to English
When you run into a tricky part of the conversation, it can be helpful to the listener to tell them what exactly you didn’t understand. Take the sentence below, for example.
A minha avó tem muitas agulhas de coserMy grandmother has many sewing needles
Let’s say you didn’t understand “agulhas de coser”. You could ask a question to make it clear which part of the sentence you missed:
A tua avó tem o quê?Your grandmother has what?Or, similarly, you could repeat the part of the phrase you heard with a questioning tone, leaving the rest to be filled in by the listener:
A tua avó tem muitas...?Your grandmother has many...?If they repeat the part you missed, but you still don’t know what it means, you could ask:
Não entendi, pode explicar?I didn't understand, can you explain?
O que significa?What does it mean?Sometimes, however, you may not catch much of anything and need the person to repeat or speak more slowly:
Pode repetir, por favor?Can you repeat (that) , please? Pode falar mais devagar, por favor?Can you speak more slowly, please?If you are trying to say something specific, but don’t have the vocabulary, you could ask something like:
Como se diz isso em português?How do you say that in Portuguese?You can replace the word isso with a word you want to translate. And, of course, don’t forget to be patient and polite:
Obrigado pela explicaçãoThank you for the explanation (male speaker)
Obrigada por me ajudar a praticar!Thank you for helping me practice (female speaker) Obrigada pela ajudaThank you for the help(female speaker)Putting it All Together
In this article from Tomorrow magazine, Lena Strang writes about her experience building Portuguese conversation skills even when she kept getting a response in English. Inspired by Lena’s article, we put together a goofy video to show you an example of how to politely manage a situation in which a local keeps responding in English:
Build Conversational Confidence
Of course, all of these tips are much easier said than done. Until you have the skills to sustain a conversation in Portuguese, it can be daunting to ask for Portuguese when you know you’re going to struggle.
Keep learning! The more comfortable you feel with your Portuguese skills, the easier it is to manage whatever comes up in conversation. In the beginning, it’s okay to start small and stick to some basic greetings and phrases. Over time you can gradually add to your skills. The best way to do that is by continuing to challenge yourself in real conversations. There are even some shortcuts to help simplify your approach!
As you progress, you’ll notice more of the nuances of the language, such as the common colloquial expressions, as well as pronunciation quirks, including regional accent differences and how the ends of words often sound like they are “swallowed”.
Immerse Yourself
Lastly, try exploring other parts of Portugal. In more tourism-focused areas, getting a default English response is quite common. By traveling to other areas of the country, or even just going off the beaten path a bit, you can expect to hold more conversations in Portuguese. Don’t shy away from experiences like this that will help you feel more immersed in both the language and culture of Portugal.
Hello, some of the phrases on this page do not have the speaker icon so I can hear them properly pronounced.
Sorry about that! We record in batches, so often we go ahead and publish the articles with just the written example phrases and then add audio to them later. But don’t worry, these are on the list to be recorded. 🙂
Wonderful that you address this. This happens to me a lot too, and I do use these phrases above and others to convince people to speak Portuguese with me, and they are quite happy to, normally. It is a bit slower for them, communicating in my Portuguese instead of their excellent English, so at the end I say ‘Muito obrigada pela sua paciência,’ which I hope is correct. Sometimes people also answer me in French. (Never in Spanish however!). The fact that this is such a common problem just goes to show what brilliant linguists the Portuguese are. This won’t happen in most European countries! I do notice that people are pleased when foreigners make an effort to speak Portuguese, and I am only sorry that so relatively few can be ‘arsed’ to do so. I have witnessed some really shocking linguistic rudeness. I wonder how townspeople manage to keep their temper at all sometimes. But they seem to be unfailingly polite. I find this topic quite painful, actually. It motivates me to learn more. Thanks for your help with that, Rui and Joel.
Here’s an idea if you happen to speak some Spanish. I experienced the same “switch to English” syndrome when I moved to Denmark years ago. In those early days if I attempted Danish the answer would inevitably come in English. But I discovered that if I instead started off in Swedish, which I speak, the person I was talked with would actually stick to Danish. (The gap between Swedish and Danish is similar to the one between Spanish and Portuguese.) After that I could float over to Danish for the rest of the interaction. A bit sly, but it was war 🙂
Since my Portuguese is still at a level where natives tend to answer in English, I’ve used the Spanish switcharoo a few times with good results – at least in Porto where they’re used Spanish tourists. So if you’re struggling getting responses in Portuguese and are reasonably confident in Spanish, this might be a way to prime the pump.
It may be helpful if we had a short tutorial on conversation when the learner has difficult hearing. I have a mile hearing impairment especially in noisey environments.
Even with my native language have difficulty when there is noise around me.
This word recognition problem makes learing a new language a daunting task, and yet I am determined. Portugues will be my second foreign language and I am going to succeed.
Roy D King
Good idea, thanks! There are a few phrases in this blog post under the “Asking for Clarification” section that may be helpful: Olá! Tudo bem? …NOW what? Some other phrases show up in this unit as well: Basic Conversation
Let us know if there are particular phrases that would help you in these situations and maybe we can work on another post that’s more relevant. What do you find yourself wanting to say usually? For example, something like “Can we talk in a quieter place?” or “I have a mild hearing impairment. Could you say that again?”, etc…
As for the word recognition / understanding piece, most of the tips would involve trying to set up the environment, or your position relative to the speaker, to be more conducive for hearing. But that’s not always possible of course! You may be able to talk to an audiologist about different types of hearing aids or other amplification options that would work better in noisy environments. There are certain options that can be set to reduce background noise, or that have a transmitter that can be positioned toward the speaker. It depends on the type of hearing loss you have. If you have high-frequency hearing loss, you may find the most difficulty with words that contain sounds such as s, th, and f. If this applies to you, we could try to create something to help with getting extra practice with these sounds.
Another way to practice would be to listen to lower level Shorties, but play music or create a noisy background to help practice hearing in noisy environments. Follow the transcript as you listen to help match the sounds to the words. Then try listening without the transcript.
This might be very challenging, but here is a unit that focuses on differentiating between similar sounds: Minimal Pairs
Hello! I’d like to ask something about grammar
Regarding the sentence “obrigada por me ajudar a praticar”
Would be correct if I say “obrigada por ajudar-me”?
And also, in the sentence “estou a aprender a língua e preciso praticar”
“….preciso de praticar” would be correct? I thought the verb “precisar” always had the preposition “de”
Thank you in advance!!
Olá! It is preferable to say “Obrigada por me…”. The preposition ‘por’ attracts the clitic pronoun to it. Also, ‘preciso de praticar’ would be absolutely correct as well. The verb ‘precisar’ does not always need the preposition ‘de’, but that’s the most common way of using it in Portugal, indeed.