Difficulties when learning portuguese

Question

English

For non-native speakers/learners of portuguese: What do you think is the greatest difficulty you find when studying/reading/writing/speaking? Is it the difference between ser and estar, inflection of adjectives, pronunciation of nasal diphthongs like ão and õe? What do you find more difficult?

Português

Aos falantes não-nativos/estudantes de português: Qual tu achas que é a tua maior dificuldade quando tu estudas/lês/escreves/falas? É a diferença entre ser e estar, a flexão de adjetivos, pronúncia de ditongos nasais como ão e õe? O que achas mais difícil?

Answer 1

Well, of course it strongly depends on which language you're coming from: native speakers of Spanish, German, or Korean will face different difficulties when learning Portuguese.

That said, two points that come to mind (I'm refraining myself from googling the subject) that probably impact most learners are:

• Pronunciation. Portuguese has quite a mix of sounds, especially considering the various variants. I've yet to meet a learner who didn't find at least a few of them challenging to pronounce correctly, with nasals often taking the top spot.
• Verbs. In some languages you get away with a few tenses most of the time (like German), no so in Portuguese. And conjugation is of course quite an exercise of memorization.

And, yes, as mentioned in the question, using ser/estar correctly typically takes some practice. Also, like with most other languages, the differences between formal and informal languages, as well as regional variants poses an additional challenge; being a gendered language means it takes more work to learn vocabulary; etc.