Defining Your Goals and Committing to Achieving Them

bullseye I’ve been working round the clock day and night to create a course to help 25 people get fluent with me.

It’s been really a laborous process but well worth it for sure as it will help these 25 to get fluent, and during the creating of this course (which will be awesome btw!), I made a video to address goals and commitment.

Why?

Because committing ourselves to achieving something is one of the single most important things that we can do to achieve success.

Yeah this video is part of the Portuguese Acceleration Blueprint Course but I felt like revealing it and sharing it with you today because it’s relevant for other areas of our lives too.

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LIB 007: How to Speak Portuguese Like a Brazilian With Idahosa Ness

Pronounce Portuguese When we gringos learn Portuguese, there is always one thing that sticks out like soar thumb above anything else: our strong gringo accent.

It’s no secret that us from the USA have an especially difficult time with the “r” or “ão”, though there is hope! (can I get an amen?)

Thanks to people like Idahosa Ness over at mimicmethod.com, we can get to the bottom of figuring out how to pronounce correctly.

So check out this episode of the Live in Brazil podcast where we get to the bottom of learning how to have the “Brazilian Flow”.

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5 Good Reasons You Should Learn Portuguese

Speak Portuguese, learn PortuguesePortuguese is an amazing language – no doubt about it – and today I am going to give you 5 reasons why you should learn it and how to learn Portuguese.

Learning Portuguese was one of the best decisions I have ever made (outside of moving to Brazil), the feeling of being able to not just communicate but express myself in Portuguese is indescribable.

Brazilian Portuguese is a passionate and romantic language, where the focus is on expressing yourself rather than following tons of grammar rules, making it the ideal learner’s language.

And combine the above with the fact that Brazilian people just love it when foreigners do everything they can to learn Portuguese, then you have a great recipe for language success.

When I first started and attempt at speaking to a Brazilian, something amazing happened.

UPDATE: Make sure to read the update at the end of the post!

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The Shortcut to Fast and Fun Portuguese Fluency

Learn Portuguese, Portuguese learning, trick to learn Portuguese fast Becoming fluent in Portuguese is a blast and can happen fast if you utilize 1 shortcut that only about 2% of Portuguese learners know about…

How would you like to fluently command Portuguese and be an amazing speaker?

You are about to enter the inside with the 2% of people who have successfully learned Portuguese fluently and receive our 1 shortcut leading to this snowball effect: a cheat sheet!

Before continuing, let me share something important that sheds light onto this shortcut and is tied directly into your Portuguese learning:

The idea that a snowball thrown down the side of a snowy hill builds in speed, size and momentum is a familiar metaphor.  Though, there is a very important side of this “effect” that people generally don’t talk about: how much snow the snowball leaves behind! (or we should leave behind when learning Portuguese?)

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6 Ways to Communicate in Portuguese Through Body Language

ok sign, body language, Portuguese Body language can be up to 90% of the communication happening in any given conversation – how we move our bodies, use our voices, gesture ,move our eyes and use facial expressions can be a communicational deal maker or breaker.

In a nutshell: learning the vocabulary of a new language is only the beginning of being able to speak Portuguese fluently, in the end, it comes down to how you use your body to express yourself.

With that in mind, let me give you an example by telling you a story about a well meaning American, who accidentily called everyone he met in Brazil the vulgar equivalent of a rear end…

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How Real Life Portuguese Usage Throttles Your Learning

Portuguese conversation Allowing your Portuguese to see the light of day is the single most important thing you can do to increases your speaking abilities by immeasurable amounts.

When I was 16 and oh so nieve, I purchased a really cool car that needed a whole lot of work – a 1986 Pontiac Fiero GT.

“A whole lot of work” basically meant that there was no motor, transmission or anything mechanical in it.  The paint was shot, interior ugly and when I handed over the hard earned $200 bucks to the seller, I got several boxes of parts.

Ok cool, so it’s like putting a puzzle together right?

Wrong!

This was a mixture of a 10,000 piece labyrinth-puzze (if that even exists) especially since I had no mechanical inclination what-so-ever… And so I mustered my best 16 year old spirit up, purchased a repair manual and cheap-o tool kit and got to work.

I was in for a ride (no pun intended)…

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How to Master the Brazilian Portuguese Nasal Vowels

Brazilian Nasal Vowels Today, we have a special guest post from Idahosa Ness.  I’ve been really looking forward to this post because not only has he learned the science behind “language Flow”, he’s got Portuguese pronunciation down with pretty much 0 accent!

Let’s welcome him with big, open and Brazilian abraço – take it away Idahosa!

To learn Portuguese and blend in with Brazilians with your accent, you’re going to need to master The Flow of Portuguese.

In my language-learning philosophy – – “The Flow” of a language refers to the sound patterns that underlie its words and phrases.  You can learn every word in the dictionary, but if you don’t master the flow of Portuguese then you won’t be able to converse fluently.  

Without a doubt, your biggest challenge with Portuguese flow will be in mastering the nasal vowels.  These sounds are not only difficult for most foreigners to articulate correctly, but they also occur all the time in Portuguese speech; so there’s no avoiding them.

But not to worry, you can master the portuguese nasal vowels in less than a month with proper training.

Here’s the process to Portuguese nasal vowel mastery:

  • Understand what a nasal vowel is and what it is NOT
  • Tune your ear to the sound of nasalization
  • Develop an awareness of your “Velum”
  • Train your control over the nasalization muscles.

Take the time to understand the diagrams and practice the drills in this post and you will eliminate over half of your foreign accent in Portuguese and dramatically increase your comprehension and speaking fluency.

Let’s get started…

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3 Hacks to Learn Portuguese Grammar Fast | 007b

Portuguese grammar learning, learn Portuguese grammarIf there is one thing to be said about learning Portuguese grammar, it’s that there are tons of rules.  Though, what if I told you that you could cut your grammar learning time down by about 30% by using 3 hacks?

What most people don’t realize when diving into their grammar books, is that there is a lot of unnecessary “proper” Portuguese grammar being taught that you really don’t ever use.  This is all done in the name of “doing it right” but in my opinion is a time wasted that you could use on speaking faster.

Usually a person doesn’t figure out how much unnecessary time was spent on grammer that they will never use until it’s too late – I’ll help you save that time!

When I began learning Portuguese, I discovered a huge shortcut trick where you take and transpose the grammar you unknowingly use every day in English right into Portuguese – giving the click “aha!” feeling and a huge foundation of turn-key grammar you can use right away.

And to top it off, there is a little but effective hack that will make speaking about the future in Portuguese a breeze, without having to learn all of the complicated “future tense” stuff!

So, what do we unknowingly spend so much precious grammar time on where we should be focusing our “language powers” elsewhere?

The answer is a bit shocking…

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5 Tricks to Learn Portuguese Vocabulary for Good | 007a

Portuguese vocabulary, vocabulario portuguesThere are 5 powerful tricks you can learn to dominate Portuguese vocabulary and beat WSS (I’ll explain later), I’m going to share these with you today!

“Why won’t it stick!? It’s like no matter what I do, it just seems impossible to keep this vocabulary down!”

This was me in the not-to-distant past…  The feeling of frustration and irritation was overwhelming, it’s like the word would go in one ear and out the other – without sticking anywhere in between.

And to be honest, this is not just a problem that I’ve had, it’s something that we all have in common when learning Portuguese.

As a matter of fact, it’s so common that I’ve come up with a term for it “WSS” or “Wont Stick Syndrome“.

But don’t worry, there is hope for us all as there is a way to reverse WSS!

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Create a Portuguese Language Foundation in 3 Steps | 006

Portuguese foundation What language program should I choose and will it make me fluent?

This is a question that is asked a lot by expats, Brazil enthusiasts and foreigners alike looking to learn Portuguese.  In my experience, the answer is the same for all of them.

In this post, I will deconstruct an example: how utilizing a little-known trick, I had fun with a Portuguese course to build a strong Portuguese foundation – contributing to fluency in under 6 months time.

Disclaimer: I am going to recommend a Portuguese program to you that will give me some financial benefit at no extra charge to you.  This in no way means that you need to purchase this program to become fluent in Portuguese, it’s just a program that I’ve tried, tested and stand by.  If you do end up purchasing through my affiliate link, send me an e-mail so that I can personally thank you!

Before digging in…

Choosing the right Portuguese course is not enough to make you fluent in Portuguese.

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