About

Hi

My name is Colin Lusk. I started learning Portuguese years ago. Years and years and years, before my wife and I were married, but it never seemed to do any good. I would start, get a few weeks in, give up and lapse back into monolingual idiocy. But this time is different, and I’m writing a blog about the experience.

This blog started out as a pure homework exercise but now that I’m getting reasonably good at speaking, I thought I’d try and make it into something more useful to other learners. If you look at the menus over there on the right hand side you’ll see lists to some pages where I’ve collected product reviews.

The site costs a little bit of money to host each year and I am hoping to make a little bit of money back in order to pay for it. I do this by using affiliate links. That’s just a fancy way of saying that if you click through any of the links to buy a book or an audio or whatever it’s quite likely that I’ll get a small commission on anything you buy. You don’t pay more – it just helps pay my fees at this end.

Please consider using one of these links if you are planning on buying online.

And if you don’t fancy any of those, you could also Buy Me A Coffee for my efforts. Thanks

Pastéis_de_Belém

About the title image: By SergioPT (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 4.0-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

About the icon: Icons made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com

14 thoughts on “About”

  1. Encontrei, por acaso, este seu blog, e gostei. Também eu, que vivo na Dinamarca há mais de 40 anos, tive de aprender outra língua, mas nunca na perfeição. E, claro, você tem os mesmos problemas que eu tenho, e, por isso, não como crítica mas somente por gostar de ajudar, tenho alguns reparos a erros que escreveu. Mas, claro, se estiver de acordo.

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    1. Claro! It would be great to have any ideas. I should probably warn you that a lot of them have already been checked by native speakers, but if you think they might have missed something I’d be happy to hear about it. Or I might have missed something in transcription of course. Are you this guy? http://www.portugalnyt.dk/content/danmarkportugalhistorie.aspx If so, hello fellow blogger! Danish was actually the first foreign language I started learning, when I was nine years old and we went on holiday there. I think I can still remember the numbers from one to ten and the words “sausage” and “thank you” but that’s about it!

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  2. Estou muito contente encontrar outro Inglês quem estar tentar dominar a língua Português.

    Ha muitos anos tinha vergonha que muitos das nossas compatriotas, mesmo eles quem vivem cá há muitos anos, fazem nenhum esforco aprender a lingua do Camões.

    Boa sorte na aventura

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    1. Muito obrigado. Estou contente também. Este Blog tem trazido muitos amigos novos com um amor da língua portuguesa. É bom de ouvir que decidiste aprender. “Melhor tarde do que nunca” como dizemos

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      1. Como assim? Eu não decidi aprender português. Tenho 75 anos de idade e sou português de nascença!

        Há aqui um mal entendido neste blog.

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      2. Hi Fernando,
        Yes, I think there is a bit of a misunderstanding. I think BarlevantoExpert was addressing me, as the author of the blog, not you (which is why he describes me as english), and I was addressing him, not you, (which is why I describe him as someone learning portuguese) The way the template shows the web page that might not be obvious, but if you re-read it that way it might make more sense…?
        Thanks for the corrections by the way.

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  3. ATENÇÃO! NÃO SOU INGLÊS MAS SIM UM PORTUGUÊS NA DINAMARCA.

    Para ser mais correcto, eu escreveria assim:
    Estou muito satisfeito por encontrar outro inglês que também está a tentar dominar a língua portuguesa.

    Há anos tinha vergonha de constatar, que muitos dos nossos compatriotas, mesmo aqueles que vivem cá há muitos anos, não fazem qualquer esforço para aprender a língua de Camões.

    Um abraço
    Fernando

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  4. Hi – pleased to find your blog. I’m weighing up doing the CIPLE or DEPLE exam, having done GCSE 9 years ago and AS Level 8 years ago. I appreciate a lot of fears described in the build up to your exams!

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    1. Hi Ibrahim – sorry for the slow reply, I haven’t been on here much lately. Good luck with the exam. I guess having done it at school will be a big help. I haven’t heard of it being taught in UK schools before. How did you manage that?

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  5. Hey I started learning Portuguese last year for a summer holiday and I’ve been really enjoying it. Your site has been really useful!
    I wanted to drop some language resources that I’ve found useful that you might not know about.

    https://www.linguno.com/
    This site has lots of conjugation exercises. You can tell it what level you are and it will give you verbs and tenses for your level, then keep track of how well you answer and tell you if you should move up a level. It also has listening/dictation exercises for different levels and themes (AI voice only though).
    I’ve found it really useful for hammering the tenses in my memory.
    It has European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese separate.

    https://learn.brulingua.be/
    This has a European Portuguese course from A1 to B2. New vocabulary and grammar rules are explained in Portuguese. It has various modules on themes like “Shopping”, “Hobbies”, “Politics” etc and each module has videos, exercises, vocabulary lists, grammar explanations and a final exam. There’s a lot of content and it’s all free!
    However, you do need to be a resident of Brussels, which is verified by entering a Brussels postcode like 1200 when you sign up and is not checked.

    They also have a language assessment test, and news articles/videos with exercises that gets updated every few days.

    It’s a really amazing resource. I use it to reinforce my learning, and fill in knowledge gaps for the CEFR levels as it’s all monolingual and thus a bit hard for a beginner. There is an app as well but it’s a little trickier to install (requires an APK installing app).

    Anyway, I’m hoping to try to take the A2 CIPLE test, to get an assessment of where I’m really at. Unfortunately it looks like the test appointments sell out super quickly! I wanted to do it in November but it’s all sold out in the UK so I’ll have to wait till next year 😦

    Anyway, hope your own studying is going well!

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    1. Hi! Thanks for the ideas. I’ll have a look in the morning.

      I believe the exams are more frequent in Portugal itself so maybe an excuse for a short holiday there?

      Failing that, well, if you’re waiting till May anyway, maybe set your sights on B1? (I was the only person in the exam when I did that one so I guess it’s less popular?)

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      1. Nothing in Portugal either for this year 😦 The only place anywhere close by is Luxemburg, but at the price of the flight there I may as well save the money for a short trip to Portugal next year. I might combine it with a week’s worth of intensive classes too!

        I was considering the B1 test, not sure if I’d be ready though? I’ve only been learning since November. I did get placed into A2 classes for a short Portuguese course in March, and online assessments have put me in B1 but there’s no speaking or writing component to those.

        I’m going to get a tutor though, and they should have a better idea of my level. It would be very cool to be able to get B1! How many years had you been studying Portuguese before passing the B1 test?

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      2. Wow, I see what you mean! I guess it must be because A1 and A2 are popular for citizenship applications.

        I took B1 in May 2016 (https://lusobritish.blog/2016/05/26/este-e-o-verdadeiro-teste/) which is only about 3 months after I started this blog so I’d only been super-serious for that long, but I had been learning in a sort of half-hearted way, on and off for a few years before, so it wasn’t a cold start if you see what I mean. I think if you are at A2 level now but can’t take the exam then setting yourself a goal for next spring to take B1 seems like it should be well within reach. November this year might be a stretch, but if you are a fast learner and prepared to put the hours in, maybe that’s achievable too.

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