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Is It Difficult to Learn Portuguese? An Interview with Seth Kugel

posted on April 1, 2010

Oi galera,

I found this video on YouTube… American journalist Seth Kugel is interviewed by  vejapontocom (Veja is a Brazilian magazine and Vejapontocom is its YouTube channel) . Seth graduated in Political Science in Yale and has a master’s degree in Public Politics from Harvard. He has been writing for the New York Times since 1998, and also works as Brazil’s correspondent for the Global Post Agency.

The interview is divided in 3 videos:

Part 1: ”Como se fala Copacabana (1/3)” – Seth talks about his experience learning Portuguese. By the time of the interview, he had been living in Brazil for 1 year. It’s a very interesting point of view, especially when he describes his difficulties learning the language, and how he interprets Brazil.

Part 2 : “Foz do Iguaçu está na lista (2/3)” – In this part he talks about the violence in Brazil , and his experience writing about travel destinations in Brazil. His writings cover not only the renowned Brazilian touristic destinations, but also and specially the not so obvious destinations in Brazil, the places that are not so known by the North American travellers.

Part 3: “Política brasileira é muito interessante (3/3)” – In this last part Seth talks about Brazilian politics, corruption, and impunity in Brazil. He also expresses his opinion about President Lula, and the relationship between Brazil and the USA before and after Obama.

The interview is in Portuguese… so it’s a great challenge for you who are learning the language yourself…but it’s also a great motivation, because he speaks very clear and easy to understand Portuguese!

Let me know what you think, how you relate to his experiences, and in which points your own experience is similar to, or completely different from, his.

Divirtam-se!

[video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kd5-SFo4T58] [video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNB5ygC07KM] [video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o892VbKbXV8]

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. kabita

    May 10, 2011 at 1:27 am




    Learning and speaking different languages has become most of the youth interest now. This might probably because most of the youths are moving abroad for further studies and knowing other countries language would surely help those students in everything. As we always get to hear that, English is an international language and French language is worlds most reckon language and difficult to learn as well. I have collected some books on Japanese, Russian and French language book. But while reading those books I cannot understand a single thing there. My language teacher told me about http://www.pimsleurapproach.com that guarantees students, learn any language in 10 days. Are there any other sites that I could reference on for learning Brazilian Portuguese language?

     

    Reply
  2. Luciana Lage

    April 1, 2010 at 1:05 pm

    Students often say that some "sounds" in Portuguese are difficult to pronounce . Well, the English language also offers difficulties for us Brazilians. One of them is the "th". The interviewer introduces Seth and mentions that in Brazil he is often called "Sete". Sometimes he even needs to answer to "Sergio".  Now notice how the interviewer himself introduces Seth in the very first line of video 1. I could not help but have a good laugh. Seth truly is a difficult to pronounce name.

    This is a great interview!

    Reply

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