Social media posts about Brazilian food always generate great engagement. Of course, right? Who can resist a good pão de queijo or a beautiful moqueca dish?
Have you been using your love of Brazilian food to improve your Portuguese? You should!
Most English speakers who have a Brazilian partner use English to communicate. In my experience, when you start a relationship in one language, it’s challenging to switch to the other. So I hear many people saying that they wish they had more opportunity to practice Portuguese with their loved ones. I have a few ideas to offer 🙂
Plan a dinner date in Portuguese
Plan a dinner date in Portuguese. You can go to a Brazilian restaurant or cook at home. The food doesn’t even have to be Brazilian. The trick is to reserve a couple of hours to intentionally speak Portuguese. Having a plan and knowing that it’s an exercise that will only last for a couple of hours will help help control the impulse to switch back to English.
Use your love of cooking to learn Portuguese
If you like cooking, pick some great recipes and use them to your advantage. Learn about Brazilian ingredients and cooking techniques as a way to immerse yourself in the Brazilian culture and learn new vocabulary.
Check out Nando Cuca’s YouTube channel. He shows how to cook Brazilian cuisine classics. The videos are in English, but you can use this opportunity to look up words in Portuguese.
Add vocabulary learning to your cooking activities. Learn the names of all the things we have in the kitchen and ingredients such as vegetables, herbs, grains, nuts, and more in Portuguese.
I recently learned about Travel to Brazil – The Cookbook, written by a Brazilian travel entrepreneur. I hear it is full of great stories about Brazil and tasty recipes.
You will find innumerous books with Brazilian recipes, Brazilian gastronomy, etc., both in Portuguese and in English, on Amazon.com.
Here is what I found when I searched for Brazilian culinary.
Now get to work 🙂 Invite your Brazilian friends to come over and try your dishes. Make it fun by challenging each one of them to teach you a new word, expression or cultural tip as their ticket to dinner.
The goal is to have a good time and to speak some Portuguese. Of course enjoying great Brazilian food doesn’t hurt 😉
Full disclosure: The links to books are Amazon Affiliate links, which means that if you go to Amazon.com using the link and you make a purchase, I make a tiny commission. This does not affect the price you pay. And I do really believe that you can and should leverage food and the love of cooking to practice and improve your Portuguese while having fun with friends and family.
Street Smart Brazil offers online Portuguese lessons. We have been teaching Portuguese via video meetings for over a decade, helping learners around the globe speak Portuguese with confidence. Book a Portuguese trial lesson with us.
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