2026-02-19
in
9 min read
In this post I laid out how I fake out speaking immersion for studying European Portuguese. That’s only one small part of the puzzle though. The other three components of language learning I want to try to recreate immersion on are: reading, writing, and listening. How do I go about faking out immersion in those areas?
Reading
Reading is probably the easiest of the three aspects to come across content. There are some good sources of European Portuguese news and media on the internet. For smaller current culture events type news stories there is NiT.pt . There is also a US based world Portuguese news outlet called Tribuna Portuguesa . Another news source, based in Portugual this time, is The Portugal News . This is a bit harder for me to parse through though. Another great source is transcriptions on media. Unfortunately a lot of media that have Portuguese transcriptions use Brazilian Portuguese. There will be differences in colloquialisms and some other things, but it may be better than nothing. I’ve found a trick where it’s possible to get European Portuguese transcriptions on many YouTube videos however. By throwing my account into the Portugal location, watching a European Portuguese video, and turning auto-transcription into European Portuguese on, that option will stick and be available for many videos. It doesn’t work for all videos. I can’t tell why it sometimes doesn’t come up as an option. But when it does it allows me to see lots of new words tied to the English dialog that I’m listening to. I also like to read along on European Portuguese videos as well (more on that below).
Writing (and Reading)
Writing practice in Portuguese takes a few different directions. First thing I did was a started doing my “daily jots” in Portuguese as well as English. I started the practice of doing bullet journaling of what happened during the day, my thoughts during the day, etc. each and every day in a text file. To go along side of that I’m doing it in Portuguese first. Any simple things I have to say I can do in Portuguese. If I have more complicated things to say then it defeats the purpose of the exercise to just have Google Translate do all the heavy lifting for me. When I’m doing the journal writing I am doing the same methodology I did above with my speaking practice. I try to just spit out what I’m trying to say with my limited capabilities. I then will go through Linguee or Reverso to find words I didn’t remember/didn’t know, fix conjugations, et cetera. I then run it through Google Translate to see what it comes up with. That’ll become the final form. I make mental notes of how I did and things I need to improve on.
Another aspect of writing (and reading) is starting to respond to Portuguese social media posts on the various social networks that I have access to. This is a bit more interactive than the jot journal method above. But I still can take as much time as I need massaging my answer, figuring out what they wrote using Linguee and/or Google Translate for assistance.
A final aspect of writing (and reading) is I found some Portuguese speakers that don’t mind helping me practice with DM/IM chats. I try to do as much as I can in Portuguese and vice versa. I can break “out of character” and ask them how they would say something. I trust their colloquialisms answers more than Google Translate’s. In these dialogs I can break out the same tools but the tempo is much faster so I have to think on my feet a lot more. This is a lot more like a “speaking” practice where I have to recall vocabulary and grammar to put together a sentence as well as process what they are writing. I like the level of interactivity a lot more than these other exercises because of that. It is just harder to come by as well so it is not the largest part of my writing practice.
Listening
Listening practice is probably the hardest of the three to come by. The majority of the Portuguese media content I come across is in Brazilian Portuguese not European Portuguese. Unlike with writing it is different enough to potentially make using that as a source counterproductive. Fortunately I have found some good European Portuguese content to listen to. That content falls into two categories: slowed down content and normal speed content. I use both but for different things.
Slow Speed Content
Slow speed content would be the first place you’d probably look to for getting better at listening and speaking Portuguese. Portuguese, like English, is a stress-timed language. That means the interval between stressed syllables is roughly the same. That is different from syllable-timed languages, where each syllable’s duration is about the same. When I first started learning Portuguese I was thinking that this whole “stress-timed language” thing would take some getting used to with words and sounds mashing together. I wondered to myself, “How can one get used to speaking in a language like that?” Then I learned English is also a stress-timed language and we do the same thing. So obviously it is something I’ll pick up. However at slower speeds a lot of that “mashing together” goes away. Along with giving us time to process what we are hearing it also makes it easier for us to hear it. If we are trying to replicate what we are hearing it also teaches us how to properly make the same sounds. While slowing down full speed recordings can help with the time for comprehension bit it doesn’t help so much with the others. Instead I found some sources of Portuguese where the speakers are intentionally speaking slower for learners like me.
The first is The Beginner Portuguese With Leo Podcast . Leonardo Coelho is from Lisbon. He does Portuguese Language instruction. He actually has a couple of podcasts and a YouTube Channel . Along with the beginner podcast, he has an Intermediate Portuguese one as well. These are great because he speaks slowly and deliberately. He also includes a transcript so one can read along, although some are behind a pay wall.
Another great resource is Diana’s Portuguese in Real Life YouTube Channel. Like Leo’s beginner course she intentionally speaks deliberately and clearly. She isn’t doing a dialog but doing things like exploring the kitchen and cooking an egg. There is a Portuguese transcript that goes along with it live. You are then learning as if you were there and she’s pointing to things or things she’s doing so you can build up associations directly rather than memorizing a transalation.
Another great YouTube site is The Practice Portuguese YouTube channel. They too do a lot of slower speaking and direct learning like Diana’s channel does. They have an app you can use/sign up for as well if you like it.
A podcast that is a mix of slower Portuguese speaking and some English discussions about it is the Portuguese from Portugal podcast. They not only provide transcripts in Portuguese and English but they have some additional learning information around the content read in each episode.
Short Stories in Portuguese is a podcast that hasn’t been updated in a while but has a wealth of slower paced readings as well.
Two other podcasts that I haven’t used much but show some potential promise are: Slow Portuguese with Maria and Beginner European Portuguese Bodcast by Uca
Full Speed Content
In terms of practically building up my listening, pronounciation, and vocabularly, the slow speed content is the way to go. I still want to start getting used to hearing Portuguese as it is spoken day to day though. For that I wanted to search out every day content that a native Portuguese speaker would use. I use these in two different ways. The first way is to listen intently and see what I can pick out. For shorter content I may listen without Portuguese subtitles and then with them to see what more pops out. The second way I listen to them is as background content. This is just stuff I’m going to have on so I can get used to hearing people speaking Portuguese day to day. I don’t make any major attempt to figure out what is being said. It’s more about getting a sense of the sound and rhythm of the language.
I found a YouTube Channel that does local news coverage of Portugal: Fala Portugal . These are great because they are short news stories, just a couple of minutes, so I don’t have to get bogged down in a long video. This is part of the Record Europa network which also has tv shows of other types there. Apparently the content is mostly from Brazil. What I don’t know is if these are redubbed into European Portuguese or not. If it is that could be a fun way to get some practice as well. I have more research to do there.
Along with news type YouTube video with transcripts I also started following some Portuguese music artists and channels. One is DJ Mankey , which is an EDM style with Fado (Portuguese folk music) influence. I also found some publicly shared modern Portuguese Music playlists on TIDAL: here and here . I’ll often put this sort of music on when I’m reading, writing, coding, or driving around. That assumes those aren’t more intensive versions of those activities. If I need more focus then I switch to something that won’t accidentally trigger me into paying attention to the music too much.
Podcasts are another great source of audio content as well. I researched some podcast topics that I have interest in like wine, current events, et cetera, but with Portuguese tagging. From that I was able to come up with a handful that are great to listen to. Again, when I’m looking to do something with mindless background content on.
Binge Portugal Podcast seems to cover reviews of media. They don’t post regularly but have a decent backlog. CNN International has the
Contrapoder podcast covering news events in European Portuguese.
The O Vinho Não Cai do Céu Podcast covers the world of Portuguese wines (and some non-Portuguese wine news) in European Portuguese.
Portugal em Direto is another Portugual news podcast covering local news stories throughout the country.
The Varandita Podcast is a podcast about movies, music, and other cultural topics.
Conclusion
While I have assembled a decent list of content I’m always on the lookout for more. For example, I haven’t found a good source of audio or video tech content in European Portuguese. I found some in Brazilian Portuguese but that was it. I’d love to hear about people’s music, streaming tv options, et cetera, to get even more options to use when I want to do some Portuguese immersion.