Where Are All the Books?: The Unique Challenges of Learning Portuguese

Portuguese is the 7^th most spoken language in the world, with official status in 9 countries and Macao, pus, it’s the most spoken Romance language in all of Asia and the Pacific, particularly Japan.  This should make it fairly easy to find language resources and books.  That would make sense, right? 

Unfortunately, that’s no where near the case.  I’m having the hardest time trying to find language books, other than travel phrasebooks or beginner’s courses.  I’ve found some great grammar books to work from (I’ll eventually get around to reviewing each of them), and even some that explain both European and Brazilian Portuguese.  However, workbooks, general courses, or readers are much harder to find. 

My favorite so far is the “Practice Makes Perfect: Basic Portuguese” by Sue Tyson-Ward (which I actually managed to find in a brick and mortar Japanese bookstore!).  Each short chapter explains an important grammar lesson or verb conjugation, as well as a list of new vocabulary, and then has some exercises to help you practice what you have learned.  It’s a great way to learn basic Portuguese grammar and vocabulary (though I definitely think it’s best to have another resource to help with pronunciation and listening, and another vocabulary resource would be helpful, since some of the definitions are a bit off).  It uses European Portuguese as the standard but also explains the alternative grammar and vocabulary of Brazil, including Brazil-specific questions within each practice session.  Basically it’s the perfect beginner’s course.  However, they don’t make an intermediate level, and it's proving impossible to find a European Portuguese intermediate book, at least from Japan.  

I’m constantly searching for a good intermediate-level Portuguese reader.  Currently, I’m working through Harry Potter in Portuguese, but it’s still a bit to challenging to get through without the help of my teacher.  I recently went to a couple large bookstores in Osaka which are supposed to have great foreign language sections.  Boy was I shocked at how little they had in stock!  In Japan, there is a huge number of Brazilian residents, and Portuguese is the most spoken European language in the country, other than English.  At these bookstores, however, I found a huge number of English, French, German, and Italian books but almost nothing in Portuguese.  What I did find were books for teaching Portuguese to Japanese people, and those books were almost entirely in Japanese.  One book didn’t even write the Portuguese words in the Latin script, keeping it entire in Japanese kana!  In one bookstore, I found an entire shelf of Italian language literature and readers, and only 1 Portuguese-English dictionary.  Seriously.  1 book.

After looking online, I noticed this wasn’t just a Japanese thing.  There are almost no beginner or intermediate level Portuguese readers printed, especially when you compare it with Spanish, French, German or Italian.  I ordered the few books I could find, and hopefully they will help me increase my reading proficiency by the time I take my Portuguese exam.  Unfortunately, they are all about 20 pages each, so not particularly helpful either.

My next mission: try to find some Portuguese-language manga.  The internet says they’re out there… somewhere….