A3 Introduction 

many other helpfui features, such as vocabulary-building exercises and verb conjugadons. The speciaf section on letter-writing will show you how to answer an invitation, make a business inquiry, and address an envelope prop-erly. Just as important is the Uving Language™ Common Usage Dictionary. This is included in the course primar-ily for use as a reference, but it doubles as a phrasebook. It contains the most common Portuguese words with their meanings illustrated by everyday sentences and idiomatic expressions. The basie words—those you should leam from the start—are capitalized to make them easy to find.

Keep practicing your Portuguese as much as possible. Once you are well along in the course, try reading Portuguese magazines, newspapers, and books. Use your Portuguese whenever you get a chance—with Portuguese-speaking friends, with other students.

This course tries to make leaming Portuguese as easy and enjoyable as possible, but a certain amount of application is necessary. The cassettes and books that make up this course provide you with ali the materiał you need; the instructions tell you what to do. The rest is up to you.

SOUTH AMERICAN (Brazilian) vs. CONTINENTAL PORTUGUESE

Although the language spoken in Portugal and Brazil is the same language, there are certain differences, just as there are differences between British and American En-glish. The structure of the language is much the same, but there are significant variations in word order, in pronunciation, and in intonation (see sections 3 and 4 of Lessons 2 and 3), and this makes altemate sets of recordings necessary, one in Brazilian Portuguese and one in Continental Portuguese.

To make it possible for Conversational Portuguese and the Common Usage Dictionary to be used with either edition, an effort has been madę to use vocabulary and phrases common to both pattems. Otherwise, the basie pattem followed is the Brazilian, with significant varia-tions in Continental Portuguese being indicated.

SPELUNG

1. Following Brazilian usage, the text will have many accent marks which are no longer used in Portugal. This is particularly true of accent marks which appear on syllabies which do not need them according to the rules for stress (see Lesson 1), but which Brazilians keep to distinguish words spelled alike but with different mean-ings (almóęo lunch, and almoęo I eat lunch), or for other reasons.

BRAZIL    PORTUGAL    MEAN1NG

almóęo    almoęo    lunch

ele    ele    he

aąuele    aąuele    that one

The first time such a form appears in the text, the variation used in Portugal will be given in parentheses or in a footnote, and will be marked ®.