Essential Portuguese Grammar (Dover Books on Language)

This book is a very fast read and is a quick way to gain insight into the grammar of the Portuguese language.

Detailed and especially good for spanish speakers who start with a huge vocab advantage but who fall into the trap of "pidgin" portuguese (or portugnol) and want to snap OUT!!

Portuguese grammar is terribly difficult. Though I am a native speaker, and have studied in Brazil, I was never really able to master the grammar rules. This book came handy to me.

"Essential Portuguese Grammar" is the best book about Portuguese grammar I've seen. I studied Spanish before I decided to study Portuguese, so it was a lot easier to absorb the information in this book. If you've never studied a foreign language before, you may want to brush on your English grammar first.

Here is a list of the items in this book:

Introduction
Word Order
How to Form Questions
Nouns and Articles
Adjectives
Adverbs
Comparisons of Adjectives and Adverbs
Expressing Posession
Demonstrative Adjectives and Pronouns
Personal Pronouns
Negatives
"Que"
Prepositions (para and por)
Verbs and Verbs Tenses

There are more sub-sections in the book, but there are too many to list here. Portuguese and Spanish grammar have something in common. Students of both languages have trouble understanding certain grammatical concepts: the written accents, ser/estar, para/por, imperfect/preterit, and the subjunctive. However, Portuguese still uses the future subjunctive, which is hardly ever used in modern Spanish.

Brandon Simpson

It's a great little grammar book that gives you all the essentials. It's especially helpful if you already know Spanish. It focuses on Brazilian Portuguese, but it clearly makes note of significant differences between Continental and Brazilian Portuguese.

The way that the book is organized was really easy to follow. Although, to really learn the rules, the same page must be reviewed or studied several times. I wish they made a workbook to go with it. Anyway, it's a great learner's tool and quick grammar reference.