Body language can be up to 90% of the communication happening in any given conversation – how we move our bodies, use our voices, gesture ,move our eyes and use facial expressions can be a communicational deal maker or breaker.

In a nutshell: learning the vocabulary of a new language is only the beginning of being able to speak Portuguese fluently, in the end, it comes down to how you use your body to express yourself.

With that in mind, let me give you an example by telling you a story about a well meaning American, who accidentily called everyone he met in Brazil the vulgar equivalent of a rear end…

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Allowing your Portuguese to see the light of day is the single most important thing you can do to increases your speaking abilities by immeasurable amounts.

When I was 16 and oh so nieve, I purchased a really cool car that needed a whole lot of work – a 1986 Pontiac Fiero GT.

“A whole lot of work” basically meant that there was no motor, transmission or anything mechanical in it.  The paint was shot, interior ugly and when I handed over the hard earned $200 bucks to the seller, I got several boxes of parts.

Ok cool, so it’s like putting a puzzle together right?

Wrong!

This was a mixture of a 10,000 piece labyrinth-puzze (if that even exists) especially since I had no mechanical inclination what-so-ever… And so I mustered my best 16 year old spirit up, purchased a repair manual and cheap-o tool kit and got to work.

I was in for a ride (no pun intended)…

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Today, we have a special guest post from Idahosa Ness.  I’ve been really looking forward to this post because not only has he learned the science behind “language Flow”, he’s got Portuguese pronunciation down with pretty much 0 accent!

Let’s welcome him with big, open and Brazilian abraço – take it away Idahosa!

To learn Portuguese and blend in with Brazilians with your accent, you’re going to need to master The Flow of Portuguese.

In my language-learning philosophy – – “The Flow” of a language refers to the sound patterns that underlie its words and phrases.  You can learn every word in the dictionary, but if you don’t master the flow of Portuguese then you won’t be able to converse fluently.  

Without a doubt, your biggest challenge with Portuguese flow will be in mastering the nasal vowels.  These sounds are not only difficult for most foreigners to articulate correctly, but they also occur all the time in Portuguese speech; so there’s no avoiding them.

But not to worry, you can master the portuguese nasal vowels in less than a month with proper training.

Here’s the process to Portuguese nasal vowel mastery:

• Understand what a nasal vowel is and what it is NOT
• Tune your ear to the sound of nasalization
• Develop an awareness of your “Velum”
• Train your control over the nasalization muscles.

Take the time to understand the diagrams and practice the drills in this post and you will eliminate over half of your foreign accent in Portuguese and dramatically increase your comprehension and speaking fluency.

Let’s get started…

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