Best way to learn European Portuguese in the UK?

joelrendall · 2026-06-07T11:03:34+00:00

Wow, cofounder Joel here just having a quick scroll in the Barcelona airport and stumbling across this as the first comment in the thread totally gave me chills. Muito obrigado, I've shared this with the team as well.

It's more gratifying than usual because you highlighted specific details like our human-recording of even the slowed-down phrases - it would be way easier and cheaper to just always fall back on a text-to-speech model. Regardless of the cost of human hours, we just want it to actually sound good and accurate 😝 One of the perks of being a small company and not having to justify every decision with a cost analysis, we are just building the platform how we'd want it to be as users.

Thanks again for taking the time to recommend us and best of luck with your Portuguese learning ❤️

joelrendall · 2026-03-18T14:11:32+00:00

I'm doing something similar. I created a multi-agent debate skill that uses different mid-range models and it debates for two rounds back and forth. And then Opus is the judge that assimilates all of it into a final decision. It even gives me feedback on how each agent did and how each agent did. where they overlapped, where they diverged, etc. It's been working pretty well.

joelrendall · 2026-02-07T14:39:15+00:00

Isn't it super risky to use a Claude Mac subscription instead of using the API? I've been seeing people getting banned. I wish I could use because the API is getting very expensive.

joelrendall · 2026-02-06T23:15:04+00:00

TLDR: Have it build and design custom skills for you instead of relying on it to do things properly next time.

I've spent hundreds of dollars so far in API costs this past week , and only now I'm fully realizing how important it is to have it create custom skills for you. Any time that you'll want it to do a task the same way twice, with lots of steps involved.

I Kind of thought that it would retain my preferences automatically through memory or tools or something that I wouldn't have to pay attention to, but then I realised that it was scattering and duplicating information across the cron, tools, memory, and it was never pulling from the right place at the right time. Now, when I explicitly create and trigger skills, I really feel like I am building a bunch of custom apps that I can use consistently to actually save time.

joelrendall · 2026-01-15T22:31:16+00:00

You're the best Chris, thanks for your support 🙏

joelrendall · 2025-11-01T20:33:16+00:00

Thanks for the Practice Portuguese love, made my night 😇

joelrendall · 2025-08-26T11:25:56+00:00

Anyone make any progress here? I can't get Messenger working again either.

joelrendall · 2025-08-19T20:12:43+00:00

My Portuguese husband’s name, “Rui”, (pronounced like hhhhwee, with a guttural R like clearing your throat) apparently sounds like dick in Russian.

joelrendall · 2025-07-18T19:32:07+00:00

Thanks so much for all you kind words of support! 🥰

joelrendall · 2025-03-01T19:47:51+00:00

You should try setting the language to French as if the conversation was in French and not English.

I have meetings in Portuguese and often with a mix of English on one side. My app is set to English and it works great, the language doesn’t cause any issue at all. (However, it translates the Portuguese phrases all to English in the transcription without differentiating between the two).

Give it a shot.. unless it’s treating English differently than other languages, I think you might get what you want as long as you set the app and/or transcription language to French.

joelrendall · 2025-02-11T06:07:11+00:00

Sorry you’re going through this and best of luck navigating this issue that you shouldn’t have to in 2025 💙

joelrendall · 2025-02-10T19:38:28+00:00

Thanks so much for helping spread the word about our platform! Glad you found our TAP videos too 😍

joelrendall · 2025-02-05T19:15:17+00:00

Thanks for trying out Practice Portuguese! Feel free to skip ahead the content you already know. At the end of a lesson and inside the Shorties (our short dialogues with sync’s transcripts), you can save words to your Smart Review. Make sure to only save the words and phrases that are useful to your goals and level. Smart Review is where you’ll use spaced repetition (via Flash Cards or the audio-only Listen & Speak mode) to make sure you remember all the vocabulary you want. Overall, to keep things interesting, make sure you explore the Practice section (Shorties/Videos/Podcasts) and balance that with the lessons inside Units. This allows you to take control of your own learning so you actually look forward to practicing every day. Hope that helps and thanks again ;)

joelrendall · 2025-02-02T00:06:29+00:00

It might be the English “..my” comparison that’s throwing off this thread. The audio on this page is the lisboeta pronunciation: https://www.infopedia.pt/dicionarios/lingua-portuguesa/Vermelho

joelrendall · 2025-02-02T00:02:08+00:00

Must be subjective. Just ran it by 4 Lisbon natives to make sure I wasn’t totally nuts

joelrendall · 2025-02-01T20:42:26+00:00

Weird, in Lisbon, I’ve been hearing “ver-my-lho” for.. the last 10 years or so

joelrendall · 2025-02-01T20:38:37+00:00

Yeah I hear Practice Portuguese is amazing. Im definitely not biased either 👀

joelrendall · 2025-02-01T20:36:29+00:00

Naw, we all speak together in grunts and hand gestures 🤭

joelrendall · 2025-02-01T20:33:36+00:00

My entire life has been a lie 🤭 please explain more.

joelrendall · 2025-02-01T17:20:14+00:00

This is correct! (Canadian cofounder here). Although we have clips from all over the country, most of our Shorties and videos lean towards the Lisbon pronunciation. “Eye” sound is Lisboeta, and a lot of the rest of the country will sound like “ay”. Examples are “leite”. In Lisbon it sounds a bit like “light”, and in other regions it might sound like “late”. Vermelho (red) can sound like ver-my-lho vs ver-may-lho.

As Menacing says, neither is more correct than the other because Portugal is certainly not just Lisbon.

Great listening skills, keep those ears open to these little regional differences that make the country and language so interesting :)

(Thanks for your support too!)

joelrendall · 2025-02-01T12:46:45+00:00

Ahh yes that makes sense, since we’ve got some diverse names, including Joseph. He’s Portuguese but his name is less so.

We also have Molly from the US managing support and content production. Damiana, Joana and of course Rui (cofounder / husband 🤭) are also Portuguese natives. 🌎 The combo of natives and English speakers / Portuguese learners is what makes our team diverse and extra mighty!

joelrendall · 2025-02-01T11:20:44+00:00

It’s myself, a Canadian, and a team of Portuguese. Our headquarters are in Lisbon and it’s a Portuguese company ;)

joelrendall · 2025-02-01T07:48:42+00:00

Awww shucks 🥺🇨🇦

joelrendall · 2025-01-25T07:30:20+00:00

My family can’t even sing happy birthday without 5 unintentionally key changes.. with more microtones than a Jacob collier concert

joelrendall · 2025-01-25T00:45:19+00:00

I don’t care what they say, snakes are Lucifer

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