'drops out' of its Portuguese counterpart, or when we speak of a 'new' Portuguese sound, we are echoing the thoughts of students before you. We are using terminology which reflects the point of view of the American who is using Spanish as a springboard to Portuguese.
An attempt to examine the distinctions between European and Brazilian Portuguese is beyond the scope of this manual. In any case, such treatment would not be particularly useful to us, since the special problems of the Spanish speaker are much the same regardless of which kind of Portuguese he is learning. On the assumption that the majority of users will be studying standard Brazilian Portuguese, I have elected to write about this variety. However, students of European Portuguese will find that this manual has nearly as much to offer them as it does to those who are studying Brazilian Portuguese.
The manual is divided into four parts: 'The Sounds', 'The Grammar', 'Vocabulary Transfer', and 'Supplementary Pronunciation Exercises'. We recommend that you read about the sounds and do the pronunciation exercises at the very beginning of your Portuguese course, for it is then that you will experience most of your interference from Spanish pronunciation. You may want to read the other two parts in their entirety at any time, but we especially recommend that you select for careful study the various subsections of these two parts at such time as they fit in with the course of study you are following. The Portuguese portions of all four parts are available on tape.
Many of my colleagues have contributed in various ways to the preparation of this manual. While I cannot name them all, I do want to give special credit to Dr. Earl Stevick and Miss Madeline E. Ehrman, both of whom read the original manuscript and offered many useful suggestions.
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