Portuguese Conversation-Grammar

This Portuguese Grammar is an adaptation of my “Neue Portugiesische Konversations-Grammatik,” issued in 1910 by the same publisher, Julius Groos, of Heidelberg, who, in consideration of the extremely favourable reception that work met with in German-speaking and Portuguese-speaking countries, commissioned me to compile a Portuguese Grammar for English use. This work I undertook the more readily, as the close relationship existing between Great Britain and her Portuguese ally, the increasing commercial intercourse between the two nations, and the evergrowing needs of tourists, demand further means of linguistic correspondence.

In this Grammar, as well as in that employed as a model, I have tried to overcome one of the greatest difficulties of the Portuguese language – i. e., the pronunciation – by adopting the phonetical system of the Association phontique Internationale. It was carefully applied to the Portuguese language by Sr. Goalves Viana, who also kindly revised the chapter on Pronunciation in this grammar. As for the orthography the difficulty of which is next in importance to the phonetical one, as hitherto the Portuguese have apparently considered this as a problem to be solved individually I have employed that given in the Novo Diccionario da Lingua portuguesa, by Candido de Figueiredo, member of the Academy of Sciences in Lisbon, which tends to simplify the writing and to facilitate the pronunciation of Portuguese.