Thalita Alves Last updated: 10 Best Portuguese Audiobooks to Learn the Language
Portuguese audiobooks are excellent tools for both learning language concepts and exploring the wonderful world of Portuguese literature.
Read on for 10 of the best audiobooks to boost your Portuguese skills and listening comprehension.
Covering both instructional language courses and authentic Portuguese literature, these audiobooks will entertain and educate you!
Contents
- Portuguese Language Learning Audiobooks
- Free Portuguese Audiobooks
- How to Learn Portuguese with Audiobooks
Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)
Portuguese Language Learning Audiobooks
These audio courses for Portuguese learners will help you increase your proficiency level. They’re ideal for auditory learners and those who want to perfect their pronunciation without the help of a native tutor.
1. “Collins Easy Learning Portuguese”
Level: Beginner
Dialect: European Portuguese
This audio course was created especially for time-crunched beginners. Divided into 12 units, it covers all the essentials for getting around Portugal, without the complex grammar.
The main learning method is listening and repeating, with some vocabulary explanations and plenty of dialogues representing real-life interactions such as asking for directions or ordering food.
This resource is especially useful if you’re planning a trip where you’ll need to use your language skills. Listen to it while you’re driving or doing chores and make sure to repeat the essential phrases for pronunciation practice.
2. “Pimsleur Portuguese” — Brazilian and European
Level: Beginner
Dialect: Brazilian and European Portuguese
Pimsleur is a well-known language learning company that offers courses in both Brazilian and European Portuguese, among many other languages.
Each of these audiobooks contains 5 lessons, each 30 minutes long. The lessons begin with a conversation in Portuguese and then break down the vocabulary and grammatical structures used.
You’ll continue practicing previous lessons’ vocabulary and work to perfect your pronunciation. You’ll also get a user guide in PDF form and you can listen to the courses on the Pimsleur app.
3. “Everyday Portuguese for Beginners”
Level: Beginner
Dialect: Brazilian and European Portuguese
This audio course comes from
It includes 10 chapters with common phrases for everyday scenarios such as going to work and spending time with friends.
You’ll get audio pronunciation, bonus vocabulary and more for over 400 actions and activities, so you can gain confidence talking about the things you do every day.
4. “Get Talking/Keep Talking Brazilian Portuguese”
Level: Beginner-Intermediate
Dialect: Brazilian Portuguese
This pack includes two audiobooks meant to be used together. “Get Talking” is the beginner guide, using 20 everyday scenarios and conversations you’d typically encounter on a trip to Brazil.
“Keep Talking” continues with the travel and cultural advice theme, helping familiarize listeners with new vocabulary terms and fast-paced conversations.
Paired together, both resources enable travelers and keen Lusophiles to quickly brush up on the essentials, so they can interact with native speakers. They also feature interactive role plays to prepare you for real-life situations in Portuguese.
5. “Foundation Portuguese (Michel Thomas Method)”
Level: Beginner (intermediate course also available)
Dialect: European Portuguese
Part of a well-known immersion program, “Foundation Portuguese” is an 8-hour audio-based course that should take around 20-30 hours to complete.
You can go at your own pace, pausing and rewinding as much as you need to fully absorb the material. The course promises to give you “the confidence to understand and speak basic Portuguese” with a building block format to gradually build up your skills.
You can download the iOS or Android app to access all of the Michel Thomas language courses covering 18 languages.
6. “Learn Portuguese Level 9: Advanced Portuguese”
Level: Advanced
Dialect: Brazilian Portuguese
Here’s another great resource from Innovative Language. This advanced course consists of a 200+ page Kindle book with downloadable MP3 audio files of over 6.5 hours.
This is a great resource for learners with a solid set of language skills looking to close the gap to fluency. It includes 50 lessons plus review and dialogue tracks for interactive practice.
If you like this resource, check out the wealth of other learning materials found on the PortuguesePod101 site. There are also audio courses available for every level.
Free Portuguese Audiobooks
Now that you’ve got all the right learning tools up your sleeve, it’s time to move on to the kind of books Portuguese speakers enjoy themselves. Challenge yourself to listen to these classic literature treasures in the public domain.
7. “Coleção de Contos Brasileiros” by Various Authors
English Title: “A Collection of Brazilian Tales”
Dialect: European and Brazilian Portuguese
As its title suggests, this audiobook is a compilation of 15 short stories by both well-established and emerging authors, covering a variety of genres.
Each tale is read by a different narrator, so you’ll be exposed to various Portuguese voices, dialects and regional accents—and appreciate the diversity of this beautiful language.
It will also open a window into Brazilian culture and society in a way that most textbooks and courses just can’t do. You can easily download the audio for offline listening.
8. “Sonetos: Poemas de Amor” by Luís Vaz de Camões
English Title: “Sonnets: Love Poems”
Dialect: European and Brazilian Portuguese
Luiz Vaz de Camões is one of Portugal’s highest-regarded poets, commonly compared to classic literary geniuses like Shakespeare and Dante.
This audiobook focuses on the love poems the author penned during his lifetime. It’s narrated by a combination of native European and Brazilian speakers, so you’ll hear various accents.
You’ll be introduced to a literary classic, which is essential to learning about the culture and history of the Portuguese-speaking world. And, as you know, you can’t separate a language from its host culture.
9. “Fábulas de Esopo”
English Title: “Aesop’s Fables”
Dialect: Brazilian Portuguese
This audiobook is entirely dedicated to Aesop’s classic tales and the morals behind them. Every story is followed by a brief analysis of the fable’s message.
This is the first installment of a three-volume series (see volumes 2 and 3). It begins with a 13-minute introduction to Aesop’s life and work and then proceeds to the author’s renowned fables.
If you know the stories in English, this familiarity will allow you to focus on the language as you’ll already know the gist of what’s being said.
10. “Saudades: História de Menina e Moça” by Bernardim Ribeiro
English Title: “The Young Girl’s Story or “The Book of Longing”
Dialect: Narrated in Brazilian Portuguese
This is classic European Portuguese literature at its finest. Also known as “Menina e Moça” (“Girl and Woman”), this book pioneered the Portuguese “pastoral novel” genre.
Originally published in 1544, the tale is told from a woman’s point of view. It follows different storylines interconnected by a common thread of heartbreak and suffering.
While the author is from Portugal, a Brazilian Portuguese speaker narrates the version linked above. The text version is available on the website so you can read along as you listen or check your comprehension afterward.
How to Learn Portuguese with Audiobooks
Listening is a significant component of language acquisition—the more you practice those auditory skills, the easier it’ll be to understand and communicate with native Portuguese speakers.
But why audiobooks in particular? One word: Flexibility. You can listen to audiobooks anytime and, depending on your time, choose how much you want to absorb in a single lesson—a chapter, a paragraph or just a page.
Just remember that all the basic study rules apply. Take notes to keep track of new words and try to keep a dictionary handy to review them. With intentional listening, audiobooks can help you hone your memorization skills and improve your comprehension as you replay passages you didn’t quite understand.
You can also use an immersive program like FluentU to get some listening practice with a visual aspect and helpful learning tools.
FluentU takes authentic videos—like music videos, movie trailers, news and inspiring talks—and turns them into personalized language learning lessons.
You can try FluentU for free for 2 weeks. Click here to check out the website or download the iOS app or Android app.
If you ever doubted it, now you know that you can absolutely learn Portuguese with audiobooks.
Choose one or two of these options and enjoy learning all the language essentials through this powerful learning tool!
Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)
