Anki for Brazilian Portuguese: Import 6 Original Starter Cards

Download the original situation cards

Download six Brazilian Portuguese starter cards — tab-separated UTF-8 text. Each line contains a situation prompt, a tab, and one possible Portuguese answer with an English meaning. There is no header row, audio, picture, script or add-on. You can inspect the file in a plain-text editor.

These are original teaching examples from I Speak Portuguese. They are not copied app content or transcribed podcast quotations. You can adapt them for your personal study. They develop the practice of reusing sentence patterns discussed in Bruno’s learning material, rather than trying to store a complete conversation as one answer.

What Anki is doing in this setup

Anki’s getting-started manual describes cards as question-and-answer pairs, decks as groups of cards, and notes as information used to generate cards. This starter uses one prompt and one answer per note. We recommend the Basic note type for this exercise so you practise responding to the situation, without automatically adding a reversed version.

Anki schedules later reviews using your recall ratings. That does not evaluate pronunciation, appropriateness or how well you cope with an unexpected follow-up. Keep listening and interaction in your routine, and ask a teacher about phrases you do not understand.

Import on desktop and check the preview

The official text-import documentation requires plain text in UTF-8 and supports tab-separated fields. In desktop Anki, open the text-file import option and select the download. Choose Basic as the note type, your intended deck, and Tab as the separator. Map the first column to Front and the second to Back.

Inspect the preview before confirming: you should see two fields, with accents such as açúcar and você intact. This file contains no HTML, so it does not need HTML rendering. Anki can use a matching first field to update an existing note; review the duplicate-handling choice before importing again.

We checked the file’s encoding, two-column structure and six unique prompts. We have not executed the import in Anki desktop. If your preview differs, cancel and consult the current manual before changing your collection. These instructions concern the desktop text-import workflow; mobile interfaces may differ.

See exactly what you are importing

There are other valid ways to respond. The answer is a model for this starter, not an exhaustive marking key. If you say something different and are unsure whether it works, check the language before treating it as interchangeable.

Extend a reviewed card into a new reply

After revealing an answer, change one meaningful detail. With Eu gosto de cozinhar, say that you like travelling. With No sábado eu estou livre, change the day to Sunday. With Que horas você chega?, imagine a reply giving an arrival time.

1. Make the preference about travelling.
2. Make the availability statement about Sunday.
3. Reply that you arrive at three o’clock.

Do this spoken extension separately from the card’s recall rating. A correct new sentence is useful practice, but it does not mean you remembered the original card if you actually needed to reveal it. Keep the review record honest and the speaking task flexible.

Add only material you understand and have permission to use

Do not fill the deck with unfamiliar sentences just because importing is easy. Add a useful situation, a checked response and a clear meaning. For decisions about which phrases deserve a card, read our phrase-card review guide. This page focuses on getting a small original file into Anki and using it.

The download is text-only and cannot teach you how a phrase sounds. Listen to authorised learning material separately. If you later add media, use your own recordings or material you have permission to reuse; this guide does not grant rights to extract audio from an app, video or podcast.

Bruno Lopes is a co-founder of Real Life Portuguese. The app supplies guided Brazilian Portuguese material and native audio, while this Anki file supplies a small set of self-managed review prompts. Use either tool for a clear purpose, without confusing a larger collection with more useful practice.

Build a listening-and-response routine

For related teaching practice, explore our guide to speaking, grammar, subtitles and accent. These exercises apply the idea of listening and then creating your own message. They are original written activities, not additional episode recordings.

Explore Real Life Portuguese for Brazilian native audio and everyday expression practice. Listen to a phrase in its lesson context, then prepare a fresh response. Use the starter cards as a small review aid alongside listening, speaking and feedback.