Why speaking beats studying, how to train your ear for European Portuguese, and what it really takes to market a new business in Portugal.
Learn to speak Portuguese in Portugal: Speak Daily founder Mika Naidoo on live daily conversation classes, training your ear and the language of integration.
Plenty of people living in Portugal can read a menu, a contract or a letter from the Finanças, yet freeze the moment someone speaks to them. In this episode, Justin West sits down with Mika Naidoo, founder of Lisbon-based Speak Daily, a live language-learning platform built on one simple idea: the fastest way to speak a language is to speak it, every day. Mika brings more than twelve years of experience launching brands, products and campaigns to the venture, which launched just three months ago with three languages already live.
Mika explains how Speak Daily grew out of her own life in Lisbon. Having moved from South Africa and produced an acrobatic theatre show in the city, she wanted to build something genuinely useful to the community around her: a place where foreigners could practise languages together. She is also a student on the platform herself.
Justin, a visual and kinaesthetic learner who learnt to read Portuguese long before he could speak it, shares his struggle to distinguish European Portuguese words and recall them in real time. Mika describes how Speak Daily classes run on Zoom with fresh, screen-shared visual material each session: a pronunciation warm-up, a new rule or verb drilled through its forms, and then most of the class spent putting it into conversation. There is no homework, but for extra listening practice she recommends playing songs on Spotify while reading the lyrics.
The conversation turns to confidence. Mika explains why mixed-ability groups help hesitant beginners take risks, make mistakes and speak up, and why making the effort in Portuguese, long before reaching professional fluency, shows respect, builds goodwill and opens doors to friendships and business. From the vet to an unexpected delivery call, and Justin’s own battles with tax and administrative vocabulary, they explore the everyday moments where conversation practice pays off, as well as how personality, humour, gesture and facial expression carry across languages, something Mika also works on when coaching fluent, non-native English-speaking professionals.
Drawing on her marketing career, Mika is candid about starting again in Europe without the network she had built in South Africa, and how she has stood out in competitive markets with distinctive offerings, from a family-friendly fairy-tale aerial show at Christmas to an affordable daily speaking service that complements tutors and grammar courses. She shares practical advice for founders on a limited budget: strong, conversion-focused creative with broad targeting for paid Meta advertising; useful, saveable and shareable reels with search keywords for organic social media; and, above all, authentic community relationships and partnerships, which count for a great deal in Portugal.
Speak Daily classes run Monday to Friday, and learners of any level can drop in without booking a specific class. Start speaking the language you are learning:
Join a live class at Speak Daily: www.speakdaily.co