My question is for the native Brazilian Portuguese speakers. I seem to encounter and use a lot of modern resources that use the Rio De Janeiro Carioca accent. For me, it actually helps to distinguish my Portuguese pronunciation from my Spanish, but it's also more difficult to understand. I like the Sao Paulo accent. It's more clear but it's also closer to Spanish in sound which makes it more likely that I will confuse the two. Is the Carioca accent a suitable one for students to learn from the beginning? I'm starting to love Portuguese, Thanks to LingQ!!!

Thanks in advance!

Any accent is suitable, IMO, although I personally dislike the carioca accent intensely. The paulista (from São Paulo state) accent seems to be less popular among learners, but overall I think you need to go with whatever resources you have available. Word pronunciation doesn't vary that much from one accent to the other, it's more an issue with intonation and a few sounds that are different in each variant. The 's' in the carioca accent sounds more like the 'x' in Chinese (like in xie xie) or the 'ch' in German (like in ich) while the 'r' is always gutural at the end of words, actually it's more aspirated than gutural, like in the German word 'doch'. In the paulista accent the 's' is mostly like in English. The 'r' sound is a different matter, since there are different pronunciations for the capital city variant and the countryside variant. Having said that, I should mention that paulista is the person born within the state of São Paulo, while paulistano is the person born in the capital city of São Paulo. The former pronounce final 'r's like the Americans while the latter always roll their 'r's. Other than that, it's mostly a matter of, like I said, intonation and vocabulary. Cariocas call a curb 'meio-fio' whereas paulistas say 'guia' and so on and so forth.

If you watch the news on Brazilian tv, you'll see that the broadcasters speak neither the carioca nor the paulista variant. It sounds more neutral, and I suppose that's a good standard to learn because it doesn't sounds heavily carioca nor paulista.

Hey thanks so much Elric, I appreciate your opinion!

I think any accent is suitable.
Doesn´t really matter wich accent you pick, as long as you speak it clearly people will understand.

There is a lot of accents in Brazil, but from media you´ll get mostly carioca and paulistano accents. As I´m from são paulo, I would say that most of the media sounds like carioca to my paulistano ears, even though it´s intended to sound neutral; so, if you learn portuguese based on media, it will probably sound carioca.

I think the great problem is looking for specific media to learn a specific accent. If I were you, I would choose the accent with more disponible resources.

I hope you enjoy learning brazilian portuguese!