Real Brazilian Portuguese & Culture
Brazilian Portuguese Subjunctive Present In Brazilian Portuguese, the present subjunctive it is used when there is present expression of hope, uncertainty, desire, emotion, wish or a demand. The easiest cue to know when you should employ the subjunctive form of a verb in Brazilian Portuguese, is when you encounter a “que” phrase. Some examples of [...]
ASKING QUESTIONS IN PORTUGUESE How do you ask questions in Brazilian Portuguese? There are many different ways to phrase questions in Portuguese, and this post is only meant to give a basic description of how you can ask questions in Portuguese (I will try to make a more detailed post later on). Below are the [...]
Emails In Brazilian Portuguese Here are some suggestions for writing both formal and informal emails in Brazilian Portuguese: How To Write Formal Emails in Portuguese For those who need to learn Portuguese for work, this will come in handy… 1. Salutation / Greeting (Introdução) A formal salutation to use is “Prezado Senhor” or “Prezada Senhora”, depending on the [...]
Since much of Portuguese Blog is aimed at intermediate and advanced learners, I thought we’d do a post to help some of our readers who are just starting to study Portuguese. Still, this particular tip should be useful for everyone, since I’ve noticed this is a common mistake. BEM VS. BOM It’s important to remember [...]
HOW TO MAKE NOUNS PLURAL IN PORTUGUESE Here are some rules for forming plural nouns in Brazilian Portuguese: Words ending in vowels Just add an “s.” janela –> janelas [window -> windows] cotovelo –> cotovelos [elbow -> elbows] jacaré –> jacarés [crocodile -> crocodiles} 2. Words ending in "r" "s" or "z" Add an "es." [...]
Augmentatives In Portuguese The suffix -ão is often used in Portuguese as an augmentative. An augmentative increases the quality of the original word, often indicating a larger size. For example: forte (strong) – fortão (very strong) centro (centre) – centrão (big centre) Augmentatives are very popular in Brazil. An important football championship is the Brasileirão and [...]
HOW TO USE CUJA / CUJO IN PORTUGUESE? What does Cuja/Cujo mean in Brazilian Portuguese? Cujo/Cuja is a pronoun in Portuguese that means ‘whose’ and precedes a noun without an article, but is employed as an adjective pronoun. For Example: ”qual será o animal cujo nome a autora não quis escrever?” – “which would be the animal whose name the author did [...]
PORTUGUESE PERSONAL PRONOUN LESSON *In Brazil, with nouns having gender, it is very common to use ele/ela to refer to objects. For example: “eu achei ele” - ”i found it” (referring to a masculine noun). eu – i você - you (singular) ele - he, it (m) ela – she, it (f) vocês - you (plural) nós – we eles - they, them (m) elas [...]
THE GENDER OF COUNTRIES AND CITIES IN PORTUGUESE Unlike most other Romance languages, Brazilian Portuguese genderizes the names of many countries of the world, and also some cities, for example, Rio de Janeiro is masculine – o Rio. To say “Rio de janeio is a beautiful city”- ”O Rio de Janeiro (or O Rio) e uma cidade linda” (not to [...]
DROPPING THE PLURAL IN BRAZILIAN PORTUGUESE Informal speech in Brazil may avoid the plural altogether by using “a gente” - for we, and “todo mundo” – the entire world/everyone, for they. Both forms use 3rd person singular. It is also becoming common in colloquial or slang Portuguese to hear people dropping the final -s on plural nouns as it [...]
WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN “POR” & “PARA” If you’re like most other Portuguese students you’ve probably found yourself stuck when speaking Portuguese trying to work out if the correct preposition is ´por´ or ´para´. The problem is, especially with por, that there are no single English equivalents. But, before we get too annoyed, we’d do [...]
What Does Até Mean in Portuguese? Até is a handy word. Most English speakers learn it as meaning “until” in English, but it also covers “even” and “up to” as well. The problem for Brazilians learning English is having to distinguish between the different meanings of the three words in English. até - until “eu vou ficar ali até o fim” [...]
BRAZILIAN PORTUGUESE NOUNS & WORD GENDER LESSON Portuguese Nouns are either Masculine or Feminine. In English, our words don’t have gender and so this will get some getting used to. Fortunately, the gender of most nouns in Brazilian Portuguese is quite predictable. For example, the world for girl, “menina” is obviously going to be feminine (a [...]
