Tatuagem com Ideogramas Chineses – fique atento

Olá. Quando falo para alguém que sei falar chinês muita gente pergunta: “Ah que legal! Como escreve o meu nome com aquelas letras em chinês?”. Ou então: Quero fazer uma tatuagem com aqueles caracteres chineses mas não sei o que significam aquelas letras.” Como existe um pouco de confusão sobre o assunto, e como a resposta para essas perguntas não é necessariamente trivial, resolvi escrever esse post para tentar explicar alguns pontos essenciais sobre como funcionam os caracteres chineses, caso você esteja pensando em fazer uma tatuagem desse tipo.

sou ou estou? ser ou estar?

Hi. In this post I want to talk about the important difference between the verbs ‘ser’ and ‘estar’, both of which are translated into English by the verb to be. Many times, for learners of Portuguese, this is a big source of confusion, but in this post I will show you that this is a classical case of making a mountain out of a molehill.

Brazilian tongue-twisters

Hello. A tongue-twister in Brazilian Portuguese is called trava-língua. As in any other culture of the world, they are part of the oral tradition of the people and make for an important aspect of the “lore of the folk”.

What to say to your boyfriend and girlfriend in Brazilian Portuguese

Hello. In this post you will learn how to address your soulmate in Brazilian Portuguese. To be loved and to love somebody is the most important, the most wonderful and the most precious gift that life can give us. So, if the love of your life is from Brazil, why not surprise her/him by addressing them in a sweet and loving way using Portuguese?

pedindo água

Hello! Here comes another post to teach you a new bit of colloquial Brazilian Portuguese. The expression today is ‘pedindo água’.

Metaphorical colours

Hi. Welcome to another Brasileirando post. In these posts I try to present you with some precious gems of colloquial Brazilian Portuguese that you can use to amaze your Brazilian friends in everyday chat. The posts are very short and right to the point, with a little explanation about the context where the expression can be used safely.

entregando os pontos

Welcome to another “Brasileirando” post. The aim fo these posts is to teach learners of Brazilian Portuguese some cool colloquial expressions that are widely used by Brazilians but are nonetheless hard to find in dictionaries or the like.

tô voando

Hi. After some (long) time without any brasileirando, here I come again. In this post you will learn another cool expression in Brazilian Portuguese that you can use to amaze your Brazilian friends. Idiomatic expressions are usually metaphorical, and this one is no exception.

just too much

Hi. Here is another Brasileirando post, with one more drop of colloquial Brazilian Portuguese. This one can be used when you want to express the feeling that something is very good. Its use, of course, has some limitations and will not work in every situation, but since its use is very widespread throughout Brazil, it is definitely one worth learning.

bóia na sopa

Here’s another post with a new expression in Brazilian Portuguese for you to amaze native Brazilians with your knowledge of the language!

In English you have the expression ‘piece of cake‘ to indicate that something is easy to perform, learn, do, etc… In Brazilian Portuguese there are (just as in English) a couple of words that convey the same meaning. Two of the most common ones are ‘bóia‘ (buoy) and ‘sopa‘ (soup). Check the examples below:

gato e gata

This is the first of a different kind of post for those learning the Brazilian Portuguese language. It is under the category “Brasileirando” that, although not a proper word, could be translated into “Brazilianing” or something along this line. They are aimed at people who already know something, otherwise it can be difficult to follow, since I won’t give many explanations on anything else but the expression I’m focusing on.

Brazilian Portuguese – Lição Um – o básico

A few characteristic points of Portuguese is use of gender to distinguish between feminine and masculine nouns (there isn’t a neuter gender), different places for stress (it can fall on the last, before last, or even the before before last syllable of the word), agreement between article, noun and adjective regarding gender (feminine, masculine) and number (plural, singular). One thing that learners of the language find particularly difficult is verb conjugation. But I can assure you it is not worse than French, Italian or Spanish (after all these languages all stem from the same latin root).

Fatos Interessantes da Língua (Interesting Language Facts)

Great, we have just finished learning how to pronounce the sounds in Brazilian Portuguese. If you missed that, go back and check the two posts on Phonetics (Teach Yourself How To Pronounce Brazilian Portuguese I and II). They’re somewhere close by in this blog.

By the way, who speaks this language?

Teach Yourself How To Pronounce Brazilian Portuguese – Fonética Dois

Now that you know how to pronounce the vowels, let’s move on to the consonants.

Here they are: b, c, d, f, g, h, j, l, m, n, p, q, r, s, t, v, x, z

Also, apart from these there are also the letter ç and a few digraphs, but they are not part of the alphabet. Ç is the alter ego of C.

Teach Yourself How To Pronounce Brazilian Portuguese – Fonética Um

In this post I present you with the sounds for Brazilian Portuguese. Bear in mind that Brazil is a large country, so dialectal variations, though small, do exist, and hence the following should not be taken as a fast rule. However, if you learn to produce the sounds similar to what is explained below, you should be okay. I must say that this is somewhat simplified (on purpose) but nonetheless perfectly enough for now. You are a beginner, aren’t you?

Teach Yourself Brazilian Portuguese – Introdução

This is how I have organized the Teach Yourself posts.

Each lesson (lição) is divided into four sections:

• Vocabulary
• Grammar
• Text
• Exercises

Learn Brazilian Portuguese

I am a language enthusiast. I am very much into learning new languages. Never went into teaching though. Nonetheless, I do feel I can contribute somehow, so this post is the start of a (initially) short chain of posts that I will write on teaching Brazilian Portuguese (my mother tongue).

Well, I do not believe I can actually teach something, but who knows, you may eventually learn something from these posts.

Have fun!