Portuguese Opinions

*Please note that, by “Portuguese”, I am referring to the Portuguese from my experience… The Portuguese from Porto Alegre and from the perspective of a learner. There is probably quite a bit that I’m missing out on and don’t understand*

It seems like a lot of things are expressed in the same way in Portuguese and Spanish, so the experience hasn’t been quite as eye opening as the Spain immersion experience. However, as time goes on, I have been catching some more interesting expressions that are quite different from Spanish.

“Meu” and “cara” are similar to “dude,” but are much less stigmatized. “Cara” is literally “face,” and “meu” is “my.” It is very common to throw in a “cara” at the beginning of a phrase, or a “meu” at the end. Although the average person uses them regularly, conversations at Rockhead are saturated with them. Talk around the office is informal, and is characterized by what some may call “bro talk” in English.

It took me a bit to figure out that definitive articles before names are standard. When addressing someone, we precede the name with “o” or “a”. The English equivalent would be “The Joe, can you…”. It is one of the stranger aspects of Portuguese for me, but I imagine it is not a rare phenomenon among languages.

To put it simply, Portuguese colloquial grammar seems like a simplified version of Spanish grammar. It seems like all of the informal shortenings in Spanish are standardized in Portuguese.

I hadn’t given a lot of thought to how much hand (and bodily) gestures vary along with language. It was something I noticed but didn’t quite take to heart in Spain. There are some typical gestures that my host family and their friends used, like the two shown below. The gesture depicted in the picture to the left was the first that grabbed my attention here in Porto Alegre. It is basically a way of expressing “I couldn’t care less/it doesn’t matter”. I’m not quite sure he was drawn with such a creepy face…

Here are some of the patterns that I have noticed. A lot of them are in comparison to Spanish (because they are so similar):

• The verb tenses are simplified. The past-perfect tense is not used colloquially. Instead of the the Spanish “He hecho…” or English “I have done/made…”, they use “Eu já fiz…” to distinguish from the past preterite “Eu fiz”. This would be like “I already did” instead of “I have done”.
• “Estar” conjugations, which are very common, are shortened: instead of “Eu estou indo”, one would likely say (and may write) “Eu tô indo”.
• The subjects are simplified, therefore making conjugations easier. In Rio Grande do Sul, they use the 2nd person subject with the 3rd person conjugation: “tu mora” instead of “tu moras or você mora”.
• They often leave out object pronouns: “I tried it” vs “Eu provei” (literally, “I tried”, with the implicit object).
• The word-final “r” in verbs (fazer, dizer, deixar…) is either not pronounced or pronounced very softly (similar to a French guttural R).
• It is fun in that there is a lot of room for expression: a lot of fluctuation, great variance in the tone…
• Words are generally more easily producible. Rather than the Spanish “peligroso”, it is “perigoso” in Portuguese.
• False cognates with Spanish. For example”acordar” and “pegar”…. Acordar(se) in Spanish is usually translated as “to remember”, whereas in Portuguese it is “to wake up”. There is clearly some connection at the root of these notions, but they are manifested in different ways. Both involve the realization of consciousness, but one is used more literally. Pegar in Spanish can mean “to hit” or “to stick”. In Portuguese it is extremely common verb, to mean “to pick up”, “to get”, “to catch”, and “to take”. Again, the interesting part is the relationship between the words, especially the “stick” and “pick up” senses. Cognates like these reveal a lot about the evolution of language
• Instead of a using plural first-person subjects and conjugations, most speakers use a generalized third-person… I hear “a gente (es)tá…” (the people are…, pronounced “ʒ* – en – chee”) much more often than “Nos (es)tamos…” (We are…).  There may be a distinction between the two, but I’m still not sure. I think one might be an inclusive “we” while the other is exclusive.
• They suppress word-final vowels. It kind of sounds like they just don’t feel like finishing words. For example, the second “a” in “nada” ends up kind of like an “h” sound in English. I believe this is not as true in Portugal Portuguese.

Some of my favorite words include:

• tartaruga – turtle/tortoise.
• criança – child/kid. Because of the nasalized “a”
• beijo – kiss
• abacaxi – pineapple (“ah-bah-cah-shee”)
• pipoca – popcorn
• doente – sick (“do-en-chee”)
• mamão – papaya
• chato – boring/rubbish/annoying… pretty much everything bad (“shah-too”)

These are difficult to write phonetically in English. IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet, not Indian Pale Ale) could accurately describe them, but the symbols wouldn’t mean anything if you aren’t already familiar with the system.  Nasalized sounds often go unnoticed in English – not because we don’t use them, but because there is no predictable system for them in English phonology. For example, say the words “bead” and “mean” and catch the different between the vowel sound in the middle. Both are more or less the “e” (in IPA, [i]) sound. However, because of the preceding and succeeding nasal consonants (“m” and “n”) in “mean”, we nasalize the vowel sound as well; [i] is realized as [ĩ].

Everyone uses “ter” for “there is/there are” instead of “haver”. On Duolingo and in literature, the verb “haver” is usually used to mean “there is/there are”. However, in conversation, ter is always used. A person learning completely from immersion (spoken conversation) may not even realize that there is a more formal way to express “there is/there are”.

One of my favorite aspects of Portuguese is the fluctuation and wide range of expression in phrases. You can really emphasize certain syllables and words and sound quite normal. Here is a video of a well-known Youtuber named Kéfara. She certainly takes advantage of this feature of the language. Of course, she exaggerates a little bit for entertainment’s sake, but this is really how people speak.

* The voiced post-alveolar fricative “ʒ” (in IPA) is the sound that most English speakers make in the “sion” part of “confusion” and similar words. Another example is the “s” in “Asia”. It is produced in the same location as the “sh” sound, but is voiced. A lot of the words that make use of this sound were adopted from French.

Quick notes/fun facts/quotes/whatever feels right:

• Check out the history of the word “soccer” according to Etymonline. Basically, they claim that it comes from a shortening of “Assoc.” in “Football Association”
• “If you talk to [someone] in a language they understand, that goes to their head. But if you talk to them in their language, it goes to their heart.” – Nelson Mandela
• Almost everyone brings their toothbrush to work or has one that they leave at work. After lunch, people go to the bathroom for a quick brush.