Portuguese for your first 48 hours in Brazil

Brazil asks for a tax number before it will sell you a phone line, and once you have one it asks for it again at the supermarket till, on a pharmacy discount and on the form for almost anything else. The CPF is the thread running through the first two days, and the rest of them are made of habits a phrasebook rarely bothers to explain: lunch weighed on a scale, a bill split into instalments, a doorman who signs for your parcels, a car you identify by its number plate before you open the door. This page takes the 48 hours in order, from passport control to the office on day two, and puts the Portuguese for each stop next to it. Rows come from our Portuguese collection, 500 phrases we wrote and reviewed in the Brazilian variety with European forms noted beside them, and the six tables here hold 187 of them.

Oi, and the thank-you that changes with you

Oi, tudo bem? is the greeting and half of it is also the answer. Later in the day Boa tarde. takes over until it gets dark, and after that Boa noite. serves as both hello and goodbye, since Portuguese has no separate good night for leaving.

The word most visitors get wrong is thank you. Obrigado. agrees with the speaker rather than the listener, so a man says obrigado to everybody and a woman says Obrigada. to everybody, including each other. Nothing about who you are thanking changes the ending. The warm reply you will hear back is Imagina. which is closer to don't mention it than to you're welcome.

A shop assistant opens with Pois não? and it will sound to an English ear like a refusal. It means how can I help you, and said back to a request it means of course, which is a good early lesson in trusting the note column over the literal words.

Two rows set your register for the whole trip. Tá bom. is spoken Brazilian in every situation, from a friend to a bank clerk. Beleza. is fine with a shopkeeper and worth holding back with an official. When you need a stranger to wait, Só um minutinho. asks for patience in a diminutive that promises nothing about the actual length of the wait.

Passport control, then the car you are about to get into

At the desk, Vim a passeio. is what people say for a holiday, while a turismo sounds like you are reading off the form. Aqui está meu passaporte. and Vou ficar duas semanas. cover the rest.

Outside, the ride app is the default and the safety habit belongs to the rows. Pedi um carro pelo aplicativo. tells the person meeting you what to look for, and Qual é a placa do carro? is the check you do before the door opens, since the plate is the one thing a wrong car cannot fake. In a taxi from an airport rank, Quanto custa até o centro? goes before the door closes, because those runs often work on a fixed fare rather than the meter.

Two more rows belong to the terminal. Onde compro um chip? asks for a SIM, which in Brazil is a chip and in Portugal a cartão SIM, and it is the first of many words this collection has to give you twice. Onde fica o banheiro? is the other one: banheiro here, casa de banho in Lisbon.

Across the city: the ônibus, the corner, the ten more minutes

Esse ônibus vai pro centro? is the sentence and pro is the giveaway. Brazilians contract para o into pro and para into pra everywhere, in polite speech as much as in a message, and our rows are written the way people say them rather than the way a textbook spells them.

On board, Me avisa quando chegar? asks the driver or the person beside you to flag your stop, and drivers expect to be asked. Getting out is Com licença, vou descer. Addresses work in blocks and corners rather than door numbers when you are giving directions out loud: Fica a duas quadras daqui. uses quadra, the city block, which is quarteirão in Portugal, and Pode me deixar na esquina? drops you at the corner, which is often easier than a number on a long street.

One row in this section is a cultural fact wearing a translation. Estou chegando. comes out of somebody's mouth as they leave the house, and our note tells you to treat it as ten more minutes, at least. Nobody is lying to you. The phrase describes an intention that has begun.

The chip, and the CPF that has to come first

Quero um chip pré-pago. is the counter sentence, and the note attached to it is the reason this page keeps circling back to one document: a Brazilian SIM needs a CPF to activate. The tax number comes from the Receita Federal, and where you apply and what a consulate can do for you before you fly depends on your nationality and changes, so check the current rules rather than this page. What does not change is the order. The number comes first and the phone line second.

After that the questions are ordinary. Quanto custa o pacote de dados? asks the price of the data, and Como faço pra recarregar? asks how to top up.

The word you will meet most often online is cadastro. Preciso fazer um cadastro. covers any sign-up, on a website or on paper, and a lot of them end with a code arriving by text, which is why Não recebi o código. earned a row of its own. A local number turns most of these from a problem into a formality.

Pix, débito, and the question about instalments

Aceita Pix? is worth learning before you learn the word for card. Pix is Brazil's instant bank transfer, shops and taxis and people selling things on the pavement all take it, and Me passa a chave Pix? asks for the key you type into your banking app, which is a phone number, an email or a CPF.

On a card, the cashier asks Crédito ou débito? every single time and expects one word back. The answer keeps its preposition: No débito. Then comes the question that has no European equivalent. À vista ou parcelado? is asked about a pair of shoes and about a trolley of groceries alike, and parcelado splits the total across months, often with no interest added, which is why a Brazilian till conversation runs longer than the one you are used to. If you want it over with, Pode parcelar em três vezes? is the shape of the answer.

Two more rows are pure local procedure. CPF na nota? gets asked at almost every till, it links the purchase to a tax rebate scheme, and não is a complete answer. Pode me dar a nota fiscal? asks for the official receipt, which is the piece of paper a return needs, so keep it with the card slip rather than in the bag.

Lunch on a scale, and the card you carry to the till

É por quilo ou à la carte? opens the most Brazilian meal there is. In a restaurante por quilo you take a plate, fill it from the buffet with whatever you want, and it goes on a scale on the way out, so the price is decided by your own hand and lunch costs whatever you put on it.

Onde eu pago? matters in bars and bakeries, where the table gets a comanda, a tab card that collects everything you order, and you settle at the caixa on the way out. Losing the comanda is a worse problem than losing the receipt.

Coffee has one default. Um cafezinho, por favor. gets you a small black coffee that is usually already sweet, so sem açúcar has to be said early rather than after it lands. Beer splits the same way: Um chope, por favor. is draught, and Uma cerveja bem gelada. is the bottle everyone wants at the temperature everyone wants it. Com gelo e limão. will get you lime, because limão in Brazil is the green one and the yellow lemon needs its own name.

The bill has a line to read. O serviço está incluído? asks about the optional service charge Brazilian restaurants usually add, which people normally pay and rarely top up. Allergies go in early: Sou alérgico a amendoim. with alérgica for a woman.

The room, the building fee, and the man at the front desk

Tenho uma reserva no nome de Silva. is check-in. What goes wrong afterwards tends to be plumbing or air: O chuveiro está sem água quente. and O ar-condicionado não liga. are the two sentences to have ready, and não liga means it will not turn on rather than it is broken in principle.

Every city building runs on a porteiro. Deixa na portaria, por favor. is where deliveries go by default, and O entregador está na portaria. is the message you will get when food arrives. Learning the porteiro's name in the first week does more for your deliveries than any app setting.

If you are renting, two rows save money. O condomínio está incluso? asks about the monthly building charge, which can be as large as a utility bill and is quoted separately from the rent. Precisa de fiador? asks about a guarantor, which Brazilian landlords usually want, with a deposit or rental insurance as the way round it for somebody who has been in the country a fortnight.

The pharmacy, and the false friend that lands you in the wrong aisle

Tem uma farmácia aqui perto? finds one quickly in any Brazilian city. Symptoms take a fixed frame: estar com plus the thing that is wrong, so Estou com febre. and Estou com dor de garganta. are built the same way and you can swap the tail.

One row carries a warning worth more than its translation. Estou resfriado. is how you say you have a cold in Brazil, where constipado means constipated. In Portugal constipado is exactly a cold. Same language, opposite end of the pharmacy.

Precisa de receita? asks whether you need a prescription. If it goes further than the counter, Tenho plano de saúde. tells a clinic you have private cover, and without it the public SUS treats everyone, visitors included. Ask for Pode me dar um atestado? before you leave the room if an employer needs proof of the day off.

192, 190, 193, and the address you should already have

Brazil splits its emergency lines. 192 is the ambulance, 190 the police, 193 the fire brigade, and Portugal uses 112 for all of it. Chama uma ambulância! is what you shout at whoever is closest to a phone.

The phrase that actually moves people is not the dramatic one. Ela está passando mal. is the one that gets a room moving, and the collection gives it to you in the she form, so swap ela for ele when it is a man on the floor. Me roubaram. is the other emergency, and it ends with paperwork: Quero registrar um boletim de ocorrência. is the police report that your insurer and your consulate will both ask to see, and many states let you file it online. Call your bank while you are at it with Bloqueia meu cartão, por favor.

The gap here is the same one every phrase list has. An operator wants an address, and we cannot write yours. Put it in your phone tonight, complemento and all, and keep Te mando o endereço. for the times somebody is coming to find you.

Day two: the CPF, the senha and the boleto

Preciso tirar o CPF. is the errand, and our note lists what it stands in front of: the SIM, the bank, the rent, even a pharmacy discount. Before you travel to any office, ask Tem que agendar pela internet? because most Brazilian public counters only see people with an online booking and a walk-in tends to leave with a date rather than a document.

Inside, Onde pego a senha? is the first question. Senha means both a password and the numbered ticket that gets you served, and this is the ticket sense. Precisa autenticar? asks whether a copy has to be certified at a cartório, the notary office, which is a step that catches people who assumed a photocopy was enough. Preciso de um comprovante de residência. is proof of address, usually a utility bill in your name, and a landlord's signed declaration where you do not have one yet.

Two smaller things belong to the same day. Onde pago o boleto? is about the barcoded slip Brazil uses for rent, bills and online shopping, payable in a banking app or over a counter. Como se escreve seu sobrenome? will be asked of you constantly, and sobrenome is surname in Brazil while the Portuguese form says apelido, which in Brazil means nickname. Spell it slowly.

What this page leaves out

The variety line for our Portuguese 500 says Brazilian Portuguese with European variants noted, and this guide leans all the way into the first half. A reader landing in Lisbon gets a list aimed at São Paulo with a note column doing the translating: ônibus against autocarro, chip against cartão SIM, celular against telemóvel, suco against sumo, trem against comboio. That works as a glossary. It does not make this an arrival guide for Portugal, where even the emergency number is different.

Inside Brazil we mark nothing regional at all. The country is the size of a continent and our notes treat it as one voice, so a week in Recife or Porto Alegre will hand you vocabulary and a rhythm this list never mentions. That is a real limit and we would rather say it than pretend the file is bigger than it is.

Register is the other soft edge. Our line says você by default, with tu noted where the European form differs, and that skips over the parts of Brazil where tu is ordinary daily speech. The rows still work. They just are not the local version.

Last, speed. We wrote the contractions in on purpose, so the rows say tá and pra rather than está and para, which is already closer to what you will hear than most lists get. The step below that is cê for você, and we did not write it, because a list that teaches you to produce cê on day one is teaching the wrong half of the skill. Hearing it is the part that takes time.

Making it stick

Take the one section you will walk into tomorrow and say its rows aloud until you stop reading them. What fails at a counter is retrieval with somebody watching, and rereading a table trains recognition instead.

The charger handles the rest. Plug in, and one entry plays: the Portuguese, a pause, the English, a pause, the Portuguese again, assuming the Shortcuts automation is in place and the platform lets the audio through. A weighted sampler picks which entry, favouring the ones you have not heard for a while, and that is a rotation rule with no opinion about what you have learned. The reasoning behind a single word at that moment sits in One word per charge: why a lesson would fail.

Collections start as web pages and become app packs with text-to-speech audio afterwards, with no date attached. All six lists and the way they were built are on The Vocabcord 500, and the Portuguese list in full, travel and work lanes included, is The 500 Portuguese phrases you actually need. If you already read Spanish, Portuguese after Spanish: what carries over is the shortcut worth taking first.

Common questions

Do you need a CPF to buy a SIM card in Brazil?

Yes. A Brazilian SIM, a chip, is activated against a CPF, so the tax number is the errand that comes before the phone shop. Say Preciso tirar o CPF. at the office and Quero um chip pré-pago. at the counter afterwards. Where you apply depends on your nationality and the rules change, so check the current ones before you fly.

What does the cashier mean by à vista ou parcelado?

Whether you want to pay the whole amount now or split it over months. À vista ou parcelado? is asked about clothes and about groceries, and instalments often carry no interest, so it is a real question rather than a sales pitch. Pode parcelar em três vezes? asks for three of them, and No débito. ends the conversation on a debit card.

What is the emergency number in Brazil?

Three lines, one per service: an ambulance answers on 192, the police on 190, the fire brigade on 193. Portugal folds the lot into 112, which matters if you learned this language for one country and end up using it in the other. Chama uma ambulância! is what you say to somebody nearer a phone, and Ela está passando mal. describes the situation that usually needs one.

How does a restaurante por quilo work?

You take a plate, serve yourself from the buffet, and the plate is weighed at the end, so you pay for exactly what you took. Ask É por quilo ou à la carte? on the way in. In bars and bakeries the other habit to know is the comanda, a tab card you carry to the till, which is why Onde eu pago? is a normal question rather than a lost one.