Portuguese mistakes English speakers make

Grammar mistakes get forgiven in the first second. Say sou alérgico when it should be alérgica and the waiter still keeps the peanuts off your plate. What actually costs you in Portuguese is the sentence that comes out correct and lands where you did not aim it: a casual word at a government counter, a false friend that tells a pharmacist you are constipated when you have a cold, a promise to arrive that buys the speaker another ten minutes. When we built the 500-phrase Portuguese collection, 119 rows ended up with a note beside them, and most of those notes are warnings. Here are 46 of them, grouped by the kind of damage they do, each phrase quoted as it stands in the list.

Register: você, tu, and how casual is too casual

Portuguese makes you pick a register in the first two seconds of an exchange, and the pronoun is only part of the pick. Brazil runs on você, which takes the same verb ending as ele, so a learner drilled on European tu forms manages to sound stiff and slightly off at once. Plenty of Brazilian regions use tu anyway, often with the você ending attached, which is why the note beside Tudo bem, e você? says that forms of address move with the place and the relationship rather than with a rule.

The louder decision sits in the words around the pronoun. Tá and pra are the spoken forms of está and para, and they turn up in speech that is otherwise careful: Pode escrever pra mim? is a normal thing to ask a clerk. Beleza is where the line actually falls. A shopkeeper hears it as friendly. At a notary counter or a passport desk it lands on the wrong side of casual, and Tá bom does the same job without going there. The apology splits the same way: desculpa on the street, desculpe once the situation has a form to fill in.

The word that changes with who is saying it

Obrigado agrees with the person saying it. A man says obrigado and a woman says obrigada, whoever is on the other side of the counter, and that catches English speakers because our politeness words hold still. The rule then runs through every adjective a beginner needs on day one. Estou perdido from a woman should be perdida. Sou alérgico a amendoim becomes alérgica, tired is cansado or cansada, and the new arrival in the office is an estagiário or an estagiária.

None of this blocks understanding. A waiter who hears the masculine ending from a woman still keeps the peanuts off the plate. What it does is mark the sentence as assembled rather than spoken, and the repair costs one vowel, which is a rare rate of exchange in a language you are learning. Fix it first on the word you say most, which is thank you.

False friends, in the order they reach you

The false friends that hurt in Portuguese are the ordinary words. Constipado is the first one: in Brazil it means constipated, the word for a cold is resfriado, and Estou resfriado is what belongs at a pharmacy counter. Cross to Portugal and constipado is exactly a cold, so one word is safe on one side of the ocean and mortifying on the other.

Pasta is a folder, on a desk or on a screen, and the food is massa. Senha does double duty as password and as the paper ticket that holds your place at a counter, which makes Onde pego a senha? a question about the queue. Sobrenome is your surname in Brazil, while a Portuguese form asks for your apelido, and apelido in Brazil is a nickname; filled in on autopilot, that box ends up with the wrong name in it. Two more are friendly rather than dangerous. Pois não? looks like well, no and is a shop assistant offering help. Imagina is literally imagine and means don't mention it.

The mistake is in the verb

Ask a beginner for I am hungry and they reach for a verb of being plus an adjective. Portuguese keeps the state as a noun and hands it to you with estar com, literally to be with: Estou com fome, Estou com febre, Estou com calor. That last one carries the trap. Estou com calor is what you say when the heat is getting to you; estou quente is a grammatical sentence about yourself that you did not mean to make. The day itself takes a different subject: está quente or faz calor, and the first person stays out of it.

Age goes the other way and takes ter, to have. Tenho trinta e dois anos is I have thirty-two years, and sou trinta e dois is the sentence that gives away a first week. Saudade sits in the same frame, which is part of why it resists a one-word English translation: the feeling is a noun you carry, so Estou com saudade de casa is nearer to I am with the missing of home. Learn the frame once and five sentences arrive with it.

The pronoun comes first

Brazilian Portuguese puts the object pronoun in front of the verb, including at the start of a sentence, where every traditional grammar book says it should not go. Me liga depois is what people say. Liga-me is what the textbook prints and what you will hear in Lisbon. The same order runs through requests to a stranger: Me avisa quando chegar? to a bus driver, Me passa a chave Pix? to someone paying you back.

Add a second verb and the pronoun slides into the middle: Pode me dar a nota fiscal?, never pode dar-me in speech. A learner who assembles the hyphenated version in São Paulo is understood on the spot and sounds like a printed document, which is the price of most word-order mistakes here. They confuse nobody. They date you.

The phrases that translate cleanly and land badly

English splits excuse me across two Portuguese words and gives you no way to hedge. Com licença gets you past a body or out of a room; desculpa apologises. Use one for the other and nothing breaks, though the sentence arrives with a small wrong note inside it, like paying the right amount in the wrong currency.

Four more are worth the care. Não concordo is honest and lands harder in Portuguese than I don't agree does in English, so it wants a reason attached. Sinto muito belongs to bad news and condolences, which makes it oversized for a bumped elbow. Que chato stretches further than its translation: boring and annoying, a delayed bus and a tedious colleague, mild enough that nobody in an office minds hearing it. The one that runs the other way is the diminutive: Posso te interromper rapidinho? is polite because of rapidinho, and trimming the ending to sound more grown-up is what makes the question abrupt.

The timing traps: right phrase, wrong hour

Some of these are correct in every particular and still wrong because of when they arrive. Estou chegando is the famous one. It translates as I am nearly there and it gets said while the speaker is still looking for keys, so nobody times a coffee by it. Só um minutinho works the same way, a request for patience with no unit of time inside it.

The clock catches you earlier than that, at the door. Boa tarde starts at midday and runs until it gets dark, so the switch follows the light rather than the hour, and in Brazil the light moves with the season: six in the evening is still boa tarde in December and already boa noite in June. Boa noite is where English speakers stall, because we save good night for the door on the way out. In Portuguese it is the greeting you walk in with, said to the porteiro, the cashier and the waiter, and said again when you leave. Nothing separate exists for bedtime, so the phrase you have been holding back for the end of the evening is the one to lead with.

Invitations bend the same way. Vamos marcar! is warm and sincere and commits to nothing until a day is named, so an English speaker who hears a firm plan in it can spend a fortnight waiting for a message that was never promised. At work the clock runs the other way, because early is the whole point. Não vou conseguir até hoje costs you nothing the moment you know and plenty once the office is emptying, and Desculpa o atraso is a one-line apology that gets worse the longer you make it.

Brazil and Portugal split on the frequent words

The split does not sit in rare vocabulary. It sits in the words you need in the first hour off the plane. A bus is an ônibus or an autocarro. The toilet is a banheiro or a casa de banho, the menu a cardápio or an ementa, the phone a celular or a telemóvel, the screen a tela or an ecrã, the file an arquivo or a ficheiro.

Our collection is Brazilian first and puts the European form in the note, which is a choice with a cost: a reader learning for Lisbon gets the right phrase with the wrong noun inside it. Both forms are understood on either side. What the far side's word buys you is a beat of hesitation and often a correction offered kindly, which is a fine way to learn and a poor way to ask for a police station in a hurry. The loudest giveaway is Que legal!. Brazilians reach for it all day; the Portuguese word is fixe.

Where these notes run out

Sound is the biggest thing this page cannot hand you. Portuguese keeps meaning in vowels the spelling does not mark: avô and avó are grandfather and grandmother, and the only difference between them is which o comes out of your mouth. The nasals in mãe and pão have nothing in English to lean on. Read every row here and you still have not heard one of them, and hearing them is the only route we know.

Two more limits are worth stating plainly. Register advice describes an ordinary day, and a queue at the end of a long shift is something else; the same phrase can be friendly at nine in the morning and pushy at closing time, and neither speed nor warmth fits in a note column. The other is coverage. Our notes are Brazilian with the European form beside them, which leaves a reader in Luanda or Maputo holding somebody else's list, and Brazilian usage outside the big cities is thinner here than it should be. No independent native-speaker review is documented for this batch. Where a note sounds more certain than your own ear, trust your ear.

When the warning turns into a reflex

The warning and the moment never arrive together. You need estou com calor at the second the heat gets to you, and by then your mouth has already picked whichever version you have heard most. The app exists for that gap. Plug the phone in and a phrase plays, once the automation is set up, and the sampler favours entries you have not heard recently. Why a phrase beats a scheduled lesson at that moment is in One word per charge.

The Portuguese list runs straight through, in the order a first week hands the situations to you: The 500 Portuguese phrases you actually need. The five sibling lists sit beside it on The Vocabcord 500. Audio for these collections is not built yet, so the note column is doing a voice's job for now. If you read one section before you fly, make it the pharmacy and the till: those are the two counters where the wrong word costs you time you had not budgeted.

Common questions

What mistakes do English speakers make most in Portuguese?

The ones that cost you are the sentences that come out correct and land wrong. Obrigado agrees with the speaker rather than the listener, states of the body take estar com instead of a verb of being, and in Brazil the object pronoun goes in front of the verb. Add the false friends and the phrases whose meaning depends on when they are said, and you have most of what our note column warns about.

Do I say obrigado or obrigada?

Whichever one agrees with you. The word follows the speaker, so obrigado from a man and obrigada from a woman, and the person being thanked does not come into it. The same agreement then runs through the adjectives you need on day one: perdido or perdida for lost, alérgico or alérgica for allergic, cansado or cansada for tired.

Is boa noite hello or goodbye in Portuguese?

Both. Boa noite greets people once it is dark and sees them off at the end of the evening, and there is no separate phrase for good night at bedtime. Boa tarde covers midday until the light goes, and the light in Brazil moves with the season: six in the evening is still boa tarde in December and already boa noite in June.

What are the common false friends in Portuguese?

Constipado means constipated in Brazil, where a cold is resfriado; in Portugal constipado is exactly a cold. Pasta is a folder and the food is massa. Senha is both a password and the ticket that holds your place in a queue. Apelido is a surname on a Portuguese form and a nickname in Brazil, where the surname is the sobrenome.

Which everyday words change between Brazil and Portugal?

The frequent ones. A bus is an ônibus in Brazil and an autocarro in Portugal, the toilet is a banheiro or a casa de banho, the menu a cardápio or an ementa, the phone a celular or a telemóvel. Our collection gives the Brazilian form first and puts the European variant in the note beside it.