The 3 popular Brazilian music videos — shot in the favela in Rio, Cantagalo…. are back online. All customers that have access to the online site can access them now. They will appear after you login, on your Account page.
My wife just asked me to translate this from English to Portuguese.
‘What?’, I said.
Turns out, ‘Juweet’ = ‘did you eat?’
Oh. And we say it all the time. True.
It reminded me of the many, many confusing Portuguese language-transformations /convolutions that I hear everyday. If you’re trying to get to fluency, you too will have to endure these!
Let’s break-some-down:
You don’t need to actually know what an “adverb of intensity” is – you already use them everyday. You just need to know the vocabulary for expressing things like, ‘quite’, ‘almost’, ‘completely’ as in, ‘I kind of hope he wins’ or, ‘It hardly matters’.
Get used to saying things like:
Eu trabalho bastante.
Eu tenho tanto medo do escuro.
Eu durmo muito pouco.
Eu mal consigo esperar.
Eu quase não saio à noite.
Use these adverbs to convey intensity, such as these:
menos
demais
tanto
quase
bem
mal
pouco
You already know that learning a Portuguese song helps your language learning. But, did you know that it in-fact, super-charges you?
It does.
Images & music set your brain in a highly stimulated state — and that makes it record what is happening in a uniquely powerful way.
Here is a fantastic song by Maria Rita (category: MPB). It’s the perfect type of song you should be “studying” — it has useful vocab and isn’t too poetic or abstract. It’s full of useful phrases and verb tenses.
It starts out like this,
Eu tentei mas não deu pra ficar sem você
Here’s two verbs in the preterit tense (simple past): tentar and dar. And you already know about how the verb DAR can be used to say “work out”.
And here’s FICAR also — used to mean “stay”, as in “get with” 
. Brazilian make sentences just like this all the time!
And the next line — it says: I’m sick of waiting (ENJOAR = literally to become nauseated) is widely used:
Enjoei de esperar
Me cansei de querer encontrar
Um amor pra assumir teu lugar
É muito pouco,
Venha alegrar o meu mundo que anda vazio, vazio
Me deixa louca
É só beijar tua boca que eu me arrepio,
Arrepio, arrepio
Here’s an outtake of us trying to dub this song for the INTENSIVO series, A Virada.
The whole idea of caring is more complicated in portuguese. Whereas we would say “I don’t care about that” & “I care deeply for her” & “He needs to be taken care of” are all accomplished in the same way: using the word CARE.
To get these same meanings across you need firstly that the verb LIGAR takes CARE of much of this. Use it like this:
I don't care > Eu não ligo.
I don't care if you go without me. > Eu não ligo se você for sem mim.
I care (am interested about) about hip-hop music. > Estou ligado hip-hop.
LIGAR is used to CARE or, be INTERESTED about something. (*NOTE that ligar means to connect, be turned-on.)
You could also use the verb IMPORTAR. This is more intuitive because when you don’t care about something it’s because it’s just not very IMPORTANT to you.
I don't care about politics. > Eu não me importo com politica.
I care about personal safety. > Eu me importo com segurança pessoal.
I really care about her. > Eu realmente me importo com ela.
*Note that in this example, IMPORTAR is used reflexively.
What about to literally CARE FOR someone or something? Use the verb CUIDAR.
I'm going to take care of you. > Eu vou cuidar de você.
I'll take care of our family accounting. > Vou cuidar das contas da familia.
Are you sure?
That’s for sure… You’re right…That’s correct…
These are called affirmations.
The phrases that Brazilians use to express themselves are based mostly on
RAZÃO and CERTEZA
It goes like this:
You can HAVE certeza and HAVE razão… You can BE certo (a) and BE correto (a).
Você tem certeza disso?
Eu tenho certeza!
Você tem razão.
Você está certo disso?
Eu estou certo disso.
Você está correto (a).
Have you ever asked yourself, why do we say ‘do & did & done’ all_the_time?
In portuguese you can skip all the do-did-done nonsense and speak about what you do, did do and have done much easier!
Let’s prove it.
What did you do yesterday? > O que você fez ontem?
How did you do that? > Como você fez isso?
Did you do your homework? > Você fez seu deve de casa?
Let the verb FAZER ‘do’ all the doing.
You just need to remember how to conjugate it — it’s (very) irregular:
eu fiz
você, ele, ela fez
nós fizemos
vocês, eles, elas fizeram