Tag Archives: learn portuguese

Qual é a forma de pagamento?

Leave a reply

Easy low monthly payments.

We all know this language. It must be totally confusing for a foreigner to hear something like,

90 days is the same as CASH.

Brazil has it’s own vocabulary. Let’s learn the important ones:

When paying for something, this question is almost always part if the transaction:

“Dinheiro ou cartão?”

If the answer is ‘cartão’ the next question is always: “crédito ou débito?”

‘Débito’ is direct-deposit or, an ATM card.

If you’re buying something big — like a pair of jeans (um, a pair of tennis shoes can set you back several hundred dollars here) another set of questions will be presented by the seller. Everyone finances bigger payments into monthly payments — they do not always put them on a credit card. This is because most of the stores offer special lower interest rates if you use their payment plan. Okay, so here’s what you need to know:

Pagamando a vista means CASH IN FULL, NOW. You should always ask for a discount if paying up front (~5%)

Pagamento parcelado means PAYING IN MONTHLY INSTALLMENTS. A sentence like: parcelamos em até 12 vezes  means that the store will finance your purchase up to 12 months. The verb here is PARCELAR.

> Na Lojas Americans, além dos descontos, os clientes vão poder parcelar em até 24X no Cartão Extra.

The Social Language

Leave a reply

Just as Brazilians love to talk and be social, they are equally enthusiastic about facebook, twitter, skype and all the rest.

*just a year or two ago everyone had an Orkut account — now replaced almost completely by facebook.

Some of our readers have been asking us to talk about the current vocabulary of média social.

This, for example form Chris:

Just wanted to make a request: is there a chance you could do some lessons on vocab for Social Media? Things like “friending/unfriending” someone on Facebook. “blocking”, spammers, posters, followers, “retweet”, “hashtags”, always stump me. How do I say “like” a page/post for instance? I’m sure there’s a lot of English used … The other day a Brazilian friend in Rio posted that he was “fazendo um clean” of his Facebook profile! I don’t know if this subject is something you’ve thought of before…? I speak quite good Portuguese but more and more I’m finding it really awkward talking about these things specifically.
 

Bom, most important is that you get the way they “friend” — they always use the verb adicionar, like this:

Ana > Você tem Facebook?

Tiago > Claro! Pode me adicionar.
Ana > Vou te adicionar, sim.

To DEFRIEND someone you deleter or, tirar  the person like this:

Clara > Amiga, você me tirou do deu face?
Tania > Sim... Desculpa amiga foi por engano.
Vou te 'ad' novamente.

To LIKE something is to curtir, like this:

*** Note to Chris: ”fazendo um clean” is just what you would think it is >> cleaning house. In this case, he means that he’s tidying-up his facebook network (or, rather : removing some “friends”)

All you need.

Leave a reply

To need and to have-to :

possibly the most important idea you need to express in any language.

Just as in english, there are two clear ways to express this:

PRECISAR (to need) and, TER+QUE (to have to)

Precisar is a little tricky because you must always put a “de” after it unless it’s followed by a verb.

> Preciso de uma lan house, urgente!

> Preciso achar uma lan house, agora!

Entendeu?

Let’s say it using the verb TER + QUE:

> Tenho que achar uma lan house, agora!

> Temos que ir ao supermercado hoje.

* Note that the meaning here is “have to” –

Let’s suppose you wanted to say something tricky like:

You have to have a license in order to drive a car:

Você tem que ter uma licença para dirigir um carro.

Or,

Você precisa de uma licença para dirigir um carro.

Even trickier:

You have to have had sex in order to become pregnant.

> Você tem que ter tido relações sexual antes de ficar grávida.

Check out the use of the verb precisar in this clip: (from Series 1)

Não preciso me drogar para ser um gênio;
Não preciso ser um gênio para ser humano;
Mas preciso do seu sorriso para ser feliz.

Charles Chaplin

Hurry up and Learn Portuguese

Leave a reply

HURRY. What a strange word. Even stranger is the way it’s actually used.

Here’s how you would say,

I’m in a hurry. >> Estou com pressa.

Please hurry up. >> Mais depressa, por favor.

* I have no idea why “depressa” is written together like that, but it is.

Now try this one:

Could you please hurry it up? >> …you could say, “você poderia se apressar?”

Gotcha.

What’s the verb here?

Depressa. The verb means to rush, hurry.

There are lots, & lots of ways to express the idea ‘hurry up’ but you need to know how to use this one first.

Get fully supplied

Leave a reply

There are so many ways to talk about giving, supplying, making arrangements, providing-for etc. And one cannot always rely on the verbs dar, or arrumar to express this idea. You wouldn’t say for example, “Are you going to give us lunch during the meeting?” — you would say, “Will lunch be provided…”

So, let’s get aquiainted with the verbs providenciar, and fornecer:

For example, let’s say you are going to a conference and want to ask if all the documents are going to be provided:

Você sabe se todos os documentos vão ser providenciados?

Here’s another, this time using the gerund (ing) form of the verb:

We are providing the equipment needed.

Estamos providenciando os equipamentos necessários.

And you can use fornecer to convey to provide, to supply just as well.

For example, let’s say you want say that some people got sick after eating a meal provided by the school:

> Um grupo de pessoas passou mal após comer almoço fornecido pela escola.

Um grupo de pessoas passou mal após comer almoço fornecido pela escola.