By Thalita Alves Last updated: September 21, 2023

128 Portuguese Phrases for Everyday Life and Travel

How would you fare if we transported you to a Portuguese-speaking country right now?

Do you have enough phrases under your belt to find your way around?

This post is for all the beginners who want to nail their basic Portuguese phrases.

Whether your focus is on European or Brazilian Portuguese, fine-tuning your essentials will make life that much easier.

Contents

• Basic Greetings
• Basic Words and Phrases
• Essential Questions and Phrases 
• Essential Portuguese Travel Phrases
• Asking for Directions 
• Shopping 
• Words and Phrases for Food
• Quick Tips to Make Learning Basic Portuguese a Breeze
• • Learn in context
  • Learn out loud
• And One More Thing…

Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)

Basic Greetings

Greetings are often the first thing you cover when learning a new language—and in Portuguese, it’s no different.

Whether you need a reminder of your basic hellos and goodbyes, or you’re yet to learn them, here are some of the key greetings you need to know:

Basic Words and Phrases

Good manners always make a positive impression. If you’re ever traveling to Brazil or Portugal, these terms will help prevent any cultural misunderstandings that might arise from basic etiquette:

Essential Questions and Phrases 

There’s no shame in asking for help when you need it. In fact, it’s all part of the learning experience.

If you’re talking to a native Portuguese speaker, use these phrases to aid your comprehension:

Essential Portuguese Travel Phrases

Traveling to Brazil or Portugal? Then these questions will definitely help you along the way. This is by no means a comprehensive list, but it’ll help you get started:

*Grammar note: use ao for masculine nouns, à for feminine. 

Asking for Directions 

In order to get where you want to go, you’re probably going to have to ask for directions. Here are the basics:

Shopping 

If you see something you’d like to bring home, you’ll need to know a thing or two about making purchases.

It might feel unnatural, but haggling is the norm in many countries. Here’s how to let the vendor know you won’t budge from your budget:

Words and Phrases for Food

No cultural experience is complete without food. How about trying the famous Brazilian brigadeiro dessert pictured above? 

If you’re ever in Brazil you’ll need to know more than the word cachaça  (a spirit produced mainly in Brazil).

Here are some essential Portuguese phrases to remember:

Quick Tips to Make Learning Basic Portuguese a Breeze

Learning a language, as you already know, is a commitment.

It takes time to build up your vocabulary, study the grammar rules and get your pronunciation just right.

But you know what? All that groundwork doesn’t have to be stressful.

As long as you know what you’re trying to achieve and how you’re going to achieve it, the transition between all learning phases—from beginner to advanced—should go quite smoothly.

At this stage, in particular, there are two key points that we recommend you focus on:

Learn in context

Your first mission is to put your learned phrases into context. Memorizing words and sentences isn’t going to do any good if you don’t know how to apply them in your daily life.

With all the resources you can readily access these days, it’s easy and fun to get actively involved in practicing your linguistic skills—no matter how basic—beyond memorization.

For instance, the exercises and native content you’re exposed to through the FluentU program’s authentic videos will help you see how each new phrase and language rule you’re studying fits into natural Portuguese speech.

Other great sources like Portuguese short stories, fun local cartoons, engaging Portuguese movies and authentic TV shows can also help you get a feel for the basics.

Learn out loud

The second thing to think about is pronunciation. A language learner’s ultimate goal is to get fluent, after all—so the earlier you start practicing those sounds, the better.

Watching online video lessons can be quite helpful at this stage. Regardless of which dialect you’re learning, finding the right material is as simple as searching for basic phrases, greetings and other key vocabulary terms in your chosen dialect.

Don’t just listen to how words are said, though—actually repeat them out loud. Pause the video after each word or phrase and come back to it a couple of times.

And if you need some extra reassurance on the pronunciation front, try inputting each separate word into your preferred Portuguese dictionary or translator app to hear how it’s spoken. Again, repeating them to yourself out loud is a must.

Now that you have these essential Portuguese phrases, you’re ready to start using this new vocabulary in your own conversations!

Even if you’re not going traveling, try using these phrases in your everyday life. And for more advanced phrases, check out our post on Portuguese sayings and quotes for every occasion. 

These phrases will provide you with the necessary building blocks to help you on your Portuguese journey to fluency!

Boa viagem! (Have a good trip!)

Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)

And One More Thing…

If you've made it this far that means you probably enjoy learning Portuguese with engaging material and will then love FluentU.

FluentU takes authentic videos—like music videos, movie trailers, news and inspiring talks—and turns them into personalized Portuguese lessons.

Other sites use scripted content. FluentU uses a natural approach that helps you ease into the Portuguese language and culture over time. You’ll learn Portuguese as it’s actually spoken by real people.

FluentU has a wide variety of videos, as you can see here:

FluentU brings native videos within reach with interactive transcripts. You can tap on any word to look it up instantly. Every definition has examples that have been written to help you understand how the word is used. If you see an interesting word you don’t know, you can add it to a vocab list.

Review a complete interactive transcript under the Dialogue tab, and find words and phrases listed under Vocab.

Learn all the vocabulary in any video with FluentU’s robust learning engine. Swipe left or right to see more examples of the word you’re on.

The best part is that FluentU keeps track of the vocabulary that you’re learning, and gives you extra practice with difficult words. It'll even remind you when it’s time to review what you’ve learned. Every learner has a truly personalized experience, even if they’re learning with the same video.

You can try FluentU for free for 2 weeks. Click here to check out the website or download the iOS app or Android app.