Portuguese in Six Weeks

Week 1 – Day 1

We are going to start off with something fairly simple and useful. Greetings, days of the week, numbers, key nouns and a few phrases!

Listen to the audio clips and repeat what you hear.

Bom dia!!

Each section has a short audio clip –  Read first and then listen to the audio.

Let’s go through some phrases!

Bom dia! – Good morning!
Bom dia. Como está? – Good morning. How are you?
Estou bem, obrigada. E a senhora? – I am well, thank you. And you madam?
Estou muito bem, obrigada  – I am very well, thank you.

We know that the people in that conversation are female because they are saying:

obrigada – thank you 

a senhora – madam

A man would say:

obrigado

The word for sir is:

o senhor

Let’s change them around and make them masculine:

Bom dia. Como está?

Estou bem, obrigado. E o senhor?

Estou muito bem. Obrigado.

(End of audio) Practice saying them.

Take a look at this next phrase:

A senhora está aqui de férias? – are you on holiday madam?

we can change that to

O senhor está aqui de férias? – are you on holiday sir?

To be – I am…Verb Ser!

Eu sou a Maria – I am Maria (a + name – for a woman)

Eu sou o Mário – I am Mário (o + name-  for a man)

Now you try it…

Eu sou a ………..– I am ……… (a + name – for a woman)

Eu sou o ……….. – I am …….. (o + name-  for a man)

Eu gosto de… – I like…

Eu gosto de cães  – I like dogs

We could change noun and say that we like something else:

Eu gosto de Portugal  –  I like Portugal

Here are some other things you may like:

café – coffee

vinho – wine

filmes – films

so we could say:

Eu gosto de café

Eu gosto de vinho

Eu gosto de filmes

Practice saying those a little! You can even look up some nouns of your choice and substitute them for the nouns above.

Days of the week

Listen to the audio and repeat.

Next we are going to learn the days of the week.

In the column on the right you can see another way of writing the days of the week. This shows us that in Portuguese, days of the week are actually ordinals, or rather the numbers we use to denote place in competition; e.g. first, second, etc.

Speaking of numbers…

Audio 

Numbers 1 – 10

Note: the numbers one and two can be masculine or feminine:

Note: um / uma can mean one or a/an.

Masculine:

Um carro – one car / a car

Dois carros – two cars

Feminine: 

Uma casa – one house / a house

Duas casas – two houses

The –s at the end of a word sounds like the letter –s in the English word, pleasure

Nouns & Articles

Nouns – or ‘the names of things’ are masculine or feminine in Portuguese. You have to always learn the noun with the definite article, or the word ‘the’.

Definite Article – the

In Portuguese there are two words for ‘the’. One is for the feminine nouns – ‘a’. And the other is for the masculine nouns, – ‘o’ . See table:

The above table may look a little complicated at this point, don’t worry if it doesn’t sink in right now, you always have this table to refer back to.

We use the definite article with names. It is just something you get used to.

a Dona Fátima – (the) Mrs. Fátima

o João – (the) John (yeah, not so great if your name is John…)

We use the definite article with nouns:

a casa – the house

o carro– the car (the double ‘r’ is rolled – can also sound like a heavy ‘h’.)

In the plural form, it all goes plural:

as casas – the houses

os carros – the cars

Here is a list of some of the nouns we are going to use in our next lesson and a few extra ones!

Audio for dialogue – read from left to right

Some nouns will be obvious with regard to gender, like daughter, son, mother, father, etc. Most nouns ending in ‘a’ are feminine and most of those ending in ‘o’ are masculine. Of course, there are exceptions to this rule, like the word ‘dia‘ which is masculine and some nouns don’t end in ‘a’ or ‘o‘.

Adjectives

Adjectives are words we use to describe things. In Portuguese these can be feminine or masculine and plural.

bom – good (m) (like bong – but we don’t say the ‘g‘ – bon(g))

bons – good (m. pl.) (‘ns‘ sounds like the ‘ge‘ in sponge..)

 O vinho é bom – the wine is good (nho – like the word new)

Os filmes são bons – the films are good

boa – good (f)

boas – good (f. pl.)

A mala é boa – the bag is good

As malas são boas – the bags are good

alto – tall (m)

alta – tall (f)

O pai é alto – the father is tall

A filha é alta – the daughter is tall

altos – tall (m. pl.)

altas – tall (f. pl.)

Os prédios são altos – the buildings are tall

As netas são altas – the grandchildren are tall (f. pl.)

Verb of the day

dizer – to say

eu digo – I say

tu dizes – you say

ele diz – he says

nós dizemos – we say

eles dizem – they say

Tip of the Day:
‘Dia’ is masculine even though it ends in an ‘a’. Many nouns ending in ‘e’ are feminine. 

Até amanhã!! 🙂