Fun fact: Brazilians speak Portuguese.

Not so fun fact: what you learn in language class often provides little preparation for how people speak in their day-to-day lives.

 

As my bio describes, I was born in Venezuela and thus have Spanish as my native language. Even though all of the Romance languages share strong similarities, none are closer than Spanish and Portuguese. It is so similar that Spanish speakers and Portuguese speakers are capable of mutual communication while each still speaking their own language. Due to this, I was not really daunted by my lack of Portuguese skills, but rather really excited at the opportunity to learn a new language!

And not just any language, but Brazilian Portuguese. I’m not sure if you have heard Brazilian Portuguese or not, but in my opinion it is an extremely fun language. They have a certain tone and inflection in their speech that just makes it really fun to speak. As Megh can attest, I often envision myself kind of smoothly bobbing my head as I speak — the language just sounds like it would fit a sort of jazzy wave that requires a head bob with accompanying shoulder rolls. Just trust me on that one.

I must admit though, I had minimal training. Equipped with three weeks of class in high school and one or two hours of podcasts, I was still far away from being able to really “speak” any Portuguese upon my arrival.

 

Three weeks later, things have changed.

 

Not that we’re fluent or even close to proficient, but Megh and I have definitely come a long way and can certainly make our way around. The really interesting thing has also been learning both colloquial speech and more technical terms at the same time — working in a cancer hospital we are constantly encountering both!

 

Now I’m going to share with you some of my favorite phrases —

 

Tudo bem (too-doh bane)

This is possibly my favorite due to its amazing effectiveness, versatility, and simplicity. It is both a friendly greeting when asked with an inflection:

Tudo bem?   Everything all right?

And also the perfect response to itself:

Tudo bem!   Yep! Everything’s good.

At any point during the day, it never fails to communicate a friendly greeting or response. Accompany it with a thumbs up and they should have no doubt as to your state of being.

 

Beleza (beh-leh-za) or toda joia (toh-dah shjoy-ah)

These have similar functions as tudo bem — they function as greetings and responses, but they are much more colloquial. However, the best part is in what they mean literally: beleza means “beauty,” and toda joia means “all joy.” Maybe it’s just me but I find it awesome to go around asking your friends “Beauty?” and answering “Beauty!”

 

Né (neh)

Also a colloquial phrase, it is an informal contraction of não é?, which means “is it not?” This is used in the way you might add “right?” or “isn’t it?” at the end of a statement in English:

O almoço é às 12:30, né?   Lunch is at 12:30, right?

They use it all the time, and it’s just fun to say because it is definitely a very local thing to say, making us feel like more legitimate Portuguese speakers. Also, the nasalized não is sometimes hard to get right, so the more familiar n pronunciation of né helps out when speaking faster.

 

Nossa! (noh-sah!)

This carries an exclamation point since it is an interjection similar to “Wow!” in English. Nossa! is in fact a shortened version of the longer Nossa senhora! which means “Our lady!” referring to the Virgin Mary. An equivalent expression is “Oh my!” as it is also a shortened version in English. But even though it might seem odd to say “Our!” when you’re shocked, it is a phrase used by everyone here all the time. The enjoyment comes in extending the first syllable — Nohhhh-sah! — to really emphasize your shock or disbelief.

I am still working on effectively incorporating this one in my daily vocab.

 

É isso (eh ee-soh)

This is actually the most interesting aspect of Portuguese that I have found thus far. In the languages that I know at this point, responding with an affirmative answer is simple: you just use the equivalent word for “yes,” be it yes, sí, oui, etc. This is not the case in Brazilian Portuguese, as Megh and I have discovered. Instead, there are two types of affirmative response: one is by answering É isso, é, or just isso which translates to “It is that.” For example, someone may ask:

O almoço é às 12:30, né?   Lunch is at 12:30, right?

And the answer is:

É isso.   Yes, it is (or literally: it is that)

 

But the really interesting thing is the other method of affirming, which is by responding using the verb in question in an affirmative way. For example, we get asked:

Voces são os estudantes de Rice?    Are you the Rice students?

In this case they used são, the verb “to be,” to ask us the question, so we would answer:

Somos.    We are.

 

It is very interesting as it has us constantly on our toes, since not only do you have to exactly understand the verb of the question, but also be able to conjugate it back in the correct person and tense.

It’s these little things that have really added to this experience for me this summer. Yes, I am helping with the clinical study of the Melacap system; yes, I am learning a lot about how the Hospital de Câncer de Barretos works and is constantly pushing the limits of technology for their health care; and yes, I am being exposed to more professional settings of health and technology which are making me think more about my future career choices. I am seeing so much that my future career ideas have jumped very drastically day to day, wondering about what possibilities could lie ahead.

But in addition to that, if I manage to get more comfortable in my speaking, Brazilian Portuguese will be one of the best souvenirs from this great summer with BTB.