Let’s start chatting in Portuguese

You’re in a country where the locals speak Portuguese …. it could be Brazil, which accounts for most of the 220 million-odd native speakers of the language, it could be Angola or Mozambique, or Portugal itself. Because of Portugal’s maritime history, there is a good chance you are on a beach and eating peixe e camarões (fish and prawns). The one photographed above I took at a popular praia (beach), Pipa, in Rio Grande do Norte in Brazil. Or maybe you;re in a beachside bar somewhere in the Cape Verde islands, drinking uma cerveja (a beer) and listening to a song by the local superstar Cesária Évora (such as the one at the end of this post.)

Now, you want to get talking. To greet someone in Portuguese you would say bom dia (literally good day, but also a way of saying good morning), and if you were a stickler for timing after midday you could say boa tarde (good afternoon). Bom is the masculine form and boa is the feminine. Good evening or goodnight is boa noite, while uma noite em festa is a night out. The people in these parts of the world like to have festas – feasts, parties, celebrations.

Less formally, if you wanted to say hi it would be oi or olá or alô (the accents indicate where the stress falls). A casual how are you? is tudo bem? or como vai? (more literally, all well? and how is it going?). To be more formal, you might say como está, o senhor? to a man or como está, a senhora? to a woman.

The answer to this should be bem, obrigado if you are a man, and bem, obrigada, if you are a woman, meaning well, thanks. On related notes, bem, bem! means well, well! while meu bem! means my darling, honey or sweetheart (it’s probably a bit old-fashioned).

After you have told someone how well you are, you should ask them back, so say e você? meaning and you? Or more politely, e o senhor? or e a senhora? (e means and, not to be confused with é, is).

Splendid! Now you are getting on like a house on fire (dar-se bem com means to get along with).

Incidentally, a morning in Portuguese is uma manhã, while o amanhã means the future as a noun, or tomorrow as an adverb, so tomorrow morning becomes the very poetic amanhã de manhã. However, don’t confuse that with a manha (without an accent) which means cunning or an act (fake). Fazer manha is to put on an act.

This leads us to a woman who was a class act, the aforementioned Cesária Évora. Alas, she died in 2011 at the age of 70. She did come out to Australia on tour a few years before that: I wish I had gone to the concert. I particularly like her album from 2006, Rogamar. which was my introduction to her music. Here’s the opening track Sombras di distino (Shadows of destiny). The lyrics are pasted underneath.

Sombras di Destino                  Shadows of Destiny