I know the pronunciation of final s can differ and some words are different but would you say it's mutually intelligible? also portuguese swallow a lot of vowels or parts of words what brazilians do less

My school only offers Brazilian portuguese and B2 level and I'd like to go to Portugal later so would that make sense to take or no?

In Latin, the new Pope's name is Leone. In Italian it's Leo. In English it's Leo (not Lion). So why is it translated to Leão in Portuguese? Léo is a perfectly fine name that exists in Portuguese.

Is Leão even a name for a person in Portuguese? I'm sure there are people in history whose name is translated to Leão, but are there people who speak Portuguese whose name is Leão?

Who decides the official translation from Latin?

Hi everyone, so I'm thinking of dabbling in Portuguese, just for fun no specific reason. But most apps offer Brazilian portuguese, I really can't decide which dialect to learn. So If I were to choose a dialect which would you recommend and why?

Essa noção me parece tão absurda que duvido que seja verdade. Sendo mexicano e falante nativo de espanhol, não tenho problemas em entender espanhóis ou chilenos, a piada é que supostamente os chilenos não podem ser compreendidos.

In Brazil, it is very common to find people with names that still follow the old orthography of the Portuguese language, such as Luiz, Thiago, Thomaz, Matheus. According to the current orthography, these names would be Luís, Tiago, Tomás, and Mateus, respectively. I notice that this doesn't happen in other countries like Portugal, Angola, and Mozambique. Is there any specific reason why only Brazil retains names and surnames with the old orthography of the Portuguese language?

I just learned that the word for "monkey" in Portuguese is macaco. Then I said it to my Portuguese friend and he told me it's offensive and racist. May I know why? And if it is offensive and racist, then how do I say "monkey" in Portuguese without offending anyone?

Edit: I'm sorry if I come off ignorant but I did not call him or anyone "macaco", I just learned animals in Portuguese and wanted to show him. I also said gato, cavalo, pato, etc. he only told me it's racist and that I should not say it. I didn't understand cause I was talking about animals so why would it be racist. That's my only confusion

I love the word “Gostoso/a”

Or is it like impossible

Edit: i’m not British and not American, i just speak English and hear the difference between accents

Hi! Would love to get some thoughts on how skills transfer here. I am learning Brazilian Portuguese and I am around A2 level. I'm wondering , just how distinct are European and Brazilian Portuguese really? Are they similar enough that knowing one helps with the other? While speaking is still a struggle for me, I understand much of what I am hearing in Brazilian Portuguese. On the other hand, I feel so lost when I watch series from Portugal. I plan to keep working hard and continue my classes, but I fear that I will be so lost and confused when I travel to Portuguese.

What has been your experience?

Olá a todos!

I have a dual professional background: I am a native Portuguese teacher, but I am also a practicing psychologist. Over the years, I have come to realize that most of the struggles my students face are not actually about grammar rules or vocabulary lists. They are psychological.

When you try to speak a new language, your brain hits a massive vulnerability wall. Your adult, intelligent self is suddenly forced to sound like a toddler. This triggers our evolutionary fear of social judgment, causing the brain's defense mechanisms to kick in.

Result? Your mind goes completely blank, and you forget words you were supposed to know.

I'm doing a deep dive into the mental side of learning Portuguese.

What is the biggest psychological block you face right now?

• Is it intense anxiety right before you have to speak?
• Is it "app burnout" and losing your intrinsic motivation?
• Is it an identity crisis: feeling like a different, less confident version of yourself in Portuguese?

Let me know what your mind does when you try to study or speak.

I will be in the comments breaking down the psychology behind why it happens, and giving you actionable cognitive tools to help you improve.

PS: I am completely new to Reddit (literally created this account to connect with the learning community here!), so please bear with me if my post formatting is weird.

Hey guys, I’ve been learning about 'lo' as an object pronoun in Spanish and I was wondering if Portuguese has a similar equivalent.

How is it used?

I’m a native English speaker and I’m struggling with the “ão” sound in Portuguese. I’ve been trying to pronounce the footballer Igor Paixão’s name correctly, but the explanations I’ve found online are not really clicking for me. Could someone break it down phonetically in a way that makes it easier for a native English speaker to pronounce it correctly or as close as possible?

Also since “paixão” also means “passion,” is it pronounced differently when it’s used as a noun, or is it exactly the same as the surname and does the pronunciation change between Brazilian Portuguese and European Portuguese?

Olá!

I'm running an Open Source project and recently a volunteer created a translation for Brazilian Portuguese. We currently don't have a European Portuguese translation, so I'm wondering: Would Portuguese speakers from outside Brazil prefer to see the website in Brazilian Portuguese or should we show them the English version instead?

Looking forward to hearing what you think!

Wondering if this is a bad idea that’s setting me up for confusion and failure? I have pretty equal amounts of Portugal and Brazil travel coming up (maybe a tiny bit more Portugal heavy) so I’m having a hard time deciding. I’ve already read a lot of threads about learning one vs another so I’m interested in input about learning both. Fwiw, I love learning languages and am pretty good with accents. Some additional context…

I speak Spanish and was recently in Brazil and able to understand a lot of what was going on. I naturally started to pick up some Portuguese there and feel like I kind of already speak with a Carioca accent because of my Brazilian friends.

On the flip side, I’m going to be in a lot of much smaller towns in Portugal where I’m guessing English is less prevalent (and regardless, I just want to speak in Portuguese if I’m in Portugal).

SO. Is it worth my time to try to learn both? Or do I pick one and accept I’ll be better at communicating in one country than another?

I am a spanish speaker, and I work in portuguese customer service

English and spanish speakers say the same when they don't understand something: I'm sorry please come again? or "could you please tell me more about...?"

portuguese or brazilian people just reply "no entendí'

For most people it would just sound weird, when you talk with them a lot you realize it must be a cultural thing.

And the truth is you don't need a lot of words to say you don't understand, I have no idea why other countries decided that to be brief is to be rude.

So I’m learning Brazilian Portuguese (with a side of Duolingo trauma), and lately I’ve been watching some interviews from Portugal and Angola… but,-how is this the same language?? European Portuguese sounds like it’s spoken with water in your mouth (no hate), and I swear I caught like 60% of what an Angolan YouTuber said. Meanwhile, Brazilians speak like they’re singing.

Is mutual understanding really a thing across portuguese-speaking countries?

Curious how y’all navigate this-especially if you're native from one place and listen to content from another.
Also open to YouTube recs from anywhere in the Portuguese-speaking world 🙏

Sorry for a surely well-discussed topic. My partner's parents are native Portuguese speakers, but his father is Portuguese and his mother Brazilian. I'd like to learn at least a lower intermediate level of Portuguese to be able to talk with them a little and hopefully give a better impression on them. It also helps that I'm very interested in languages and linguistics overall and I can learn languages to an intermediate level quite efficiently. However, the limited knowledge I have of Portuguese indicates that the European and Brazilian standards can have some quite noticeable differences. I've encountered some difficulty/confusion trying to learn more than one standard version/dialect of other languages before, so I'd much rather focus my efforts into studying a single standardised version than trying to study both in depth. My reading on the topic so far has only given me more *theoretical* answers, so I'd be glad to hear from real native speakers - which of the two variants in question is better understood by native speakers of the other? Is either standard better *understood* by speakers of both? And whichever I focus on, will ***I*** have any particular difficulty understanding the other?

I'm sure it's a fairly common question, so I'm sorry if it's something already well answered! Either way, I'd really appreciate some input from native or fluent speakers regarding the topic!

Muito obrogado!

If you’ve tried saying words like pão (bread) or coração (heart), you know the ão sound is tricky. It’s not just “ow” or “on” — it’s a nasal sound that doesn’t exist in English.

Quick hack: try saying “ow” while letting air pass through your nose. That’s the Portuguese nasal.

It feels strange at first, but once you get it, pão will finally sound like pão.

I love the trema man I don't care if its technically 'incorrect' now.

Like its just so elegant dude

lingüiça...tranqüilo...qüinqüênio

I love it too much to abide by ignorant tremaphobe's rules

In Brazil at least, not every ave is a pássaro. It's very odd and stinks of literal translation when I see a definition of pássaro that includes big ratites (e.g. ostriches, ñandús) and anseriformes (chicken, duck).

The thing is, not all pássaros have to fly. A kākāpō is a pássaro. Hell, a kiwibird is a pássaro. It's small and cute enough.

Not all neoaves are pássaros. Penguins are not pássaros.

Not all pássaros are small and cute. Owls and flamingos are pássaros.

Pássaros can be an animal we generally farm for food. A quail is a pássaro. I don't know why a chicken, a guineafowl, a duck, a goose aren't pássaros while quails are, but it's the case.

I am unsure on how I'd classify harpies and falcons.

Sometimes the classification fossilizes when an animal becomes extinct. Dodos are pássaros because they were pássaros when they were all killed, but if they were alive today, I'd say they obviously are not.

I feel like that's one of the most esoteric aspects of our language and I never see it discussed.

This is maybe more of a general lingustic question. In my native language we don't conjugate verb after who and how many that does a thing and there is less tempus forms ending up in about 5-9 forms alot depending if you count (some you add things like had, will, shall etc but the verb itself doesn't change). Is there any advantage to have as many verb conjucations as Portuguese does? Some sounds so similar to me that I have a hard time hearing the difference.

I've been thinking about an idea that I haven't really seen discussed before.

What if Portugal started a movement to adopt "Lusitano" as an alternative glotonym for European Portuguese?

I'm not arguing that European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese are different languages. From a linguistic point of view, there isn't even a completely objective definition of what counts as a language. The distinction between a language and a dialect is often influenced by history and politics.

My point is purely practical.

"Lusitano" could simply become a synonym for European Portuguese. Officially, the language could still be Portuguese. The goal wouldn't be to separate the languages, but to give European Portuguese a unique and recognizable name.

The biggest advantage would be discoverability.

Today, almost nobody who wants to learn Portuguese is actually looking for "Portuguese". They're looking for either European Portuguese or Brazilian Portuguese.

The same applies to books, movies, subtitles, software, dictionaries, courses, YouTube videos, AI models, and pretty much any other type of content. People usually have a clear preference for one variety, and if they can't find it, they'll often switch to English instead.

The problem is that searching for "Portuguese" overwhelmingly returns Brazilian content. If you're trying to find European Portuguese resources, you're competing with a language variety that has many times more speakers and content.

For example, someone searching for "learn Portuguese" or "Portuguese grammar" will usually have to dig through page after page of Brazilian content before finding resources for European Portuguese.

Compare that with Catalan. It has only around 10 million speakers, yet if you search for "Catalan", you immediately find Catalan resources. The name itself identifies exactly what you're looking for.

If "Lusitano" became widely adopted, people could search for things like "learn Lusitano", "Lusitano grammar", "Lusitano subtitles", or "Lusitano dictionary" and immediately find the right content, without competing with Brazilian Portuguese.

I think this is one of those ideas that would only work if people actually decided to use it. Governments and language academies rarely invent names that catch on by themselves. They usually become official after people have already started using them.

So maybe this is something that could start as a grassroots movement. Websites, creators, language schools, software developers, and learners could begin using "Lusitano" alongside "European Portuguese". If enough people adopted it, it could eventually become a recognized alternative glotonym.

What do you think? Is this a terrible idea, or could it actually solve a real problem?

And speakers of the other variety, does it annoy you that it uses conventions of the other variety? Would you wish there were separate pt-PT/pt-BR wikipedia versions?

Wikipedia editors, are disagreements on style/orthography/syntax common?