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In Portugal, autumn is the time for ! Across the Alentejo, Trás-os-Montes, and the Beiras, it’s already well under way. The harvest usually runs through November and December, but this year the hot summer ripened the fruit ahead of schedule. That’s not bad news, however. Olivum, the growers’ association, expects about 10% more than last […]

If you’ve spent any time in Portugal, you’ve probably met at least one Silva already. It’s not a coincidence: roughly 3% of the country carries that surname, with Santos, Ferreira, Pereira, and Costa not far behind. Many of the most common surnames come from the land people lived on: Costa – coast or slope Oliveira […]

September 26th is , which is a good excuse to learn about another language spoken in Portugal that you may not be aware of. In the northeast corner of the country, in a small region called Terra de Miranda, people speak a language called . It’s not a dialect of Portuguese; in fact, it belongs […]

Today we’re looking at something a little different: not Portuguese words you need to learn, but Portuguese words you already know. A number of English words can be traced back to Portuguese, having made their way into the language over centuries of trade and exploration. In most cases, English kept the word and quietly changed […]

Someone asks you You could just say Or you could reach for something with a little more personality. Here are 7 European Portuguese words that mean cool, nice or great. fixe cool a good all-purpose option it never changes form: um carro fixe, uma ideia fixe, uns sapatos fixes watch the pronunciation, the x sounds […]

In Portugal, plans get made with a question like Let’s break it down: Say and Thursday’s booked. But wait, what is jeito? It originally came from the Latin iactus, the act of throwing. Over time the word changed and the meaning broadened into bodily movement and position, and then into the general way/manner something is […]

Portuguese is full of words that begin with al: There’s a reason for that, and it goes back about 800 years. From 711 to 1249, much of the was under Moorish rule. Muslim forces crossed over from North Africa in 711 and took most of the peninsula within a decade. Pushing them back out took […]

It’s one of the first things people say when they find out you’re learning Portuguese: “Oh, so it’s basically Spanish, right?”. . On paper, there’s a lot of overlap: shared Latin roots, similar sentence structure, and plenty of similar words: 🇪🇸 país | 🇵🇹 🇪🇸 pequeño | 🇵🇹 🇪🇸 disculpe | 🇵🇹 But as soon […]