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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 […]

If you’ve never been hit on the head with a plastic hammer by a complete stranger, June in Porto might just change that. June 24th is , the second of the festivals, and Porto takes it pretty seriously. The night before, the whole city centre closes to traffic and hundreds of thousands of people spill into […]

In mid-June, Lisbon throws one of its biggest celebrations of the year. On the 12th, dozens of groups in elaborate matching costumes parade down the Avenida da Liberdade to compete in the , a tradition that dates back to 1932. Each  spends months rehearsing its own dance routine and original song, and they take the […]

June 10th is . Its full name is , and it marks the death of Luís de Camões in 1580. Camões is Portugal’s national poet, best known for his masterwork . The epic follows Vasco da Gama’s voyage to India, set against the wider story of . He worked on the poem over nearly two […]

On paper, ” (edit)] is a shovel. In everyday Portuguese conversation, it can be many things. Pá began as a shortened form of . It dropped most of its letters and picked up a set of uses all its own. Because it comes from rapaz, older speakers once used it to address men only. Now […]