A customer visits an electronics store to purchase some accessories for his laptop.

Sometimes comfort is found in unexpected places!

Então is one of those words that seems to fit almost anywhere in a Portuguese conversation. It can help you greet someone, keep a story moving, fill a pause, wrap things up, or even tell someone off!

Say these words out loud: queque, bife, lanche. Do they sound oddly familiar? Cake? Beef? Lunch? Portuguese has borrowed plenty of words from English. Many recent arrivals, like smartphone or online, kept their English spelling when they moved to Portugal. Others adapted to their new home with a Portuguese makeover: a new accent, a new […]

Ana and Rodrigo have a candid conversation about societal expectations and the pros and cons of parenthood.

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 […]

Details matter! These groups of “minimal pairs” help tune your ears to native Portuguese pronunciation. How many words can you identify correctly?

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 […]

Count to 20 in European Portuguese: slowly, then fast!

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 […]

A woman calls a plumber to fix a dripping tap in her bathroom, then leaves a voicemail for her husband to update him on the situation.

We asked people on the streets of Lisbon what they think about Portugal’s minimum wage and whether it’s enough to live on. Features vocabulary around wages, cost of living, and housing, and common expressions for expressing opinions. Note: This was filmed before Portugal’s 2026 minimum wage update — as of January 2026 the minimum wage […]

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 […]

After spotting their neighbour at a café across the street, Helena and Filipa get a bit nosy.

Who were the Lusitanians?