Can I use a translator?
But if you’re just starting, a translator is almost unavoidable. However, personally, I advise you to “acquire” language in context. You can achieve this by using comprehensible input methods in Portuguese. Learning greetings is something you will pick up naturally, as it’s the first thing you say in every situation.
Your First Sentences in Portuguese – Overview
But to give you some tangible structure, let’s start with an overview of how to exchange greetings. Portuguese people use the expressions Bom dia, Boa Tarde and Boa Noite both when saying hello and goodbye. It’s also very common to combine these with “olá” (hello) and “adeus” (goodbye) at the same time. Let’s have a look at the very basics of these greetings:
A few details
Portuguese has grammatical gender (feminine and masculine). This means that nouns (names) and almost all words will change accordingly depending on the gender of the noun. To explain what I mean, let’s look at the greetings again. “dia” actually means “day”, and it’s a masculine word. That’s why we say “bom” and not “boa“. In terms of pronunciation of “bom”, the word ends in the letter “m”, so that means the sound is nasal and we don’t close our lips at the end of the sound like you would in English. Please refer to the video attached to this lesson for a more detailed demonstration of the sounds. So, going back to the meaning, you’re literally saying “Good Day” in fact.
Then we had “good afternoon” and “good evening/night”.
“tarde” and “noite” are both feminine words, so the word for “good” is feminine also – which is “boa”.
Secondly, both can mean “evening”. Which one you use will be determined by the time of day and whether the sun is still up or not. For example: if it’s 6 pm and it’s still light, you would say “Boa tarde” for“Good evening”. But on shorter days, it can be dark by 6 pm, and therefore you would use “Boa Noite” for “Good evening”
Finally, regarding the word “Adeus”, what you are literally saying is “to God” (a Deus).
Formality in Greetings
In Portuguese, there are two main forms of speech. One is informal, and the other is formal. This is important to know as you will come across it everywhere. Nowadays, this has less to do with distancing or social hierarchy and more with the level of intimacy you have with the person you’re interacting with. The more intimate, the more informal; the less intimate, the more formal. Aside from the different forms of address and titles, the way this is expressed is through the verb endings.
“tu” verb endings for informal speech and “ele/ela” verb endings for formal speech.
How are you?
“como” means “how” and, just like in English, it’s used in the sentence “how are you?”. And this is a good example of the formality levels in use. So, before you learn how to ask someone how they are, you need to understand the social situation you’re in.
- Are you out with Portuguese friends? (informal)
- Are you saying hello to your neighbour? (semi-formal)
- Are you meeting a solicitor or an estate agent? (formal)
If it’s the first scenario, then you’re likely at the “Tu” level, which is informal, so:
If it’s the second one, you’ll likely be at the “você” level, so:
And if it’s closer to the third scenario – I call this the “o senhor” level, then it’s also:
Maybe you noticed that we didn’t use any pronouns (words for “you”). And that the only difference was the “s” and the end of “are” in the “tu” level. The form “estão”(plural) never changed when we were speaking to more than one person on any of the levels. If you did, then well done! That’s how you make your speech informal or formal by changing the ending of the verb. If you didn’t, no bother! This is rather alien from the perspective of an English speaker, for instance. And takes a little getting used to. The key is to look for and listen to this in conversation. And don’t panic! I’ll help you with this 😀
Where does “you” go?
If you’re curious as to why the word “you” wasn’t there, it’s because Portuguese is a null-subject language (scary sounding, I know!!). This simply means that in Portuguese, you can actually not use the word for “you” or “I” (etc) at all and still have a complete sentence. This is something you’ll pick up on naturally as you move forward.
If you want to learn more about the levels of formality, I wrote this post for you over here.
Let’s continue with some more informal greetings
Some Very Informal Greetings 😀
Tás bom? /Tás boa? (“You good?”) This is very informal! “tás” is short for “estás”. So it’s like you’re saying “you good?” instead of “are you well/good?”
Related Post for Further Reading
- Beginner Survival Sentences
- Etiquette and Good Manners in Portugal
- Portuguese Greetings: To Kiss or Not to Kiss?
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