Have you ever wandered the streets of Portugal, and stumbled upon a billboard or advert, only to find yourself scratching your head at its message? What does it mean? Fret not! I’m here to demystify those linguistic puzzles that leave you reaching for the dictionary or bewildered by online translations.
The images below are submissions made by other learners or snaps I’ve taken during my day. Please if you have one you’d like me to cover email me!
Billboards
These huge signs called “outdoors” in Portuguese always sport publicity or political announcements. Some are easier to get than others, let’s see:
Here are some political tit-for-tat canvassing billboards I found online (image from 2021).
The one on the left side says:
The one on the right side says:
This next one is more of a bullet-point advert, so that’s why there are no prepositions or articles.
A complete sentence with propositions are articles could look like this:
In the following billboard, the local municipality is trying to incentivise people the shop locally and promote the local economy. The placement is near the big shopping centre in town.
a baixa of a place means downtown. In this case, Baixa de Tavira is also an association with the above goal in mind – to promote local businesses.
All verbs are in the command tense:
promova – promover (to promote)
compre – comprar (to buy)
desfrute – desfrutar (to enjoy)
Publicity Puns
Some companies like to use clever puns to advertise their products. Good or bad, they exist and can create confusion or lack of comprehension for language learners. Portuguese is no exception. Here are three puns I saw recently. Did you get them?
The word nobre means “noble” as in aristocrat or something or someone that is noble like a “noble cause” or “noble gas” etc. It also is the name of a Portuguese brand of tinned sausages and packaged ham and therein lies the pun. So their slogan reads “Doing it with gusto/pleasure is noble”.
In this one, we have a small dialogue between two men who say:
Velhotes means old men/people. It also means “my folks/parents” in a conversational way.
The feminine is velhota for old lady.
I don’t know if this was on purpose but, cinto and sinto are homophones, so they are both pronounced the same way but with different meanings.
Sinto means “I feel” and cinto means “belt”.
I had to laugh when I saw this next one! And it needs some explaining for it to make sense in English. So, we have a Christmas dessert here called Tronco de Natal (Christmas yule log/”trunk”) and the word for torso is also tronco (trunk”).
So this television channel (Canal Hollywood – a film/movie channel) made this pun:
And on the bottom, it says:
Slogans
Sometimes you’ll come across slogans or sentences used in publicity and you’re unsure of what they mean. Below are a few of these.
“Life is made of choices” – okay, this one is self-explanatory but I still wanted to include it. Saúde!
This one says:
Encha comes from the verb “encher” (to fill) and is in the imperative tense (command tense)
Ezvaziar is in the personal infinitive tense due to the trigger “sem“(without).
This one belongs to an air-conditioning company when they had a campaign going on for anyone who would invest in their units would get 200€ back if one participated in their online pass time.
Another supermarket slogan reads “At your side with the best prices”.
ao lado means to the side or beside
melhores is plural here because the words preços is also plural.
There were a few images from around and about Portugal with slogans and sentences that may leave you thinking What does it mean? Do you have one to send me? I’d love to see it! Email it to me now.