What’s the difference between European and Brazilian Portuguese?
Portugueses imitando sotaque brasileiro na conversa do dia a dia
A2 Portuguese listening practice · European Portuguese · Picked for people who know a little
European and Brazilian Portuguese split on a single word: tu vs. você. In this clip, a Portuguese speaker imitates the Brazilian way of saying “tua mãe deixa?” (“does your mom let you?”), using tua (informal “your”) plus the Brazilian-style preposition na instead of à. In standard European Portuguese the same question lands as “a tua mãe deixa-te?” with the clitic pronoun attached and a different preposition.
This split is the single fastest way Portuguese speakers identify each other across the Atlantic. Brazilians collapse a lot of the European preposition system; Europeans keep clitic pronouns the Brazilians have mostly dropped. “Portuguese” is really two grammars sharing a name.
How common are the words?
How common are the words in this A2 Portuguese listening practice video?
How common in written Portuguese
How common in spoken Portuguese
Harder words in this video
These words are harder than A2. Here is what they mean.
Source: HermitDave OpenSubtitles 2018 (pt-PT) (general) · OpenSubtitles 2018 (HermitDave, pt-PT) (spoken). These numbers are close, not perfect.
- ▸In Portuguese reaction videos to Brazilian content (and vice versa)
- ▸In Lisbon and Porto when locals tease Brazilian tourists about pronouns
- ▸In Brazilian-Portuguese workplace conversations in Lisbon
- ▸In pan-Portuguese podcasts that highlight the split (Conversa Estrangeira, etc.)
- ▸In any Portuguese language class that compares EP/BP. A perennial discussion topic