Amazon Language - the Portuguese of Brazil

Portuguese is a latin-dervied romance language, ranked seventh in the list of the world´s most-spoken languages. Although most people associate Latin America with Spanish, in fact Portuguese is spoken by over 50% of the population of Latin America, owing to the size of the only Portuguese-speaking country, Brazil. Brazilian Portuguese is different to European Portuguese in much the same way that American English differs from British English.

In the Amazon, Portuguese has been influenced strongly by native Indian languages, notably Tupi-Guarani, and thus many place names and the names of birds and animals are indian-derived.  The practical impact of this for the visitor is that some of the rules learnt regarding Portuguese may not always apply - so it´s worth remembering when you see what looks like a complex collection of vowels and consonants, that the word may be a native one. Happily, these words are often obvious, once you´ve got any sort of familiarity with Portuguese - take Itacoatiara, Puraquequara, pirarucu, tambaqui (placename, placename, fish name, fish name), for example - and can then be treated with caution. In cany case, most people coming to Manaus are not going to learn Portuguese. Ever. Nonetheless, there are a few really simple rules you should know which will make life a lot easier. A tiny effort on your part will bring you a big return. So here goes:

1. Vowels in Portuguese are generally there for a good reason, and are pronounced much more often/distinctly than in English. So for example geografia is pronounced gee-aw-gra-fee-a. And quite right too.   Initial R is pronounced as an H. So it’s not Rio Negro, it’s Hee-o Negro. The road your hotel is on is not a Rua, it’s a Hoo-a. And the country’s currency is (please!) the Hay-al (it might help to imagine saying hello to your friend Al), not the Real. There are no exceptions. Not ever.  

2. Double rr’s in the middle of a word are also pronounced H, but all other r’s are pronounced like an English r. So, for example, the name of the state of Roraima is pronounced Haw-raima, while the word for car - carro - is pronounced  cah-ho.  

3. Thank you - men say obrigado; women say obrigada. They just do.  

Below are a few other useful words, and if anyone would like to suggest more, we´ll include them if they´re simple and straightforward (we don´t want to become a language site!)

You might also like to remember the rule that most words in Portuguese have the stress on the LAST BUT ONE syllable, unless a syllable has an accent, in which case the stress is on the accented syllable. There are quite a few exceptions (indigenous words - see above, words ending in r or l, for example), but it will help you maybe 70% of the time, and give you a fighting chance of communicating the names of people and places and things.

There is a large and growing entry at the Wikipedia site, which is extremely informative - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilian_Portuguese  - and if you are thinking about buying some study books on Portuguese, make sure they cover Brazilian Portuguese - it´s grammatically easier, and in some cases is also easier to pronounce.

There is also now a great resource specifically for Brazilian Portuguese at Sonia Althoff´s site, www.sonia-portuguese.com. Apart from a nice website with tips on things like pronunciation,  grammar and slang, you can also buy Sonia´s book and CD course. Well worth having a look.