Street Smart Brazil

We teach smart Portuguese

Archives for September 2013

  "You become rich when you aren't paying attention" - Kevin O'Leary, aka Mr. Wonderful, from the TV show Shark Tank   I saw a few short talks online given by the cash-loving panel member of the hit show Shark Tank and the phrase above made an impression on me. I've made the most money in Read More

Street Smart Brazil is proud to sponsor the amazing event: SENSUAL JOURNEY TO BRAZIL, AN EXUBERANT WEEKEND OF DANCE, WELLNESS AND FUN, OCT. 18, 19 & 20, 2013. Instructors are Alfred Kendrick (Shakira, Rihanna, Grammys), Vanessa Isaac (Director of Hip Brazil), Autumn Phillips (Circus du Soleil, Read More

, Walk into any Brazilian market in the US or any department store in Brazil and you’ll likely be confronted with a rack along the walkway full of concert DVDs. In fact, if you enter Brazilian homes and look at their DVD collection, you’ll find out that most are not films, but rather filmed Read More

Professora Tatiana sent me a job description today: "Google is looking for a professional who can speak and write in English, Portuguese, and Spanish fluently and idiomatically.” The post got Tatiana’s attention because of the explicit mention to “idiomatically.” I founded Street Smart Brazil in Read More

I'm currently learning a new language, only it's not the kind that I can speak (or use hand signs with). What I'm learning is a programming language which I'll use later to build apps for smartphones. Like all languages, I find that it's equally important to know what to learn as it is to know Read More

For as long as I've been interested in Brazil, I've usually had something physical on me or near me that reminds me of the country. In the early days, it was merely a few stickers of the flag on my university binders and, at other times, there were various keychains of the shape of the country or, Read More

In Brazilian Portuguese, there’s a noun called a palavra-ônibus (literally, word-bus) which is a linguistic term that covers colloquial words that “have many meanings, or that are used to express various vague ideas, in different situations”. Some examples are legal, bacana, troço, and coisa, among Read More

In recent years, Hollywood has been taking a greater interest in Brazilian-born talent. While none of the Brazilian actors or actresses have seen their US careers take off yet, their presence on the big screens is pretty consistent. One actor and one actress stand out from the crowd. Rodrigo Read More

I recently read an interesting study: Viewing images that remind you of your home country can decrease your fluency in the foreign language you are learning. The study was done with Chinese students who were living in the US and learning English. When those students were speaking English while Read More