Learn by Breaking down Brazilian Portuguese

In my Street Smart Brazil blog posts over the years, I’ve mentioned several times the personal importance of having translated word for word from newspaper articles when I was in the midst of learning Brazilian Portuguese. One thing I’ve never done here is to show what that actually means, and luckily, I once considered doing a series of posts on my old blog to demonstrate my method…therefore I have a single example to show above.

The reaction when polling my audience was a very positive one, as they all loved the idea. For some reason, I didn’t follow through with more at the time, but perhaps I should have! As can be seen in the picture, I took a random headline from a Brazilian newspaper and then broke it down in all the ways I could think of. While I didn’t create displays like the one above in the early days, the basic process is the same, only I’d study entire articles rather than just the headline.

Let’s take a second example with a random, more current story, from O Globo on September 2nd, and break it down, in words only and by leaving out anything too simple (ie, jeans).

Title: “Ser mordomo está em alta, até mesmo de jeans e camiseta.”

Translation: “Being a butler is in demand, even wearing jeans and a t-shirt.”

Literally: “To be butler is booming (“is in high”), even in jeans and t-shirt.”

Vocabulary:

• Mordomo – butler, head servant, steward
• Até + mesmo – even (emphasized)
• Camiseta – t-shirt

Verbs/Phrases:

• Estar em alta – to be in demand, to be booming, to be higher than before
• De (+ clothes) – to be wearing something (see this post on Estar+De)

As can be seen, with Brazilian Portuguese verb and word reference materials, plus a little gumption in some cases, anyone can do the same! If you feel comfortable with this translation exercise, I suggest giving it a go…even if you don’t feel prepared, I’d still suggest trying it and seeing how far you get.