Learn Brazilian Portuguese from the Headlines

Using headlines, as I’ve shown before in a previous article, is a good way to improve your Brazilian Portuguese. Doing exercises, such as the one I’ve created below, on a regular basis can really help you progress in several areas at once. Additionally, with a thesaurus by your side, skimming of similar words can prep your brain for future vocabulary expansion.

In fact, I used to take the thesaurus thing a bit too far and worry myself with trying to learn all the extra words related to the one I was learning. It turns out some were obscure or unused in most daily conversations, thus why I suggest you merely skim the thesaurus.

Here is an example of how you can learn Brazilian Portuguese from the headlines:

Headline: Robô disfarçado de bebê pinguim ajuda pesquisadores [1] Translation: Disguised baby robot penguin helps researchers

Nouns

Robô – Robot
Bebê – Baby
Pinguim – Penguin
Pesquisador – Researcher

Looking at the nouns, two words jump out at me due to there being other words which could take their place. A direct alternative for bebê is neném, while a word similar to pesquisador is investigador. The suffix of -dor in these last two words, by the way, references a person who does what comes in the word before (ie, pesquisa and investiga).

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Verbs

Disfarçar – To disguise
Ajudar – To help

It’s also good to remember that disfarçar can be applied to the act of hiding one’s emotions. For ex. Ele tentou disfarçar a emoção. = He tried to hide his emotions.

You can customize your exercise to learn whatever you want to learn. It is very useful to practice verb tenses.

At Street Smart Brazil we have a great library of class materials that come from the news. Book a Trial Lesson to see how we can help you speak Portuguese comfortably.

The video below is in English; it if just for your enjoyment watching the cute penguins 😉