WHY DON’T YOU KNOW BRAZILIAN PORTUGUESE?

Added: 2026-06-04

[00:00:00]He's going to Brazil.

[00:00:01]>> Good thing I learned Spanish. He is not ready. And unless you watch this video, neither are you. Today, I'm handing you the ultimate blueprint to Brazilian Portuguese, covering everything from grammar to profanity. You know where we're going.

[00:00:17]So, fellas, how many accents does Brazilian Portuguese have?

[00:00:21]>> Too many.

[00:00:23]>> Way too many. In order to keep this video neutral and to stop myself from glazing my personal favorites, we're going to be following the media accent.

[00:00:31]It's a madeup neutral register used for important things like announcing the news or dubbing jiu-jitsu kaisen or dubbing Dragon Ball or D. We're starting with the letter R because it has the most regional variation. In rural S Paulo, it can sound American. In Hugh, it sounds French. And in the south, they trill it. But back to the quote unquote standard accent. At the start of a word or when doubled, it's a huge janeeru. In consonant clusters or between vowels, it's a tap. Brazil. If it's at the end of a word, just drop it. Fa.

[00:01:02]>> So, what sound does H make then?

[00:01:04]>> Yamcha asked stupidly.

[00:01:06]>> H doesn't make any sound, silly. That's what R's for. Instead, it's more of a combo piece. Son, son, filia. You might recognize those sounds from Spanish and Italian. And since we're drawing parallels between Portuguese and other romance languages, just like in French, Portuguese spelling is about 500 years old. Old spellings and letters made redundant by linguistic evolution were kept for cultural reasons. And before you start whining, remember English spelling is a lot worse. Also for cultural reasons. How about we play a game? What sound does the letter she make? Shikurimui.

[00:01:56]Did you guess four different ones?

[00:01:58]Because if you did, you win. But if you didn't, yeah, you're going to have to learn it on a casebyase basis. Speaking of letters, suffering from a long-term personality disorder, Cesadilia is fine.

[00:02:10]It's easy. It's always a voiceless S sound.

[00:02:14]The problem is regular S. It's the S in the Kaza in Koopa. Wait, wait, rewind.

[00:02:22]Wait a minute. In Portuguese, the letter Z makes a Z sound, which is actually unusual for romance languages. And yet, the word kaza is spelled with an S.

[00:02:32]That's because it's voiced if it's between two vowels or if it's followed by any of the nasal consonants.

[00:02:39]If a syllable ends in L, it becomes a W, like in Brazil or Michael.

[00:02:47]Portuguese words can end in any vowel, but only a very limited number of consonants. But given how pervasive English has become, native speakers often have to use lone words that end in different consonants from the ones they're used to. So what they usually do is add a very short e sound at the end.

[00:03:04]Oh, so that means internet is pronounced as internet. Some people say it that way, but the more common version is integi because if these three letters are followed by e, they turn into chi gi.

[00:03:16]Brazilian Portuguese has seven regular vowels. That's the reason for those two different stress markers. Those are not the same sounds. Avo stress markers also exist due to vowel reduction. Thank god this only applies to these three letters. GU lech kazu. To draw parallels, we have a dumber version of this in English. We don't care what the original vowel is. If it's unstressed, it gets turned into uh about banana.

[00:03:48]Problem, huh, that wasn't so bad. What's next? Nasal vowels.

[00:03:55]People notice the tilda and they think, "Ah, those must be the nasal vowels."

[00:03:59]What? You think there's only two?

[00:04:02]If a vowel is followed by an N or an M at the end of a syllable, it becomes nasalized. See, bam, boom. Now, for these two bad boys, they're used to write what is called a nasal dip thong, but I personally prefer to call it a mindbreaking pronunciation experience.

[00:04:21]>> Doctor, what's wrong with him? He's got a lethal case of the Portugitis.

[00:04:26]Ooh, it's the Brazilian variety. In Brazil, the spoken language and the written standard have diverged significantly. You've got diglossia. And while I think the spoken language is fundamentally all you're ever going to need, sadly, this is the grammar section, and I'm obliged to at least make you partially literate. Following a long-standing romance language tradition, Portuguese demands that everything from living beings to chairs be gendered. This is the definite article for your hyper masculine muscle pumping objects like the pillow and this for the beautiful delicate spoons in your life. Usually looking at a noun's ending will tell you its gender. This rule does not apply to certain body parts, abstract concepts, and loan words. If you want to pluralize a word, all you have to do is add an s at the end. And speaking of putting things behind other things, adjectives usually come after the noun, but they can go in front of it as well. However, that changes their meaning and focus. It can be the difference between demonstrating empathy, that poor guy, and commenting on someone's economic status. That guy's poor. Realistically speaking, this stuff takes one afternoon to learn. The verbs, on the other hand, will take you approximately the rest of your life.

[00:05:39]Yeah, you think you know everything. Oh, romance languages conjugate a lot. You know what a personal infinitive is? In almost every single Indo-Uropean language, the infinitive is the dictionary form of the verb because it's the one that never changes. Do you know what Portuguese speakers did to it? They conjugated it by person. Mr. President, they uh conjugated the infinitive. Well, it's used mostly after impersonal phrases and prepositions, which doesn't sound that bad, but you're forgetting something. You have to contend with a hundred more. All conjugated for six grammatical persons. We're starting our conjugation marathon with the present and future tenses. But at least I don't have to explain those to you. Do I? Then the three past tenses that have their own conjugations. The imperfect is used to describe actions that were ongoing in the past. The perfect is used for actions that happened and finished in the past. And the pl perfect is for things that were completed before another past event. What the I wonder what the conditional does. But don't get ahead of yourself. You can't use this to talk about hypothetical scenarios. To express that, plus any feelings and opinions you might be having, you're going to have to use the subjunctive mood, which also has three tenses, and they're all used.

[00:06:56]No, not really. To speak, you only really need to know three verb forms.

[00:07:02]Those for the first person and those for the third person, singular and plural.

[00:07:06]Why? because du andvos got replaced by van says which function like second person pronouns but use third person conjugations. Now technically it is better if you know how to conjugate for the first person plural nos. However, if you don't want to, you can replace it entirely with ai which uses third person singular pronouns and literally means the people. And after that nightmarish emotional roller coaster, I'm sure that the people want the profanity segment.

[00:07:35]Portuguese differs from some of its romance peers because its most severe profanity is not blasphemous, but instead culation related. Uh, no blasphemy. That must mean Portuguese has weak insults.

[00:07:51]First, we start with the sticks. And yes, they refer to exactly the type of wood you're thinking of, with this one in particular being the most popular branch. Feel free to exclaim it when you're having a good time, a bad time, or especially when you're hurt.

[00:08:09]This exemplar here is the disgusting liquid byproduct of the aforementioned appendages turned exclamations.

[00:08:16]One evening, I was scrolling the internet for Dragon Ball Z clips to use as B-roll for these exact videos when I stumbled onto a cartoon with no fighting in it. Ew. But its protagonist caught my Portuguese-speaking eye.

[00:08:30]Well, you see this name can be broken down with the right kind of pattern recognition with ta meaning to be, bondu meaning to give and kun sounding awfully close to coup which means but so it literally translates to he is giving ass.

[00:08:46]Speaking of the rear, this is the standard scatological exclamation that comes pre-installed with every romance language along with the verb describing its excision.

[00:08:56]In Portugal, this is nothing more than an innocent fox. But in Brazil, it's the literal human spawn point. Now, how do I say this? Put second box. Boom. And now you know how people are made. As for my personal favorite, it's the exclamation.

[00:09:11]And I translate the lady of the night gave birth.

[00:09:18]First, an honest thank you from yours truly for liking, commenting, hyping, and subscribing if you've done so.

[00:09:25]Second, there may be a new video coming out as early as next week. However, that depends on if I finish it on time. But on the 13th of June, you're definitely getting the French special, which sounds kind of inappropriate now that I repeat it to myself. Either way, I've been your host, Plasticine Hart, and uh start learning languages now.