Idiomatic Expressions

When studying another language, one opens himself to a new universe in terms of communication and culture. I usually tell my students that languages are like alive amalgams which reveal a lot about the way an specific group of people who speak this or that language think. Languages live and transform themselves daily.... and transform the people who speak that language. They reveal a lot about certain peoples’ thoughts and ways of establishing relations with the others.


What Portuguese do we speak in Brazil ?

Portuguese is the official language in Brazil , but there are many languages which are spoken here, such as Guarani and Tupi. There are over 290 distinct Indian populations in Brazil , who speak different languages, or variations of a main linguistic basis, and who have influenced our language. Some African idioms, such as yorubá, have also contributed to amalgamate the Brazilian-Portuguese language.  

Such conditions reveal a great number of differences and peculiarities about what one could call the ‘Brazilian Language”. Our culture is known for its great diversity, and what in fact makes the Brazilian people is our undeniable mixture: we are partly Indians, partly Africans, partly Europeans, partly Asiatic… This irrefutable truth is also very noticeable in our language and idiomatic expressions.

An idiomatic expression may find a correlative meaning in the plan of ideas, but not in the plan of structure. Therefore one finds no use in literal translation of an idiomatic expression. We have listed some common and widely used expressions trying to avoid regionalisms, so than you can make yourself understood in any place you go in Brazil .

Cheers! Miguel de Rogates, Silvia Nogueira e Tania Nogueira