How different is Brazilian Portuguese and European Portuguese?

I am from São Paulo, Brazil and I was 18 when I first traveled abroad for the first time. The destination? Portugal. Although at that time I was already pursuing a degree in Linguistics, I had no idea how different Brazilian and European Portuguese were. I believed the differences boiled down to different words and that was it. All I knew was what I’ve heard my whole life when someone used to tell a joke about the Portuguese. Simple words like:

Bicha* (pt-pt) = Fila (br-pt) [Line]

Cacetinho* (pt-pt) = Pão (br-pt) [Bread]

If you are Brazilian or if you know enough Portuguese, you are aware that these pairs of words have completely different (and some negative) meanings.

While getting everything ready for my trip, I didn’t worry too much about not being able to understand the people or to be understood. After all, it was the same language. However, the first time I communicated with a European Portuguese speaker in person I had a hard time processing some of the words. Even though 99% of them were exactly the same as in Brazilian Portuguese, they sounded way too different in European Portuguese. You’ve probably heard someone said that we, Brazilians, sound like we are singing when we talk. That’s because some of our vowels are pronounced in a more open way than in European Portuguese. And believe me, that makes a lot of difference in the pronunciation.

Take the word começar for example, which in European Portuguese would be phonetically transcribed as ku.mɨ.sˈaɾ as opposed to ko.me.sˈa in Brazilian Portuguese. (Lisbon and São Paulo standards).

Another difference in terms of sounds is the final “L” in a word like mel (honey). In Brazilian Portuguese, we pronounce the final “L” like the sound of the vowel “u” in Portuguese instead of doing the velarization of the letter L. You can listen to this difference here if you are interested.

How about the lexical differences? Here are some of them:

In Brazil, we call a tape (like a scotch tape) durex. Guess what is the meaning of it in Portugal…: condom! Now, imagine going to a stationary store and asking for durex. A little awkward, huh? That didn’t happen to me, but to one of my friends (and I am sure she was not the only one).

There’s also words like:

• Carona (br-pt) = boleia (pt-pt) [a ride]
• Trem (br-pt) = comboio (pt-pt) [train]
• Ponto de ônibus (br-pt) = paragem (pt-pt) [bus stop]

At the end of my stay, I didn’t even bother being called a rapariga anymore…(Rapariga in pt-pt simply means a young girl. In br-pt it has a pejorative meaning which can be compared to b**ch in English).

This is just the tip of the iceberg. I will leave the grammatical differences for another day…

Thanks for reading and share your language stories :D

*Bicha in Brazil is a pejorative term used to refer to gays. Cacetinho is derived from “cacete”, which can be used as a negative interjection or to refer to the male organ.