The beautiful language of Portuguese has over 225M native speakers around the world.It's the official language of nine countries, including Brazil (208M), Portugal (10.8M), and Angola (29.3M). As part of the Indo-European language family, it shares familiar traits to those speaking other Romance languages, like Spanish, French, and Italian.

In addition, Portuguese is a mandatory foreign language to learn in several well-known countries like Uruguay, Argentina, Paraguay, and more. That means if you plan to travel to South America in the near future, it's a handy language to know.Whether you're deciding to learn Portuguese to travel, your personal interests or for your career, the first place to start is learning the most basic Portuguese words and phrases.

In today's article, we'll share with you what you absolutely must know as a beginner. Before you move on to grammar or sentence structures, we recommend becoming as familiar as possible with this.
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37 Basic Portuguese Words and Phrases For Complete Beginners
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Before we begin, we should remind you the benfits of learning the most common words in Portuguese.

Several studies have pointed out that when you learn the 100 most common words, you can understand up to 50% of text in Portuguese. This number goes up to around 85% when you learn 1,000 of the most common words.What does that mean?Instead of spending time on words that you'll likely never use in regular conversations, focus your valuable time on words you'll use the most.

Today's article will certainly cover some of the most basic words, but here is a useful resource if you want to learn all 1,000 of the most common Portuguese words.
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Simple Greetings in Portuguese

The start of any conversation whether you're speaking French, Chinese, or Portuguese, is greetings. While you do have to learn the individual greetings in Portuguese, the good news is, there's only so many ways to greet people.

1. How are you? - Tudo bem?

‍2. Bye! - Tchau

3. See you later! - Até logo!

4. See you tomorrow - Até amanhã

5. Good morning/afternoon/night Bom dia/Boa tarde/Boa noite

‍6. Hello -Olá

‍7. Hello (on the phone) - Alô (In Brazil) / Está lá (In Portugal)

‍8. What is your name? (formal; male) - Como o senhor se chama?

‍9. What is your name? (informal) - Qual é o seu nome?
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Showing Your Politeness

If you want to make a good first impression at a first date, family event, or workplace when speaking Portuguese, keep these important words in mind.

10. Thank you (for men) - (Muito) Obrigado

‍11. Thank you (for women) - (Muito) Obrigada

‍12. I'm sorry - Desculpe-me

‍13. You're welcome - ão há de quê.

‍14. Excuse me / Pardon - Com licença / Perdão.

‍15. Nice to meet you - Prazer em conhecê-lo

‍16. Please - Por favor
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Kickstart Conversation Questions

So you just met someone and you want to get a small conversation going. Hopefully it'll lead to a more interesting and deep relationship, but you have to start somewhere. Here's a simple guideline.

17. How are you? - Como vai?

‍18. Where are you from? - De onde você é?

‍19. What is your name? - Qual é o seu nome?

‍20. Do you speak English? - Você fala inglês? (Try not to use this unless you have to!)

21. What is happening? - O que aconteceu? (Useful if you're approaching someone at an event)
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Basic Responses to Questions

What happens when someone asks you a simple question while making small talk? Not to worry, it's likely they will ask you one of the following polite questions that you can answer with.

22. My name is - Me chamo...  (when someone asks you what your name is)

23. Same here - Igualmente (after someone says nice to meet you)

24. I am ____ years old - Eu tenho _____ anos

‍25. Very well - Muito bem (from 'how are you?')

26. I'm from... - En sou de...

‍27. I don't understand - Não compreendo

‍28. What is that? - O que é isto? (when someone explains something you don't know)

29. Please speak more slowly - Fale mais devagar, por favor
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Counting Portuguese Numbers

30. 1-10 in Portuguese:

• um (oong) (one)
• dois (doh-eez) (two)
• três (trehz) (three)
• quatro (kwah-troo) (four)
• cinco (sing-koh) (five)
• seis (say-eez)
• sete (seh-chee) (seven)
• oito (oh-ee-toh) (eight)
• nove (noh-vee) (nine)
• dez (dez) (ten)
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How to Use Portuguese When You're Traveling

31. What time is it? - Que horas são?

‍32. How much does this cost? - Quanto custa?

‍33. How do I get to... - Como chego ao (à)…

‍34. I need your help - Preciso de sua/tua ajuda
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Other Important Words and Phrases to Know

35. How do you say ... in Portuguese? - Como se diz… em Português?

‍36. Do you speak English? - Fala inglês?‍

37. What's your [Email/Instagram/Facebook]? - Qual é o seu [E-mail/Instagram/Facebook]? (when asking out a special lady or man)
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How to Use these Basic Portuguese Words and Phrases

Congrats for making it to the end of our list!

We intended this to be a short list on purpose because we know how overwhelming it must get when you try to go beyond this number. In fact, we recommend you start with the top 5 basic Portuguese words that you find most valuable. From there, move on to 10 words, then 15, then 20, and so on.

Build the initial confidence you need by starting small, and you'll be able to memorize all 37 words in no time.

Most importantly, make sure you put yourself in positions to actually use these words and phrases in real life!