"From Spanish to Portuguese"
by University of Arizona Associate Professor of History Bert J. Barickman
Dr. Barickman was a historian of Brazil and modern Latin America at the University of Arizona from 2009 until he passed away in November 2017. His graduate colloquium in Brazilian history was extremely rigorous, engaging, creative, and fun. Each year the course ended with a public singing competition between students on the River team (the Ypiranga River) and the Hill team (the Sacred Hill of the Senhor do Bonfim). On the day of the competition, always at the No Anchovies bar in Tucson near campus, River performed the Brazilian national anthem and Hill sang the anthem for the Senhor do Bonfim. Course alumni served as judges and those who could not be there in person Skyped in or watched a live stream of the event. Students designed costumes, played musical instruments, and - as demanded by Bert - received fierce messages of encouragement by past team members.
Much of the course material was in Portuguese and because most students who took the class were more used to Spanish, Bert prepared an incredibly detailed guide to help them with vocabulary and grammar. His guide is below, lightly edited for online readability.
-Erika Korowin, former MIT-Chile Program Manager and Hill '07
Much of the course material was in Portuguese and because most students who took the class were more used to Spanish, Bert prepared an incredibly detailed guide to help them with vocabulary and grammar. His guide is below, lightly edited for online readability.
-Erika Korowin, former MIT-Chile Program Manager and Hill '07
If you are working from Spanish to Portuguese, then you will be able to rely a large number of cognates or close cognates for vocabulary. Not always, of course; some cognates have very different meanings. (e.g., oficina means workshop (Sp., taller); the Portuguese word for office is escritório or, in some cases, sala (i.e., university instructors do not have, on campus, escritórios; they have salas.)
Consonants
ch/ll and lh/ll: Some cognates may not always be immediately recognizable – at least not at first. For example, “chave,” “chuva,” and “chamar” correspond to “llave.” “lluvia,”and “llamar”. “Filho,” “alho,” “baixo,” and “fazer” correspond to “hijo,” “ajo,” “bajo,” and “hacer.”
f/h: A more or less safe bet is if you run across a word beginning with “f” and do not recognize it, it may very well be an “h” in Spanish. (e.g., fazer = hacer, fada = hada; ferro = hierro) (see the alternative pronunciation / spelling “fierro.”).
x/j: Likewise, an “x” in a Portuguese word that you do not recognize may very well correspond to a “j” in Spanish.
r/l: Children in English sometimes confuse ls with rs. That same confusion historically helped shape modern Portuguese – at least where l combined with other consonants.
Vowels
e/ie and o/ue: The very common Spanish diphthongs ie and ue more often than not correspond to e and o in Portuguese. (e.g. pensa = Span. piensa; dorme = Span. duerme; bom = Span., bueno; bem = Span. bien; posto = Span. puesto; festa = Span. fiesta). This really should not cause you any problem at all if you think about the matter. In Spanish, ie and ue are themselves closely linked to e and o. For example, it is piensa, but the infinitive is pensar; it is duerme, but the infinitive is dormir; it is fiesta, but the adjective is festivo (festivo, pensar, dormir are exactly the same in Portuguese).
-ão/-ón, -ção/-ción, -ães/-anes, and -ções/-ciones: Quickly enough, you will get used to the endings “-ção” and “-ções,” which usually correspond to “-ción”and “-ciones” and to the endings “-ão,” “-ões,” and “-ães,” which, more often than not correspond to the endings “-ón,” (or “-án”) “-ones,” and “-anes.” Eg., “alemão,” “alemães” = “alemán,” “alemanes.”
ç/z or ci: Likewise, you will quickly get use to the “c cedilla” [i.e. “ç,” with the hook or cedilla to give the “c” a soft “s” sound before an “a,” “o” or “u”], which once existed in Spanish and still exists in English in a handful of words incorporated from French (e.g. “façade”]. It often corresponds to “z” or “ci” in modern Spanish.
m/n: Words that end in n (including some conjugated verbs) in Spanish often end in m. (e.g. fim = Span. fin; cantam = Span. cantan). But, in the case of nouns, a final m, when an s is added to indicate a plural, becomes an n. So fim (sing.) becomes fins (plural).
-vel/-ble, -veis/bles, and the disappearing l: Also note the suffix -vel (preceded by an accented vowel), which corresponds to -ble in both English and Spanish. So, possível responsável, reversível, provável (probable), notável, descartável, etc. A closely related matter: the plural forms of possível, responsável, etc. are possíveis, responsáveis, etc. Note the disappearance of the l. All words ending in l lose the l in the plural. (Apparently the only exception is gol, which is gols in the plural).
Here, in beginning to get used to such forms, it might be helpful to go back to the Spanish words azul and carnaval, which in the singular are spelled exactly the same way in Portuguese. The plural forms of those words in Spanish are azules and carnavales. Drop the l from the Spanish plural and you get azues and carnavaes, both of which are nearly identical to the modern Portuguese plural forms for azul (in Portuguese) and carnaval (in Portuguese): azuis and carnavais. In fact, until the orthographic reforms of the early 1940s, the plurals of carnaval, azul, and similarly words ended with -es.
The same disappearing l also shows up in the plural forms of cascavel (rattlesnake; Span.= cascabel), sutil (subtle; Span. = sutil), and útil (useful; Span.= útil), which are, respectively, cascavéis, sutis, and úteis.
Note the difference in the last two examples: sutil becomes sutis and útil becomes úteis. The difference has to do with stress. (The plural of sutil, which ends simply in -is, merely suppresses the double ii what could be an ending in -iis.) In any event, if you run across a plural noun or adjective ending in -is, keeping in mind that there may be an l at the singular form will get you back to the Spanish.
h: Words in Portuguese can begin with the letter h. (e.g., humano, história, honra, haver, etc.) But, except in the combinations lh (which corresponds roughly to the Spanish ll) and nh (which corresponds roughly to the Spanish ñ), Portuguese does not allow hs in the middle of words. (Recall that in Spanish those hs, like all hs, are silent.)
So, in some cases, adding an h will get you to the Spanish cognate.
Where you are most likely to run into recurring difficulties is with contractions. Contractions exist in Spanish (e.g., “del” and “al”), but there are far more contractions in Portuguese; some of them are easily misread by Spanish-speakers. A number of very common prepositions form contractions with definite and indefinite articles, 3d-person pronouns, and demonstrative pronouns (or adjectives). In what follows, I list, first, definite article, 3d-person pronouns, demonstrative pronouns, and indefinite articles. After that come the contractions.
Definite articles: o (masc. sing. = el), os (masc. plural = los), a (fem. sing. = la), as (fem. plural = las). (Also serve as the most common form of the 3d direct object pronouns.)
Personal pronouns (3d person): ele (= él), ela ( = ella), eles (= ellos), elas (= ellas).
Demonstrative pronouns and pronominal adjectives:
Indefinite articles: um (masc. sing. = un); uns (masc. plural = unos); uma (fem. sing. = una), umas (fem. plural = unas).
Contractions:
Other common sources of confusion:
Also note:
Neuter forms of demonstrative pronouns etc.: Spanish has neuter forms of demonstrative pronouns: aquello (that, that thing), eso, esto. Portuguese also has equivalent neuter forms of demonstrative pronouns: aquilo, isso, isto. Note that the neuter forms of the demonstrative pronouns, like demonstrative adjectives and masculine and feminine forms of the demonstrative pronoun, combine with de and em to form contractions:
Basic “sentence-building” and “working” words: In some cases, such words have nearly identical forms in Spanish and hence present no problems; e.g., também (= también), já (= ya), nunca (= nunca), etc. But, in a number of other cases, the Portuguese words differ radically from their Spanish equivalents; e.g., ninguém (= nadie), ainda (= aún, todavía), até (= hasta, aun), embora (=aunque), etc. There is no way round learning such words as fast as possible since misreading them could easily lead to a very faulty interpretation of a particular sentence or even of an author’s argument.
Orthography: For all practical purposes, what is currently the modern standardized Spanish orthography now in use, including the use of accent marks, had been established by at least the early decades of the nineteenth century. And since then Spanish spelling has undergone only minor changes.
But that is not the case with Portuguese. The first version of what is now modern standard Portuguese orthography was not established until the early 1940s (and more precisely 1943). Since then, the spelling rules have been changed more than once and most recently in 1971. The changes since the 1930s, for your purposes, need not be of any real concern since they deal mainly with the use of certain accent marks.
This need not concern you unless you are planning to do research on Brazil. A concrete, but for the moment unnamed, example. One of the (North American) authors you will read this semester uses, in an article dealing with Brazil between the 1890s and the late 1930s, the spelling prêto in the main body of the article’s text. Since 1971, the only legally correct spelling has been preto (no circumflex [^] over the e). If the article were translated into Portuguese and published in Brazil, the journal would eliminate the circumflex.
The author would have little recourse because she cannot claim that she found the circumflex in the sources from the years between 1898 and 1930 that she consulted. She could not make that claim for the simple reason that the circumflex was an innovation put in place with the 1943 spelling reform; so it was not in the sources.
Likewise, the author cannot allege that she learnt Portuguese in the 1960s and hence needs to be excused if she has not in the past thirty years kept her Portuguese up to date. She cannot make the allege that because she got her PhD in the early 1990s, which means that she was no more 12 years old when, while she was living a monolingual life in the United States, the Brazilian Congress abolished by law the circumflex in words such as preto. So it simply comes down to the following: for whatever reason, the author, writing in the early 1990s, uses a spelling that, by then, was twenty years out of date.
Prêto versus preto may seem like a minor matter, and perhaps it is in the case at hand. But...it also sets off potential alarm bells precisely because historians “live” by their language skills. They interpret written documents. For native speakers working with documents written in their language, that requires careful attention to historical changes in meaning and the like.
Obviously, non-native speakers also need to pay careful attention to changes in meaning. Yet, more than that, they need to possess advanced language skills to read, interpret, translate, etc. the texts they use as sources. A repeated and unexplainable, or at least unjustifiable, error in spelling – such as prêto for preto – potentially raises a whole series questions about the author’s interpretation of the sources and about the argument built on that interpretation.
All of this goes back to the deliberate choice to include numerous readings in Portuguese in this course. Not to make your life difficult and not only because many important works are not available in English translation, but rather to help you improve your language skills. Even if you have no intention of ever doing research on Brazil, improving your Portuguese-language reading skills will indirectly help you improve your Spanish-language skills.
Yet, where problems might arise is with the pre-1930 orthography. Several different spelling systems were in effect during much of the nineteenth century. Between the late nineteenth century and the 1930s, what prevailed was an etymological spelling system; e.g., pharmacia instead of farmácia (modern spelling), theatro instead of teatro, acto instead of ato, physica instead of físcia, Parahyba instead of Paraíba, etc. Do not worry; you are not going to have to read eighteenth- or nineteenth-century works in this course. But, when they quote directly sources or even when they simply cite names from the sources, some authors unnecessarily insist in using, in the main body of the text, the spellings they find in the original documents. (“Unnecessarily insist” because it is unnecessary. The older spellings do not reflect different pronunciations. As noted above, during much of the nineteenth century and before, more than one spelling system was in effect. And, further, if the author is quoting directly or citing names from manuscript sources, those authors do not and cannot, for the most part, know whether a particular spelling was part of some orthographic system or a simple misspelling by the notary or whoever wrote the document. Indeed, it is not uncommon to find more than one spelling for the same name or word in a single colonial or nineteenth-century document.)
Of course, original spelling should be maintained in the notes citing the sources. But that is different from the main body of the text. Also note that, despite the earlier standardization of spelling in Spanish, it is not uncommon to find different spellings for names, etc. in manuscript documents in Spanish from the early nineteenth century. That is true at least in Mexico and probably elsewhere in Latin America.
There is not much to do except to warn you that some authors do unnecessarily retain in the main body of their texts older spellings. So it may be that you will run across assucar for açúcar, sertam for sertão, cantão for cantam, cantárão for cantaram, Joze for José, etc. If, for instance, you do not recognize that assucar equals açúcar or that sertam equals sertão, looking up assucar or sertam in a dictionary will not do not you any good since they will not be in the dictionary. Again, there is not much to do except to forewarn about this potential problem.
The list of examples above includes the proper given name Joze (=José). Many given names and surnames have resisted orthographic reform. So, even though the modern spelling has since the 1940s been Luís, many parents still name their sons Luiz. (Luiz Mott, an author whom you will read, is an example). Likewise, some authors are surnamed Matoso (modern spelling); others bear the surname Mattoso. Along the same lines, modern spelling, since the 1940s, would require an accent over the i in Amílcar, but, when they registered at birth, Amilcar Martins’s parents did not include the accent (probably because his father who was born in the late nineteenth century was Amilcar without an accent.)
Probably the best pocket Portuguese/English-English/Portuguese dictionary you can buy is the Langenscheidt.
Consonants
ch/ll and lh/ll: Some cognates may not always be immediately recognizable – at least not at first. For example, “chave,” “chuva,” and “chamar” correspond to “llave.” “lluvia,”and “llamar”. “Filho,” “alho,” “baixo,” and “fazer” correspond to “hijo,” “ajo,” “bajo,” and “hacer.”
f/h: A more or less safe bet is if you run across a word beginning with “f” and do not recognize it, it may very well be an “h” in Spanish. (e.g., fazer = hacer, fada = hada; ferro = hierro) (see the alternative pronunciation / spelling “fierro.”).
x/j: Likewise, an “x” in a Portuguese word that you do not recognize may very well correspond to a “j” in Spanish.
- e.g., caixa = caja; xadrez = jadrez.
- Note: See for example “México” where, in Spanish, the x is pronounced as though it were a j. At the time of the conquest, the pronunciation of x in Spanish was beginning to shift from a sh sound to the “hard h” sound that a Spanish j now has. So “Mexico” to represent the Nahua word “meshica.” In Portuguese, in many words, the pronunciation of x remains sh. So, in Portuguese, “mexicano” sounds to an English-speaking ear as though it were pronounced “meshicunno.” In this regard, Portuguese is more conservative than Spanish. See the early-modern Spanish baxo, pronounced basho, which corresponds to the modern-Spanish word bajo and to the Portuguese word baixo.
r/l: Children in English sometimes confuse ls with rs. That same confusion historically helped shape modern Portuguese – at least where l combined with other consonants.
- e.g., branco = Span. blanco; frouxo = (+/-) Span. flojo; obrigar = Span. obligar; fraco (weak) corresponds (historically) to Span. flaco; emprego, empregar = Span. empleo, emplear, etc.
Vowels
e/ie and o/ue: The very common Spanish diphthongs ie and ue more often than not correspond to e and o in Portuguese. (e.g. pensa = Span. piensa; dorme = Span. duerme; bom = Span., bueno; bem = Span. bien; posto = Span. puesto; festa = Span. fiesta). This really should not cause you any problem at all if you think about the matter. In Spanish, ie and ue are themselves closely linked to e and o. For example, it is piensa, but the infinitive is pensar; it is duerme, but the infinitive is dormir; it is fiesta, but the adjective is festivo (festivo, pensar, dormir are exactly the same in Portuguese).
-ão/-ón, -ção/-ción, -ães/-anes, and -ções/-ciones: Quickly enough, you will get used to the endings “-ção” and “-ções,” which usually correspond to “-ción”and “-ciones” and to the endings “-ão,” “-ões,” and “-ães,” which, more often than not correspond to the endings “-ón,” (or “-án”) “-ones,” and “-anes.” Eg., “alemão,” “alemães” = “alemán,” “alemanes.”
ç/z or ci: Likewise, you will quickly get use to the “c cedilla” [i.e. “ç,” with the hook or cedilla to give the “c” a soft “s” sound before an “a,” “o” or “u”], which once existed in Spanish and still exists in English in a handful of words incorporated from French (e.g. “façade”]. It often corresponds to “z” or “ci” in modern Spanish.
- e.g., “garça” = “garza”; “graça” = “gracia.”
- Note: Even the name cedilla in English and cedilha in Portuguese derive from the Spanish: cedilla = little z. (The name for the letter in Portuguese is zê). It was used, just as it continues to be used in Portuguese, as a mark to show that the c had a soft sound.
m/n: Words that end in n (including some conjugated verbs) in Spanish often end in m. (e.g. fim = Span. fin; cantam = Span. cantan). But, in the case of nouns, a final m, when an s is added to indicate a plural, becomes an n. So fim (sing.) becomes fins (plural).
-vel/-ble, -veis/bles, and the disappearing l: Also note the suffix -vel (preceded by an accented vowel), which corresponds to -ble in both English and Spanish. So, possível responsável, reversível, provável (probable), notável, descartável, etc. A closely related matter: the plural forms of possível, responsável, etc. are possíveis, responsáveis, etc. Note the disappearance of the l. All words ending in l lose the l in the plural. (Apparently the only exception is gol, which is gols in the plural).
Here, in beginning to get used to such forms, it might be helpful to go back to the Spanish words azul and carnaval, which in the singular are spelled exactly the same way in Portuguese. The plural forms of those words in Spanish are azules and carnavales. Drop the l from the Spanish plural and you get azues and carnavaes, both of which are nearly identical to the modern Portuguese plural forms for azul (in Portuguese) and carnaval (in Portuguese): azuis and carnavais. In fact, until the orthographic reforms of the early 1940s, the plurals of carnaval, azul, and similarly words ended with -es.
The same disappearing l also shows up in the plural forms of cascavel (rattlesnake; Span.= cascabel), sutil (subtle; Span. = sutil), and útil (useful; Span.= útil), which are, respectively, cascavéis, sutis, and úteis.
Note the difference in the last two examples: sutil becomes sutis and útil becomes úteis. The difference has to do with stress. (The plural of sutil, which ends simply in -is, merely suppresses the double ii what could be an ending in -iis.) In any event, if you run across a plural noun or adjective ending in -is, keeping in mind that there may be an l at the singular form will get you back to the Spanish.
h: Words in Portuguese can begin with the letter h. (e.g., humano, história, honra, haver, etc.) But, except in the combinations lh (which corresponds roughly to the Spanish ll) and nh (which corresponds roughly to the Spanish ñ), Portuguese does not allow hs in the middle of words. (Recall that in Spanish those hs, like all hs, are silent.)
- e.g., proibir, proíbe, (= Span., prohibir, prohibe), desumano (= Span. deshumano), desonra (= Span. deshonra).
- Note: The only exception to this is the (proper) name of the state of Bahia, which literally means bay and retains the older pre-1930s spelling. But the word for bay in general is baía. Also note that lh and nh do not always correspond to ll or ñ in Spanish; the opposite also holds true. e.g., Span. año = Port. ano.
So, in some cases, adding an h will get you to the Spanish cognate.
Where you are most likely to run into recurring difficulties is with contractions. Contractions exist in Spanish (e.g., “del” and “al”), but there are far more contractions in Portuguese; some of them are easily misread by Spanish-speakers. A number of very common prepositions form contractions with definite and indefinite articles, 3d-person pronouns, and demonstrative pronouns (or adjectives). In what follows, I list, first, definite article, 3d-person pronouns, demonstrative pronouns, and indefinite articles. After that come the contractions.
Definite articles: o (masc. sing. = el), os (masc. plural = los), a (fem. sing. = la), as (fem. plural = las). (Also serve as the most common form of the 3d direct object pronouns.)
- Note: Do not confuse "o" with “ou” = English, “or”; Span. “o.”
- Note: e.g., “João os vê” (= “John sees them” = “Juan los ve”); “O sistema a controla” (= “The system controls her [or it]” = “El sistema la controla.”).
- Also note that, in many circumstances, Portuguese allows direct and indirect object pronouns to be placed either before or after a conjugated verb. If it comes after the conjugated verb, then the pronoun is attached to verb with a hyphen. The hyphen is also used when a direct or indirect object pronoun follows an infinitive or a gerund.
- e.g., “Construiu-o em dois dias” (= “[He or she] built it in two days.” = “Lo constuyó en dos días.”); “Maria disse-me que não viria” (= “Mary told me that she would not come.” = “María me dijo que no vendría.”).
- e.g., ver-te, explicar-lhe ( = “to see you,” “to explain to him” = “verte,” “explicarle”). But note that it is also possible in many cases and, in some cases, grammatically necessary to say and write: te ver and lhe explicar.
- e.g., decapitando-os, dizendo-nos ( = “decapitating them,”“telling us” = “decapitándolos,” “diciéndonos”). But again note that it is also often possible and, in some cases, grammatically necessary to write and say: os decapitando and nos dizendo.
- Here note that when 3d-person direct object pronouns (o, os, a, as) are attached to the end of an infinitive, then the final r of the infinitive drops out and o, os, a, and as become -lo, -los, -la, and -las respectively.
- e.g., amar + os = amá-los; defender + o = defendê-lo; sentir + o = senti-lo; construir + as = construí-las (= to love them, to defend him, to feel it, to build them). Note: do not confuse, e.g., senti-lo (to feel it) with senti-o or eu o senti (I felt it).
- In several situations, the preferred position for the direct and indirect object pronouns formal written Portuguese is after the verb. (Spoken Spanish almost always places the pronoun before a conjugated verb. But, like Portuguese, formal written Spanish also allows pronouns to be placed after conjugated verbs (e.g., “El hospital distibúyelos todos los días.”; “Declaróse hostil a la medida.”; “Decrétase el fin del mundo.”))
- Also note that 3d-person direct object pronouns in a final position undergo other changes. You may run into them in some of the readings, but they are rarer in modern Brazilian Portuguese than the amar + os = amá-los change. But just in case you do run into them, here they are:
- When 3d-person direct object pronouns (o, os, a, as) are attached to a conjugated in the 3d person plural, they become -no, -nos, -na, and -nas. For example, mataram + a = mataram-na; vêem + o = vêem-no (= they killed her, they see him (or it)). Also note: in, e.g., vêem-nos, the nos could mean them or us; in other words, it could be the equivalent of either Eles os vêem or Eles nos vêem. You have to rely on context to distinguish the meaning.
- When 3d-person direct object pronouns (o, os, a, as) are attached to a conjugated verb ending in s, the final s drops out and o, os, a, and as become -lo, -los, -la, and -las. For all practical purposes, in academic writing, this change will appear only with conjugated verbs in the 1st-person plural. For example, distinguimos + o = distinguimo-lo, calculamos + as = calculamo-las (= we distinguish him/it, we calculate them).
- Something similar happens when direct object pronouns are attached to conjugated verbs ending in an m or in those few present-tense verbs ending ão. (Never in the future tense because attaching a direct or indirect object pronoun to the end of a conjugated verb in the future tense violates the rules of formal grammar. Only before the verb or in the mesoclitic position [see below]) in the future tense. The only present-tense verb ending in ão that comes to mind and that could take an object is dão). In that case, an n is added to the direct pronoun.
- e.g., vêem + a = vêem-na, dão + o = dão-no. Consider also the following: viam-nos, which could be they saw them or they saw us. Context will allow you to distinguish the meaning in such cases.
- Finally, in formal writing and only in formal writing in modern Portuguese, object pronouns may also be placed in what is a called the mesoclitic position in the future tense and in the conditional tenses. “Mesoclitic” means in the middle; and the pronouns do indeed come in the middle of the verb.
- e.g., matar-se-ia = Ele (or ela) se mataria = (Span.) se mataría = He (she) would kill himself.
- e.g., mata-los-á = Ele (or ela) os matará = (Span.) los matará = He (she) will kill them.
- e.g., ver-nos-emos = Nós nos veremos = (Span.) nos veremos (or Nosotros nos veremos) = We shall see each other.
- This apparently very strange construction makes more sense if you remember that historically the future tense and hence the conditional tense in Portuguese (as in Spanish) were created by joining the infinitive to the conjugated verb haver (= Span. haber). So matar + hás (or, in Spanish: has) = matarás (both Port. and Span.) The original meaning appears to have been (using the same example): you must kill (or you have to kill). And, of course, if you must kill, then you will kill. (The creation of the English future using shall and will as auxiliaries offers a parallel).
- At any rate, as in Spanish, object pronouns can be attached to an infinitive in Portuguese. So, if you remember that the future tense was originally infinitive + conjugated form of haver, then the mesoclitic pronouns make even more sense: infinitive + object pronouns + conjugated form of haver.
- Also note that, in many circumstances, Portuguese allows direct and indirect object pronouns to be placed either before or after a conjugated verb. If it comes after the conjugated verb, then the pronoun is attached to verb with a hyphen. The hyphen is also used when a direct or indirect object pronoun follows an infinitive or a gerund.
Personal pronouns (3d person): ele (= él), ela ( = ella), eles (= ellos), elas (= ellas).
Demonstrative pronouns and pronominal adjectives:
- este, esta, estes, estas (= este [or éste, . . .)
- esse, essa, esses, essas (= ese [or ése], . . .)
- aquele, aquela, aqueles, aquelas (= aquel [or aquél], . . .)
Indefinite articles: um (masc. sing. = un); uns (masc. plural = unos); uma (fem. sing. = una), umas (fem. plural = unas).
Contractions:
- With em (= en)
- + o = no; + os = nos; + a = na; + as = nas.
- Note: Do not confuse "no" with “não” = English “no,” “not”; Span. “no.” no Brasil = “in Brazil” and not “no Brazil” or “not Brazil”; “no fim” = “in (or at) the end” and not “no end.”
- Note: Do not confuse "nos" with “nós” [with an acute accent] = English “we”; Span. “nosotros.” Do not confuse with “nos” (same spelling) (the direct and indirect or oblique form of “nós”) = English “us”; Span. “nos.”
- + ele = nele; + ela = nela; + eles = neles; + elas = nelas.
- + este = neste; etc.
- + esse = nesse; etc.
- + aquele = naquele; etc.
- + o = no; + os = nos; + a = na; + as = nas.
- With de
- + o = do; + os = dos; + a = da; + as = das.
- Note: Do not confuse "dos" with “dois” (or “dous”) = English “two.”
- Note: Do not confuse "da" with “dá” (3d person of the verb “dar”; i.e, [he, she, it] “gives.”)
- + ele = dele; + ela = dela; + eles = deles; + elas = delas.
- + este = deste; etc, etc.
- + esse = desse; etc., etc.
- + aquele = daquele; etc.
- + o = do; + os = dos; + a = da; + as = das.
- With a (= a; i.e., English “to”)
- + o = ao; a [fem. def. article] + a [preposition] = à [“to the”; “a la”; the accent makes the difference]; + os = aos; + as = às.
- Note the differences and the absence of difference:
- a = to, at
- a = the (definite article). Context makes clear whether, in a given passage, a = to, at or a = the.
- à = to the; at the
- as = the (def. article; fem. plural)
- às = to the; at the
- Note the differences and the absence of difference:
- + aquele = àquele; etc.
- + o = ao; a [fem. def. article] + a [preposition] = à [“to the”; “a la”; the accent makes the difference]; + os = aos; + as = às.
- With por
- + o = pelo; + a = pela; + os = pelos; + as = pelas.
- Note: Do not confuse "por" with “pôr” = Span. “poner.” Also cf., e.g., “supor” = Span. “suponer”
Other common sources of confusion:
- “mas” = English “but”; Span. “pero” or “mas” (without an accent; and, yes, this word does exist in Spanish).
- “mais” = English “more”; Span. “más” (with an accent).
- “más” = fem. plural of “mau” (“má” in the fem. singular); English, “bad”; Span. “malas.”
- vir = to come; Span. “venir” (and derived verbs; e.g.: convir = convenir)
- ver = to see; Span. “ver”
- vem, vêm = he (she, it) comes, they come; Spanish “viene,” “vienen
- vê, vêem = he (she, it) sees, they see; Spanish “ve,” “ven”
- viu, viram = he (she, it) saw, they saw; Spanish, “vio,” “vieron”
- veio, vieram = he (she, it) came, they came; Spanish, “vino,” vinieron”
- ter = to have; Span. “tener” (And likewise, derived verbs. E.g., conter = contener)
- tem, têm = he (she, it) has; they have.
- tinha, tinham (imperfect tense) = he (she, it) had, they had = Span. “tenía,” “tenían”
- tido = Span. “tenido”
- Also note that both ter and haver can be used to form the perfect and other compound tenses. e.g., tinham viajado = haviam viajado (= Engl., “they had travelled”; Span., “habían viajado”).
- há = there is, there are; Span. “hay”
- no = em + o = in the
- não = English “no”; Spanish “no”
- por = English “by,” “for”; Spanish “por”
- pôr = English “to put,” “to place”; Spanish “poner” (Cf. supor = Spanish “suponer”)
- põe = he (she, it) puts, places = Span. "pone" (Likewise, "supõe," "compõe.")
- põem = they put, place = Span. “ponen” (Likewise, “supõem,” “compõem.”)
- dos = de + os = of the (masc. plural); Spanish “de los”
- dois (or dous) = two; Spanish “dos”
- lá = there = Span. “allá”
Also note:
- “só” (plural = sós) = English “only,” “alone” = Spanish “solo” or “sólo.”
- “somente” = the specifically adverbial form of “só” = Spanish “solamente”
- “boa” = fem. of bom = English “good” = Span. “buena.”
- “é” = is (= Span. “es”) and são = are (3d person) (= Span. “son”)
Neuter forms of demonstrative pronouns etc.: Spanish has neuter forms of demonstrative pronouns: aquello (that, that thing), eso, esto. Portuguese also has equivalent neuter forms of demonstrative pronouns: aquilo, isso, isto. Note that the neuter forms of the demonstrative pronouns, like demonstrative adjectives and masculine and feminine forms of the demonstrative pronoun, combine with de and em to form contractions:
- de + isto, isso, aquilo = disto, disso, daquilo.
- em + isto, isso, aquilo = nisto, nisso, naquilo.
- a + aquilo = àquilo
Basic “sentence-building” and “working” words: In some cases, such words have nearly identical forms in Spanish and hence present no problems; e.g., também (= también), já (= ya), nunca (= nunca), etc. But, in a number of other cases, the Portuguese words differ radically from their Spanish equivalents; e.g., ninguém (= nadie), ainda (= aún, todavía), até (= hasta, aun), embora (=aunque), etc. There is no way round learning such words as fast as possible since misreading them could easily lead to a very faulty interpretation of a particular sentence or even of an author’s argument.
Orthography: For all practical purposes, what is currently the modern standardized Spanish orthography now in use, including the use of accent marks, had been established by at least the early decades of the nineteenth century. And since then Spanish spelling has undergone only minor changes.
But that is not the case with Portuguese. The first version of what is now modern standard Portuguese orthography was not established until the early 1940s (and more precisely 1943). Since then, the spelling rules have been changed more than once and most recently in 1971. The changes since the 1930s, for your purposes, need not be of any real concern since they deal mainly with the use of certain accent marks.
This need not concern you unless you are planning to do research on Brazil. A concrete, but for the moment unnamed, example. One of the (North American) authors you will read this semester uses, in an article dealing with Brazil between the 1890s and the late 1930s, the spelling prêto in the main body of the article’s text. Since 1971, the only legally correct spelling has been preto (no circumflex [^] over the e). If the article were translated into Portuguese and published in Brazil, the journal would eliminate the circumflex.
The author would have little recourse because she cannot claim that she found the circumflex in the sources from the years between 1898 and 1930 that she consulted. She could not make that claim for the simple reason that the circumflex was an innovation put in place with the 1943 spelling reform; so it was not in the sources.
Likewise, the author cannot allege that she learnt Portuguese in the 1960s and hence needs to be excused if she has not in the past thirty years kept her Portuguese up to date. She cannot make the allege that because she got her PhD in the early 1990s, which means that she was no more 12 years old when, while she was living a monolingual life in the United States, the Brazilian Congress abolished by law the circumflex in words such as preto. So it simply comes down to the following: for whatever reason, the author, writing in the early 1990s, uses a spelling that, by then, was twenty years out of date.
Prêto versus preto may seem like a minor matter, and perhaps it is in the case at hand. But...it also sets off potential alarm bells precisely because historians “live” by their language skills. They interpret written documents. For native speakers working with documents written in their language, that requires careful attention to historical changes in meaning and the like.
Obviously, non-native speakers also need to pay careful attention to changes in meaning. Yet, more than that, they need to possess advanced language skills to read, interpret, translate, etc. the texts they use as sources. A repeated and unexplainable, or at least unjustifiable, error in spelling – such as prêto for preto – potentially raises a whole series questions about the author’s interpretation of the sources and about the argument built on that interpretation.
All of this goes back to the deliberate choice to include numerous readings in Portuguese in this course. Not to make your life difficult and not only because many important works are not available in English translation, but rather to help you improve your language skills. Even if you have no intention of ever doing research on Brazil, improving your Portuguese-language reading skills will indirectly help you improve your Spanish-language skills.
Yet, where problems might arise is with the pre-1930 orthography. Several different spelling systems were in effect during much of the nineteenth century. Between the late nineteenth century and the 1930s, what prevailed was an etymological spelling system; e.g., pharmacia instead of farmácia (modern spelling), theatro instead of teatro, acto instead of ato, physica instead of físcia, Parahyba instead of Paraíba, etc. Do not worry; you are not going to have to read eighteenth- or nineteenth-century works in this course. But, when they quote directly sources or even when they simply cite names from the sources, some authors unnecessarily insist in using, in the main body of the text, the spellings they find in the original documents. (“Unnecessarily insist” because it is unnecessary. The older spellings do not reflect different pronunciations. As noted above, during much of the nineteenth century and before, more than one spelling system was in effect. And, further, if the author is quoting directly or citing names from manuscript sources, those authors do not and cannot, for the most part, know whether a particular spelling was part of some orthographic system or a simple misspelling by the notary or whoever wrote the document. Indeed, it is not uncommon to find more than one spelling for the same name or word in a single colonial or nineteenth-century document.)
Of course, original spelling should be maintained in the notes citing the sources. But that is different from the main body of the text. Also note that, despite the earlier standardization of spelling in Spanish, it is not uncommon to find different spellings for names, etc. in manuscript documents in Spanish from the early nineteenth century. That is true at least in Mexico and probably elsewhere in Latin America.
There is not much to do except to warn you that some authors do unnecessarily retain in the main body of their texts older spellings. So it may be that you will run across assucar for açúcar, sertam for sertão, cantão for cantam, cantárão for cantaram, Joze for José, etc. If, for instance, you do not recognize that assucar equals açúcar or that sertam equals sertão, looking up assucar or sertam in a dictionary will not do not you any good since they will not be in the dictionary. Again, there is not much to do except to forewarn about this potential problem.
The list of examples above includes the proper given name Joze (=José). Many given names and surnames have resisted orthographic reform. So, even though the modern spelling has since the 1940s been Luís, many parents still name their sons Luiz. (Luiz Mott, an author whom you will read, is an example). Likewise, some authors are surnamed Matoso (modern spelling); others bear the surname Mattoso. Along the same lines, modern spelling, since the 1940s, would require an accent over the i in Amílcar, but, when they registered at birth, Amilcar Martins’s parents did not include the accent (probably because his father who was born in the late nineteenth century was Amilcar without an accent.)
Probably the best pocket Portuguese/English-English/Portuguese dictionary you can buy is the Langenscheidt.