Greetings and Basic Phrases

Before grammar and before vocabulary comes the essence of human contact: knowing how to greet, to thank, to apologise, and to extricate yourself from a conversation you cannot yet handle. This is the survival kit for anyone starting out in European Portuguese — a handful of fixed formulas that, well pronounced, open almost every door.

Greeting by the hour

The greeting changes with the time of day. Bom dia (“good day/morning”) is used from the morning until around lunch; boa tarde (“good afternoon”) from then until dusk; boa noite (“good evening/night”) serves both to greet in the evening and to say goodnight on parting.

Informally, among people who know each other, Portuguese is more direct: a plain olá or viva does for any hour. Olá [ɔˈla] is the universal, neutral greeting; it can be combined with the time of day — olá, bom dia.

How are you?

The courtesy question depends on whom you are facing. With someone you address as você (see below), you say como está?; with someone you address as tu, como estás? or, more colloquially, como vais? / tudo bem? (“all well?”).

The usual reply is modest and brief:

The magic words: courtesy

Three formulas carry nearly all of everyday courtesy: por favor (“please”), obrigado (“thank you”) and desculpe (“sorry”). The first accompanies any request. The second — and this is a point that trips up many learners — agrees in gender with the speaker, not with the listener: a man says obrigado, a woman says obrigada.

To apologise or ask leave, use desculpe (formal) or desculpa (informal); com licença is for passing by, leaving, or interrupting politely.

Portuguese	English	Use
por favor / se faz favor	please	any request
obrigado / obrigada	thank you	thanking
de nada	you’re welcome	replying to thanks
desculpe	sorry / excuse me	apologising, getting attention
com licença	excuse me	asking to pass or take leave
faz favor	excuse me (to summon)	calling the waiter or assistant

Survival phrases

When vocabulary fails, a small set of phrases keeps the conversation going and buys time. They are worth memorising as whole blocks.

Portuguese	English
Não percebi. Pode repetir?	I didn’t understand. Could you repeat that?
Pode falar mais devagar, por favor?	Could you speak more slowly, please?
Não falo bem português.	I don’t speak Portuguese well.
Como se diz… em português?	How do you say… in Portuguese?
O que significa…?	What does… mean?
Quanto custa?	How much is it?
Onde fica a casa de banho?	Where is the toilet?
Não faz mal.	Never mind / It’s all right.

Note casa de banho (“toilet, bathroom”) and perceber (“to understand”): both are unmistakable markers of European Portuguese, and using them sounds instantly natural on this side of the Atlantic.

Tu or você?

The greatest difficulty is not vocabulary but the choice of address. European Portuguese distinguishes a familiar mode (tu, with the verb in the 2nd person: tu tens, “you have”) from a mode of respect or distance. For the latter, the safest option for a beginner is the implicit você — that is, speaking in the 3rd person (tem, está) without even uttering the pronoun, or using the person’s name or title.

As a rule of thumb: use tu with peers your own age, with children, and with anyone who invites you to; keep the 3rd-person address with strangers, with older people, and in formal settings. Using tu too soon can sound presumptuous; the opposite error is merely safe.

Farewells

To close, adeus is the general goodbye; até logo (later the same day), até amanhã (“until tomorrow”) and até já (“in a moment”) mark an expected reunion. At day’s end, boa noite doubles as both greeting and farewell.

With this handful of formulas — greeting, thanking, apologising, asking for help and saying goodbye — you can already get through a café, a shop or a first introduction without mishap. The rest comes with practice.