Enhancement particles – Speaking Portuguese like Brazilians

Enhancement particles - Speaking Portuguese like Brazilians do

Enhancement particles – Speaking Portuguese like Brazilians do

Hello there and welcome to our Portuguese Basic Tips 85,  called Enhancement particles – Speaking Portuguese like Brazilians do

Hello there and welcome to our Portuguese Basic Tips number 85. This is Marcos Sales and today we’ll speak about Enhancement particles or partículas de realce in Portuguese.

Enhancement particles are words that we use in order to emphasize something we want to say. We normally add a word, generally “que” or “se” or another pronoun and that word could be removed, and still we keep the meaning of the sentence.

Click on the link to visit our previous episode, called Portuguese Diphons using the letter X

Today we are going to speak about those particles, cause this is something we use all the time. By listening and repeating all the examples, your way of speaking Portuguese will be more and more similar to ours.

now that you know the meaning of Partículas de realce, let’s work! Let’s see how to use them in daily conversations.

Listen to the following sentence:

  • O que você está fazendo aqui? (What are you doing here?)

This is correct! There’s nothing wrong with the sentence, however, in daily conversations it’s common when we repeat the “que” pronoun here. Like that:

  • O que que cê tá fazendo aqui? See: o quê… que…

This is the same phrase, but somehow the repetition of the word “que” turns the sentence into something more emphatic than the other.

Another example. Just imagine you want to check the price of something at the store.

  • Quanto é isso or quanto custa isso is something you ask to the seller in Portuguese, meaning “how much is it?”.

In cities like São Paulo, it’s pretty common people say “quanto que tá”, “quanto que é?”, meaning the same thing “how much is it”. Again, we got the same “que” pronoun that could be removed from the sentence.

We also use other pronouns with the same effect.

Listen to the sentence:

  • Ele estava se tremendo de frio ( He was shivering with cold)

Actually he was not “shivering himself”, he was shivering because it was cold. We could simply say “ele estava tremendo de frio”, but we add the pronoun “se” in this case.

Now, I’m going to speak some common sentences in Brazilian Portuguese using enhancement particles and I want you to repeat them with me, in order to practice a little bit.

Let’s do as follows:  I will first speak the sentence with no partícula de realce, the I’ll explain its meaning in English and to finish we repeat the same sentence, this time using realce together, deal?

  • Por que você fez isso comigo? (Why did you do that to me?)
    • Por que que você fez isso comigo? (Partícula de realce)
  • Não sei quando chego em casa (I don’t know when I get home)
    • Não sei quando que chego em casa (Partícula de realce)
  • Vou embora daqui (I’m leaving)
    • Vou-me embora daqui (Partícula de realce)
  • Nós deitamos cedo (We go to bed early)
    • Nós nos deitamos cedo (Partícula de realce)
  • Veja que coisa estranha! (Look how weird this is!)
    • Veja que coisa estranha! (Partícula de realce)
  • Tenho minhas dúvidas (I doubt it)
    • Tenho minhas dúvidas! (Partícula de realce)
  • Olha o que você vai fazer… (Be careful what you do)
    • Olha o que cê vai fazer! (Partícula de realce)

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Click on the link to see another examples of partícula de realce in Portuguese

That’s enough for today. I hope you like it.

See you soon.

Thanks!

Marcos Sales

 

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1 Response

  1. 11 de May de 2020

    […] Click no link para visitar nosso episódio anterior, chamado partículas de realce […]

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