European vs Brazilian Portuguese: Key Differences Explained for Language Learners

Did you know there are two main Portuguese standards: European and Brazilian Portuguese? Many language learners, however, aren’t familiar with the key differences between them.

So, what exactly sets European and Brazilian Portuguese apart?

While European and Brazilian Portuguese are mutually intelligible, there are notable differences in grammar, vocabulary, spelling, and, most significantly, pronunciation.

Let’s explore these distinctions in detail.

It goes without saying …
Of course, this classification of Portuguese into two main standards is a broad generalization. Portuguese is also spoken in other regions, including African countries like Angola, Guinea-Bissau, and Mozambique, as well as parts of Asia and Oceania. Due to a longer colonial presence, the Portuguese spoken in Africa has traditionally been closer to the European standard and is often grouped within that category. However, these African varieties have been evolving rapidly in the post-colonial era, and it remains to be seen how Portuguese standards will be classified in the future.

First Impressions

Let’s take a closer look at how Brazilian and European Portuguese differ in both written and spoken forms.

Below is a passage from O Alquimista by Paulo Coelho, originally written in Brazilian Portuguese. To illustrate the differences, I’ve made slight modifications (marked in bold) to align the text with the European Portuguese standard.

Translation. He got up and took a sip of wine. Then he grabbed his staff and began waking the sheep that were still asleep. He had noticed that as soon as he woke up, most of the animals would also start to stir as if some mysterious energy connected his life to the lives of those sheep that had been traveling the land with him for two years in search of water and food.

It’s worth noting that the original text in Brazilian Portuguese is fully intelligible to European Portuguese speakers. None of the adjustments were strictly necessary for comprehension. Only highly informal language, slang, or strong regional dialects tend to pose challenges to mutual intelligibility between European and Brazilian Portuguese.

Pronunciation

As mentioned earlier, pronunciation is where Brazilian and European Portuguese differ the most. Generally speaking, Brazilian Portuguese features more open vowel sounds and a more melodic rhythm compared to its European counterpart.

It’s common to hear people say that the Portuguese “swallow” syllables, and that’s a fair observation. European Portuguese, like English, is a stress-timed language, which results in greater vowel reduction (more on that soon).

Some even suggest that European Portuguese phonetics resembles Russian and Slavic languages generally. This impression comes partly from vowel reduction and partly from the prevalence of hushing-like fricative sounds (we’ll explore this in more detail shortly).

Before diving deeper into the phonological differences between the two standards, it’s important to note that Brazil is a vast country with multiple regional dialects. While Portugal is much smaller, it also has distinct regional accents. The pronunciation differences discussed below are, of course, generalizations and reflect a degree of subjectivity on my part.

Vowel sounds

Brazilian Portuguese is generally perceived as more clearly pronounced than European Portuguese, primarily due to differences in vowel sounds – European Portuguese exhibits significantly more vowel reduction.

If you’re unfamiliar with the concept, vowel reduction refers to a speech process in which unstressed syllables are shortened, causing vowel sounds to become more closed and sometimes even nearly muted.

This phenomenon is more pronounced in stress-timed languages like European Portuguese, compared to syllable-timed languages like Brazilian Portuguese.

Vowel reduction leads to a less explicit pronunciation and often gives the impression that the speaker is “swallowing” syllables. To illustrate, let’s listen to the following verses (from the song Água de Beber by António C. Jobim) in both standards. Pay close attention to the vowel sounds.

Did you notice how the vowel sounds nearly disappear in the European version?

You’ve probably heard the difference in words ending with the vowel e, such as tive or sabe. In the European version, that e-sound is barely audible. However, in Brazilian Portuguese, you clearly hear an i-sound, like the ee in Lee. Go back and listen again.

I’m sure you also noticed differences in the consonant sounds. Let’s dive into that next.

Consonant sounds 

S&Z

There’s a distinct hushing resonance in European Portuguese, more so than in Brazilian Portuguese, and a lot of this is due to the pronunciation of the letter s.

In European Portuguese, words that end with an s typically produce a sh-sound, as in shape. The same happens when s appears before a voiceless consonant (such as p, t, c, or f).

Even words ending with a z produce the same sh-sound.

In contrast, in Brazilian Portuguese, the s letter will, in the same situations, produce more of an s-sound, like in sign.

Listen to the following sentence in both standards:

L

In European Portuguese, words that end with an l produce what’s known as the dark l-sound, roughly similar to the one in normal.

However, in Brazilian Portuguese, the letter l produces a rounded vowel sound, similar to the ow sound in bow.

Listen to the following sentence and compare:

R

In European Portuguese, words ending with an r produce what’s known as the alveolar tap, similar to what you hear in settle (American English pronunciation). In contrast, in Brazilian Portuguese, these r-sounds are more subtle and, in some regional dialects, even muted.

On the other hand, in European Portuguese, words starting with an r produce a throaty r-sound, produced at the back of the mouth. This is also the case when a double r appears between vowels.

In Brazilian Portuguese, depending on the region, that throaty r can be voiceless, similar to what you hear in Juan (as in the Spanish pronunciation).

Listen to the following sentence and compare the r-sounds mentioned above:

D

In European Portuguese, the letter d is always pronounced the same way, roughly like the d in date (though the Portuguese d is slightly less percussive and aspirated than its English counterpart).

In Brazilian Portuguese, however, the letter d can produce a /dʒi/-sound, as in aging or jail. This happens when d is followed by either i or an e that sounds like i (particularly when e appears at the end of a word).

Listen and compare the d-sounds mentioned above:

T

The t behaves similarly to the d.

In the European standard, the letter t always produces the same sound, more or less like the t in tea (once again, the Portuguese t is pronounced less percussively than the English one).

In Brazilian Portuguese, however, the letter t can sometimes produce a /tʃi/-sound, as in chat. This occurs when t is followed by i or an e that sounds like i.

Listen and compare the t-sounds mentioned above:

Dive deeper into European Portuguese pronunciation:
→ European Portuguese Pronunciation: A Helpful Guide to Its Sound System.

Vocabulary

Colloquialisms

On either side of the Atlantic, you’ll find distinct expressions and colloquialisms to refer to the same things.

To illustrate this, let’s take a peek into Mário’s (Portugal) and Laura’s (Brazil) daily routines.

Here’s a summary of common expressions that differ between European and Brazilian Portuguese:

	Portugal	Brazil
bathroom	quarto de banho	banheiro
breakfast	pequeno-almoço	café da manhã
juice	sumo	suco
fridge	frigorífico	geladeira
train	comboio	trem
bus	autocarro	ônibus
hot dog	cachorro	cachorro quente
ice cream	gelado	sorvete
something	uma coisa	um negócio
awesome!	fixe!	legal!
dog	cão	cachorro
mobile phone	telemóvel	celular
draught beer	imperial, fino	chope
brandy	aguardente	cachaça
screen	ecrã	tela
computer mouse	rato	mouse
soccer team	equipa de futebol	time de futebol
goalkeeper	guarda-redes	goleiro
goal	golo	gol
tram	elétrico	bonde
grass	relva	grama
neighbourhood block	quarteirão	quadra
	. . .	. . .

False friends

Several words may share the same origin, but their meanings can drift apart over time, becoming ‘false friends.’ Let’s look at a few examples:

	PT	BR
propina	tuition fee	brive
apelido	last name	nickname
rapariga	girl	prostitute
fato	suit	fact
pele	leather	skin
bicha	queue	gay
peão	pedestrian	pawn
	. . .	. . .

Feel free to explore these other false friends:
→ Portuguese-English False Friends
→ Portuguese-Spanish False Friends

Spelling

The spelling differences between Brazilian and European Portuguese are relatively minor.

An orthographic agreement signed by several Portuguese-speaking countries, which came into effect in the 2010s, aimed to further standardize spelling across different regions where Portuguese is spoken.

To be clear, this agreement does not affect vocabulary choices, idiomatic expressions, or pronunciation in either variant—it strictly concerns spelling.

For instance, before the agreement, European Portuguese retained several silent consonants (such as c and p) in words where they were no longer pronounced. In contrast, Brazilian Portuguese had already omitted these letters from the written language.

Accordingly, before the reform, European Portuguese words like acção (action), correcto (correct), baptismo (baptism), and excepto (except) included mute consonants. Today, they are spelled ação, correto, batismo, and exceto—matching the long-standing Brazilian spelling.

This is just one example of how the orthographic agreement aligned spelling conventions across Portuguese-speaking countries. However, some minor differences remain, mostly reflecting pronunciation variations:

	European Portuguese	Brazilian Portuguese
reception	receção	recepção (Brazilians pronounce the p)
European (feminine form)	europeia	européia
Anthony	António	Antônio (the o is pronounced with a more closed vowel sound)
fact	facto (the Portuguese pronounce the c)	fato
	. . .	. . .

Grammar

There are a few grammatical differences between Brazilian and European Portuguese. Let’s take a look at some of them.

Definite articles

In European Portuguese, definite articles are always used before proper nouns and possessive pronouns. In Brazilian Portuguese, however, they are often omitted.

A few examples:

(pt) O Pedro viu a Teresa no café.
(br) Pedro viu a Teresa no café.
Pedro saw Teresa at the café.

(pt) O meu irmão vive na Argentina.
(br) Meu irmão vive na Argentina. 
My brother lives in Argentina.

Progressive tenses

European and Brazilian Portuguese form progressive tenses differently.

Take the present continuous, for example. In European Portuguese, the auxiliary verb estar is conjugated in the present tense, followed by the preposition ‘a’ and the main verb in the infinitive form.

The structure is similar in Brazilian Portuguese, but there is no preposition between the verbs, and the main verb appears in the present participle instead.

Here’s an example:

(pt) A Catarina está a viajar.
(br) Catarina está viajando.
Catarina is traveling.

Learn more about this topic:
→ Portuguese Gerund: Progressive Tenses and Beyond

Compound tenses

In Portuguese, both ter and haver can be auxiliary verbs to form perfect tenses.

However, in European Portuguese, the verb haver used as an auxiliary verb is less common than in Brazilian Portuguese.

A Ana tinha estado com o Pedro. (frequent in both standards)
Ana havia estado com o Pedro. (more frequent in Brazilian Portuguese)
Ana had been with Pedro.

Learn more about commonly used Portuguese compound tenses:
→ Pretérito Perfeito Simples vs Composto in Portuguese
→ Portuguese Past Perfect: Understanding the Pretérito Mais-que-Perfeito

Subject pronouns: você vs. tu 

One of the most noticeable differences between European and Brazilian Portuguese is how people address one another.

In Brazil, você (third person) is widely used, even among family and friends. Except for a few regional dialects, tu (second person) is rarely heard in everyday speech.

In European Portuguese, however, tu is the norm in casual settings, while você is reserved for formal situations.

(pt) Pedro, (tu) queres gelado de baunilha ou chocolate?
(br) Pedro, (você) quer sorvete  de baunilha ou chocolate?
Pedro, do you want vanilla or chocolate ice cream?

(pt) Olá mãe, como foi o teu dia?
(br) Oi mãe, como foi seu dia?
Hi, Mum, how’s your day?

Learn more about this topic Portuguese subject pronouns:
→ Portuguese Subject Pronouns

Object and reflexive pronouns

There are also differences in word order between the two variants, particularly regarding reflexive and object pronouns.

By default, in European Portuguese, these pronouns follow the verb (attached with a hyphen), though there are cases where the order is reversed. In Brazilian Portuguese, however, the pronouns are more commonly placed before the verb.

(pt) Olá, Chamo-me Miguel.
(br) Oi, me chamo Miguel.
My name is Miguel.

(pt) Conto-te essa história mais logo.
(br) Te conto essa histório mais logo.
I will tell you that story later.

Here are a couple of resources to help you dive deeper into Portuguese object and reflexive pronouns:
→ Portuguese Object Pronouns: What Are They for and Where to Place Them
→ Portuguese Reflexive Verbs and Reflexive Pronoun Placement

Prepositions

Portuguese and Brazilian people often use different prepositions, especially when expressing movement (such as the English preposition “to”).

For instance, in Portugal, people use à or ao (contractions of the preposition a), whereas in Brazil, no or na (contractions of the preposition em) are preferred:

(pt) Vou ao quarto de banho.
(br) Vou no banheiro. 
I am going to the restroom.

(pt) Vou à África do Sul em janeiro.
(br) Vou na África do Sul em janeiro.
I am going to South Africa in January. 

If you want to dive deeper into Portuguese prepositions, read this one:
→ Portuguese Prepositions and Contractions
If you’re a beginner and want to get your feet wet in Portuguese grammar, check out:
→ Dabbling in Portuguese Grammar – First Impressions for Beginners
For an analogous comparison between Portuguese and Spanish:
→ Portuguese vs Spanish: Key Similarities and Differences Explained