You can avoid potential embarrassment and frustration if you understand these important signs in Portuguese. The Rocket Portuguese team wants to ensure you never walk into the wrong restroom, light up in a no-smoking area, or have your vehicle towed from a no-parking spot!
Most of the time you’ll probably only need to recognize the written Portuguese word or phrase, but we’ve included audio so you can listen to the Portuguese pronunciation. This way you’ll be able to find out if something is open or closed, or more importantly, on sale!
Resources for further reading:
Let's get started:
Rocket Record lets you perfect your Portuguese pronunciation. Just listen to the native speaker audio and then use the microphone icon to record yourself. Once you’re done, you’ll get a score out of 100 on your pronunciation and can listen to your own audio playback. (Use a headset mic for best results.) Problems? Click here!
Damas / Senhoras / Mulheres
Ladies
Cavalheiros / Senhores / Homens
Gentlemen
Puxe
Pull
Empurre
Push
Aberto
Open
Fechado
Closed
Proibido estacionar
No parking
When you buy food in a supermarket and don’t intend to eat it straight away it might pay to check the ‘best before date’ to avoid nasty surprises…
Melhor consumir antes da data
The best before date
Melhor consumir até…
Best before…
Public smoking is legally banned in all states of Brazil. So it might be helpful to learn what área para fumantes means.
área para fumantes
The smoking area
área para não-fumantes
The non-smoking area
Proibido fumar
No smoking!
Sometimes you will see big bright colored signs in nearly every store window. There must be a sale on…
Promoção
Sale (clothing)
Preço reduzido
Reduced price
You will see in many cities, especially in big towns, that stores use the English word “off” to indicate that the products at these places are on sale. But if you are the kind of tourist that likes to visit less touristy places, then learning the word promoção can be of use too.
Pechincha
The bargain
That’s it for this lesson. I hope you had fun!
For more lessons on Portuguese vocabulary I recommend these!
Até mais!
Tereza Pereira: Rocket Portuguese
Reinforce your learning from this lesson with the Rocket Reinforcement activities!