Five Words to Expand Your Brazilian Portuguese Vocabulary

I have a book coming out today, a phrasebook for people who want to learn Brazilian Portuguese. It’s called Português na Prática para Falantes de Inglês. However, I couldn’t find room for a few advanced words that cantruly help you understand Brazil.

Thankfully, we have the Internet for that. In no particular order:

• Doleiro: Someone who buys and sells currency in the grey market, says the dictionary. So, someone whose occupation is to evade foreign exchange controls. More often, the doleiro is actually a bagman, distributing illicit bribes to and from politicians and their operatives. Not to be confused with doleira, which is a money belt.
• Concurseiro: A person who makes a career out of studying to take the civil service test (concurso público) for any high-paying government job. This is a full-time occupation, attracting bright university graduates who want to make some serious dough.
• Gato: (1) An illegal hookup to the power supply, enabling the user to steal electricity directly from the local utility, but sometimes from a neighbor too. You’d think gatos would be found only in slums, but you’ll find them in middle class and upper-middle class neighborhoods as well, though not with lovely skeins such as these. (2) A soccer player who lies about his age to play for youth teams.
• Coxinha: To those who support it, someone who opposes the Worker’s Party. A coxinha is a fried snack made out of shredded chicken and dough. Later, in São Paulo, it came to mean someone who’s conservative, bourgeois, conventional, boring, conformist. Now it just means you don’t have to pay attention to whoever uses that word.
• Mortadela: To those who oppose it, a supporter of the Worker’s Party. Back before the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, the party gave out money and mortadella sandwiches to the people it bused in to show their spontaneous support for the embattled president.

More to come, maybe.