Brazilian or European Portuguese? What it changes in a transcript.

The recording usually tells you which one it is

Start with what people talk about. In a health study, the institutions give the country away: a participant in Portugal is a utente, a registered user, of the SNS, the National Health Service, while a participant in Brazil is a usuário of the SUS, the Unified Health System, and may call the local clinic the UBS or just the posto. Common words point the same way: autocarro or ônibus for the bus, telemóvel or celular for a phone, equipa or equipe for the team, and pequeno-almoço or café da manhã for breakfast.

Grammar is a steadier clue than accent. Across most of Portugal, “I’m doing” is estou a fazer; in Brazil it is estou fazendo, a form also heard in parts of southern Portugal. Unstressed pronouns change places too: diz-me is what you usually hear in Portugal, me diz in Brazil.

Accent helps, with care, since each country has many accents. European Portuguese often shortens unstressed vowels until they are barely heard, where Brazilian speakers usually keep them. In many Brazilian accents, t and d before an i come out close to the “ch” of “cheese” and the “j” of “jeans”; in Portugal they don’t, and in some Brazilian accents they don’t either. A “sh” at the end of words such as mais is heard on both sides of the Atlantic, so on its own it settles nothing.

One recording can hold both varieties. A Portuguese researcher interviewing Brazilian migrants in Lisbon, or a Brazilian nurse interviewed in Porto, leaves a file in which interviewer and participant speak different Portuguese.

The 1990 spelling agreement left some words with two spellings

The Portuguese Language Orthographic Agreement, signed in Lisbon in 1990, became mandatory in Portugal in 2015 and in Brazil in 2016.1 It brought the two spellings closer, mostly by dropping consonants nobody pronounced: Portugal’s acção and óptimo became ação and ótimo, as they already were in Brazil. Where the two countries still pronounce a word differently, the agreement accepts both spellings, and each country keeps its own.

BR fato PT facto

fact. In Portugal, fato is a suit.

BR contato PT contacto

contact.

BR recepção PT receção

reception. Brazilian speakers pronounce the p, so Brazil kept it.

BR perspectiva PT perspetiva

perspective.

BR econômico PT económico

economic. The accent marks a closed vowel in Brazil and an open one in Portugal, as in gênero and género, Antônio and António.

Some pairs are separate words, such as registro and registo for a record, and no spelling rule turns one into the other: the transcript keeps the word the speaker used.

Two decisions follow. The Portuguese text needs one rule, chosen before the work starts: either one spelling for the whole project, Brazilian or European, or each speaker in the spelling of their country. And if the transcripts will be searched in NVivo or MAXQDA, a text search for receção won’t find recepção.

Some words mean something else across the Atlantic

A handful of common words change meaning between the two countries. Context usually sorts them out for a listener; on the page, and in a translation, they’re where a quick reading goes wrong.

propina

In Portugal, university tuition fees, which students pay as propinas. In Brazil, a bribe.

rapariga

In Portugal, a girl or a young woman, said without any edge. In much of Brazil, an insult.

apelido

In Portugal, a surname. In Brazil, a nickname; the surname is the sobrenome. When transcripts are de-identified, a Portuguese participant’s apelido is a family name and gets coded like one.

camisola

In Portugal, a sweater, or a soccer jersey. In Brazil, a nightgown.

A translator who knows where the recording was made reads these without stopping, which is one reason the request should say so.

Tu, você, and o senhor tell you who is speaking to whom

In most of Brazil, você is the usual “you,” with a third-person verb. In some regions, Rio Grande do Sul among them, people say tu, often with that same verb (tu vai), and the transcript keeps it as said. O senhor and a senhora carry respect, usually toward someone older: a young interviewer will use them with a participant of 70.

In Portugal, tu, with its own verb forms, is the “you” of family and friends, and among young people. Você can sound distant or even curt, so polite speech often leaves the pronoun out or uses a title in the third person: o senhor quer, a senhora enfermeira disse.

Both countries put titles in front of first names. In Brazil, Dona and Seu go before a first name, as in Dona Lurdes; in Portugal, so do Dona and Senhor, or a professional title such as Doutora. These forms name a person as clearly as a surname does, so a de-identified transcript needs a rule for them in the codebook.

English has one “you” for all of these. The translation keeps it, and a translator’s note can mark the moment a participant moves from o senhor to você, so the change stays visible in English. Read literally, a gente is “the people”; in Brazil, and in casual speech in Portugal, it is the ordinary “we” (a gente vai, “we’re going”), and a literal reading turns a participant’s “we” into a remark about people in general.

Portuguese from Angola and Mozambique comes by arrangement

Portuguese is the official language of both countries, and many people in both speak another language at home, such as Umbundu or Kimbundu in Angola and Emakhuwa or Xichangana in Mozambique. Written Portuguese in both countries has followed the European spelling. As of 2026, neither has ratified the 1990 agreement; Mozambique’s government approved it in 2012, and it still awaits a vote in parliament. Spellings from before the agreement, such as acção, are still common in Angolan print.

Speech carries words from those languages, and some may have traveled: bué, “a lot,” common slang in Lisbon, possibly comes from Kimbundu. Ordinary words differ too: a bus is a machimbombo in Luanda and in Maputo.

We take these recordings by arrangement, as we do recordings from Portugal: send a short excerpt and we’ll say whether our reviewers can do the work well. When an interview switches into another language, the way to mark it, for example [in Umbundu] at the timestamp where the Portuguese stops, is agreed before the work starts.

Four things your request should say

1. Where the recordings were made, and where the speakers are from. A focus group in Porto with Brazilian participants and a moderator from Portugal puts two varieties in one file. If the variety matters to your analysis, put it in your speaker codes, as in P3-PT, and the labels will follow them.
2. One spelling rule for the Portuguese. One spelling for the whole project, or each speaker in their country’s spelling. If you’ll search or code the text in software, one spelling is easier to work with.
3. The spelling of the English, separately. European Portuguese doesn’t call for British English: a study from Lisbon written up for an American journal needs US spelling. US spelling is the default; ask for UK spelling if you want it.
4. How names and titles are coded. If the transcripts are to be de-identified, send the codes you use and say whether titles such as Dona and Senhor stay in front of the code.