Customer Reviews

A Dictionary of Informal Brazilian Portuguese: With English Index

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I am truly astonished at the amount of research the authors put into this text; I would have considered it a bargain at triple the price. It covers a very wide range of levels of informality ranging from merely "colloquial" all the way down to "vulgar."

Many of my Brazilian friends have commented that the book is accurate and the examples quite humorous. If you are studying Portuguese, you must have a copy of this book.

Beware the temporal snob I always say, as a good colloquial saying never goes out of style. This book is FANTASTIC. I've worked many of the expressions from this book into my conversations with Brazilians and they not only knew what I was talking about, it always produced a great laugh and the question "where does a gringo ever learn to say such things?" From this book I tell ya! CERTAIN (not all) slang expressions do fall from usage, and some new ones are added - does that erase the value of this incredible text? Not for a second. Can you imagine how old our expression "take a hike" is? Or how about "What's up?" (I'm sure it was around before Bugs Bunny said it in 1939) "What's up?" Is as hip now as it was over 60 years ago, as are the expressions used in this book. But it's not about being hip, it's about understand figurative language and being able to express yourself figuratively. That's what this book does for you, and I assure you that as much as people said "that's diesel" 5 years ago, we never needed that expression to begin with (but I doubt we'll ever stop saying "what's up"...case closed). The good ones never die. Buy it! And to you guys who don't like the fact that whatever was said in the latest rap cd isn't in here - deixa de encher o saco, PQP~!

I must disagree with the other reviewer who said this book was out of date. This book is amazing and super-useful. I just came back from a year in Brasil (I returned in January of 2001) and I carried this book everywhere. It was very helpful when it came to reading, drinking and brandishing insults.

At first glance the book does look old. It looks like it might be xeroxed pages from a typewriter, but after a couple moments with the book all my friends were trying to steal it from me. It made me feel local so much faster than any other book, tape or video I had packed in my arsenal. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

Book may be useful for the professional Portuguese "translator" that is looking for a variety of colloquial word usages ranging from 1983 to many years back. But for everyday "informal" Brazilian Portuguese spoken today, I have found it of little use - - buyer must remember that while Amazon says the book is a 1984 copyright date (the book itself says 1983) this book is two decades (or more) old. Informal everyday word usage in Brazil today is much different than from the 70's and early 80's. I travel to Brazil once a month and have found it of little use.

The authors make a valiant attempt to compile a comprehensive register of Brazilian slang but by its very nature is flawed due to the impossibility to keep up with the rapid pace at which languages change. The authors neglect to include commonly used expressions like "pagar um mico" and "soltar a franga" but is, overall, the impressive result of an obviously tremendous amount of hard work. Despite some inescapable shortcomings the book proves itself to be one of the most definitive reference guides to a side of Brazilian Portuguese too often excluded by mainstream textbooks.