1000 Most Common Portuguese Words.
Vocabulary Builder
The 1,000 words that make up nearly three quarters of everyday written Portuguese, taught the way Brazilians speak and grouped by pattern and theme, with IPA, a plain-English respelling and three interlinear example sentences per entry.
288 pages · Paperback & Kindle · Beginner
an example sentence from the entry for nação (nation)
How the book is organised.
One thousand high-frequency words in three Parts, from the essential glue words to the ones you already know from English to the rest by theme.
A small core of words does most of the work in any language. In Portuguese, the 1,000 most common words make up nearly three quarters of everyday written text, and hundreds of them are words an English speaker already owns: nação is nation, cidade is city, escola is school.
This book teaches the Portuguese of Brazil, in the register Brazilians actually speak: você for you, a gente for we, tem for there is. Where Portugal says a different word, a note on the entry gives it, and the pronunciation guide closes with a short note on how Portugal sounds. The words themselves are overwhelmingly the same.
The thousand come in three Parts: first the essential words that hold every sentence together, then the words you already know from English, sorted by the rules that link them (-ção is -tion, -dade is -ty, -mente is -ly, and the extra e in escola and especial), then the rest by everyday theme. Every entry gives the IPA and a plain-English respelling with the stressed syllable in capitals, the meaning with the gender of every noun, and three example sentences glossed word by word with a natural translation underneath. The key verbs carry a conjugation table, each Part ends with a test, and the answer key and an alphabetical index of every word sit at the back.
- 01Part One: the essential wordsThe little words that hold every sentence together, and the verbs you cannot speak without: ser, estar, ter, fazer, ir
- 02Part Two: words you already knowIdentical twins like natural and hospital, the -ção, -dade and -mente rules, the extra e in escola, and near-cognates close enough to guess aloud
- 03Part Three: by themePeople, home, time, places, work, the world outside, feelings, everyday actions, describing, talking and ideas
- 04Three sentences per entryWord-by-word English glosses beneath the Portuguese, with a natural translation under each
- 05Five guides up frontSaying the words, putting words together, how Portuguese builds words, numbers, time and dates, and a short list of false friends
- 06Tests, answer key and indexA test at the end of each Part, the answers at the back, and every word in an alphabetical index
A bonus chapter, If You Already Know Spanish, turns the regular sound swaps between the two languages into free Portuguese, and flags the Spanish lookalikes that mislead.
Why this edition.
The Portuguese of Brazil
Spoken Brazilian usage throughout, from você and a gente to tem for there is. Where Portugal says something different, the entry notes it: a celular is a telemóvel in Portugal, and a time (team) is an equipa.
Say it from the first page
Every word carries IPA for precision and a plain-English respelling you can simply read aloud, with the stressed syllable in capitals. The pronunciation guide covers the nasal vowels, the Brazilian r and the "chee" and "jee" sounds that turn cidade into see-DAH-jee.
Rules that hand you hundreds of words
Portuguese -ção is English -tion, -dade is -ty and -mente is -ly, so nação, cidade and finalmente read themselves. Part Two gathers hundreds of words like these, chapter by chapter, so recognition does the work of memorisation.
Fewer verb forms to learn
Brazilians say você for you and a gente for we, and both take the same verb form as ele (he), so one ending covers four of the six persons. The conjugation tables for the key verbs use você and vocês for exactly this reason.
Check yourself as you go
A 20-question test closes each Part, with a full answer key at the back, and the alphabetical index lets you look up any word by its spelling.
the three example sentences for nação (nation), from the chapter “The -ção Rule”. A thousand entries read like this
The details.
- Series
- Vocabulary Builder
- Language pair
- Portuguese–English interlinear
- Variety
- Brazilian Portuguese, with Portugal's differences noted
- Format
- Paperback & Kindle
- Print length
- 288 pages
- Coverage
- 1,000 headwords, about 73% of everyday written Portuguese; 3,000 example sentences
- Level
- Beginner
- Published
- August 2026
- ASIN
- B0HFT5819M
More from the press.
Every edition is glossed by hand, word by word, and printed on demand by Amazon.
Learn the 1,000 words that carry everyday Brazilian Portuguese, with every example glossed word by word.
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