Tuesday June 16th 2020 | Porto

Portuguese for survival: coffee and beer

Key-words to survive in your visit to Porto

Portuguese for survival: coffee and beer | Blog

Portugal is like a brother we have forgotten. We do not think much about it, but when we visit it, we feel at home and behave, on many occasions, as if we had not left our country. And even if we don't have bad intentions, the Portuguese feel terrible about that. When we enter a cafeteria or a bar and start asking in fluent English, as if we were in London or Birmingham, they feel treated like a second-rate country. We must admit that they are right, because in France we do not do the same.

For this reason, we have thought about gathering in a small article a series of words that are useful during your stay in Porto. Of course, there are many online resources to learn the most basic phrases of the Portuguese vocabulary and courtesy formulas, such as "bom dia", "obrigado" and others, so here we will do something different.

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How do you order a beer? Well, it depends on the thirst you have: if you want a glass of beer, you should ask for a fino (20 cl); if you would like a 33 cl glass of beer, the word to use is príncipe; and if you are really thirsty or you want that drink to be the beginning of something, we must point to the caneca (half a litre). Be careful, because these are local denominations, if you continue the trip to Lisbon you will have to change the vocabulary. In addition, in some bars they are not very rigorous, so they will give you fino for príncipe or vice versa.

And if it is too early for a beer and you want a coffee, how do you order it? If you want a coffee with milk for breakfast, you will tell the waiter to bring you a meia de leite. For a drip coffee, there are two words on which there is no universal consensus: pingado and pingo. Pingo means “gout”, but each place interprets pingo and pingado as more or less "drops" of milk, without it being clear which one takes more.

If you prefer an Italian espresso, a very typical Portuguese name is bica. It turns out that when coffee was being introduced in Portugal, its bitter taste was not too pleasant, so the A Brasileira cafeteria put up small signs that said “Beba isto com açúcar” (Drink it with sugar), from whose initials the word bica was born. Anyway, it is more used in the south, and although it is also used in the north, it is more common as coffee or cimbalino.

As you can see, only in the field of beer and coffee there are many words that have nothing to do with English and can cause us some confusion. So no, it is no longer worth traveling to Portugal speaking only English. And of course, any other questions you have you can ask our guides during the Free Tour. We are waiting for you under the green umbrella!

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Labels: Porto , tips