Reference Centre, Dictionnaires
Dictionary of Portugese Words and Phrases
This list contains Portuguese words with their English translations. The words included here are those that one is likely to find in a genealogical or historical document or record. If the word you are looking for is not on this list, please consult a Portugese-English dictionary.
Portuguese is a Romance language very similar to Spanish. Consequently, many Spanish words resemble and carry similar meanings to those of Portuguese.
Portuguese is the national language of Portugal, Brazil, Mozambique and Angola. Portuguese is also spoken on Macau, China and in the Goa region of India. It can also be heard in various regions of the United States of America that are heavily populated by Portuguese immigrants, such as Fall River and New Bedford, Massachusetts, and in various areas of California and Hawaii.
During the 1200s, the Galician-Portuguese dialect began to emerge in the western part of the Iberian peninsula from the then Portuguese language. It was from that dialect that the Portuguese language took shape.
As with all languages spelling was not standardized until the mid-1700s. Clerks, in their written records, spelled words based upon the way a word sounded and also in accordance with the level of their own understanding of language as gained through their education. Since the early 1900s many people have wanted to simplify and standardize the Portuguese spelling, primarily by removing double consonents and other 'old-fashioned' letter combinations. In 1943 the government of Portugal and Brazil approved a new system of spelling whereby 'ph' has been replaced by the letter 'f', the 'the' by 't' and the 'y' by 'i'. Otherwise, the variations between the old-style and modern-style of spelling words should not cause too much trouble for a researcher. The most notable spelling change might be the removal of the tilde accent, in some instances, from above or beside the vowels 'a', 'e' and 'u'. In the place of ã ~e or ~u, is 'am', 'em' or 'um'.