First Portuguese words for toddlers: 75 to start with.

Start with what they can see

A study of English, Cantonese and Mandarin learners aged eight to sixteen months found that babies’ first words had much in common across languages, though the share of names for things, people words and action words differed from one language to the next.¹ In another study, mothers of twenty-month-olds in seven countries filled in matching word checklists: in every language, names for things made up the biggest share of children’s words, except among children just starting to talk.² Neither study included Portuguese, so the pattern comes from other languages. Still, it gives a family adding Portuguese a place to begin: people, food and the things in the room.

Words in both languages count. Bilingual children are no more likely than other children to have trouble with language, and with both languages counted together they know about as many words as children learning one.³ An evaluation should look at every language a child uses,^{3, 4} and the standard parent word checklist has a European Portuguese version, with short forms for eight to thirty months.⁵ The bilingual toddler guide explains more.

Brazilian words, Brazilian voices

The words on this page, and both voices, are Brazilian Portuguese. In Portugal a few of them differ. The train, trem, is comboio; the everyday word for a dog is cão, and cachorro usually means a puppy; the affectionate names for mom and dad are mamã and papá; and bebê is spelled bebé, with a more open last vowel.⁶ For “you”, Brazilians mostly say você, the word the phrase cards use; tu is heard in several parts of Brazil, most of all the north and the south,¹⁴ and in Portugal with family, close friends and children.⁷ A family in Portugal will understand every card, and where your family says it differently, your word is the right one to say after the clip.

How Portuguese sounds and reads

Spelling is a fair guide once a few patterns are familiar, and the native voice is a better one. These patterns, as Brazilians say them, cover most of the words below:⁸

• The tilde, for a nasal vowel. ã and ão are said partly through the nose. ão is close to the end of “sound”, as in mão (hand) and coração (heart); the ç always sounds like s. The ãe at the end of mamãe is like “my” said through the nose. A final m works the same way: the lips stay open at the end of trem (train) and pinguim (penguin).
• A final o and e. At the end of a word, an unstressed o sounds like “oo” and an unstressed e like “ee”: gato (cat) is “GAH-too”, parque (park) is “PAR-kee”.
• t and d before that “ee”. In many Brazilian accents, especially in the southeast, ti and a final te sound like “chee”, and di and a final de like “jee”. So leite (milk) can end like “LAY-chee”, and the de in ursinho de pelúcia (teddy bear) can sound like “jee”.
• lh and nh. lh is close to the “lli” in “million”, as in colher (spoon). nh is a soft “ny”, as in “canyon”: cozinha (kitchen), montanha (mountain).
• An r at the start of a word, and rr. Both usually sound close to an English h, as in rosa (pink) and carro (car); in some regions they are rolled instead. A single r between vowels is a quick tap. If Spanish is in your family too, these two words are spelled the same in both languages and sound different; the first Spanish words guide has the Spanish side.
• Accent marks. An acute accent marks an open vowel and a circumflex a closed one, and both show which syllable is stressed. The grandparents are the classic pair: vovó (grandma) ends in an open “aw”, vovô (grandpa) in a closed “oh”.

The 75 words

These are the free words from Their First Words in Portuguese, in the three stages the app uses. Every word has two native voices, a woman’s and a man’s, so you can hear it before trying it yourself. Action words are in their dictionary form, the one ending in -r, like comer (eat); in conversation the ending changes. The same 75, plus 35 everyday phrases, are also free printable Portuguese flashcards, with English as an optional second language.

First Words 0–24 months · 25 words

Growing Words 2–3 years · 25 words

Word Builder 3–5 years · 25 words

Phrases, articles and family words

Eight of the free phrase cards cover a good part of a toddler’s day, from breakfast to lights-out:

The word card acabou means “it’s finished”; Acabei on the phrase card means “I’m done”. The ending shows who finished.

Portuguese nouns are masculine or feminine, and the word for “the” shows which: o or a, and for “a”, um or uma. Most words ending in -o take o and most ending in -a take a: o cachorro, a bola. Some do not follow the pattern, and mão is one: a mão. Words that describe a person follow the person, so a proud boy is orgulhoso and a proud girl is orgulhosa. Thanks works the same way: Obrigada on the card is a girl’s thank-you, and a boy says obrigado.

The names a child says are mamãe and papai; mãe and pai are the plain words for mom and dad. For grandma and grandpa, a child says vovó and vovô; the plain words are avó and avô, with the same open and closed ending. Brazilian parents also add -inho or -inha to a great many words when they talk to a small child: cachorro becomes cachorrinho and gato becomes gatinho, and on the cards those are the puppy and the kitten. That is ordinary Brazilian Portuguese, not baby talk added on top. Some of these little words have settled in for good: the teddy bear is ursinho de pelúcia, a “little bear” made of plush, and abobrinha (zucchini) began as “little squash”.⁶

Using them in an ordinary day

A few Portuguese words can fit into a routine you already have. Here is what that might sound like:

• Breakfast: leite (milk), banana, colher (spoon), and Mais, por favor (more, please) when the bowl is empty. The mealtime guide walks through exactly this.
• Getting dressed: sapato (shoe), mão (hand), acabou (done) when the shoes are on, and Me dá a mão (hold my hand) on the way out the door.
• The park: parque (park), árvore (tree), flor (flower), pato (duck), bola (ball), and Quer brincar? (do you want to play?) for a new friend.
• Bedtime: ursinho de pelúcia (teddy bear), abraçar (hug), Eu te amo (I love you), and Boa noite, dorme bem (good night, sleep tight) at lights-out.

Your child’s interest gives you an opening. In a small study, toddlers whose mothers more often talked about what the child was already looking at knew more words at twenty-one months.⁹ “Pato” when they spot a duck, then a few seconds for a reply. A point, a sound or “duck” keeps the exchange going; you can answer with the Portuguese word again. The two-language card routine shows how that can work with a picture beside the real meal.

Grandparents, Saturday school and a second parent

Portuguese in the US comes in many accents. About half of the country’s Brazilian immigrants live in Florida, Massachusetts or California,¹⁰ and other Portuguese-speaking families trace their roots to the Azores, mainland Portugal or Cape Verde, and in smaller numbers to Angola and Mozambique.¹¹ For many of these families, the grandparents are the heart of it: a child who can answer vovó on a video call. A call goes better when a toddler has something to say on cue: Eu te amo (I love you), Obrigada (thank you), or Essa é minha mamãe (this is my mommy) when Mom leans into the frame. A week of saying them at bedtime gives Sunday’s call somewhere to start.

A Saturday Portuguese class or a church service in Portuguese is a few hours a week, and the words need somewhere to live in between; a minute with four cards at breakfast is not homework. More speakers also mean more of the day in Portuguese. In a study of twenty-nine Spanish–English two-year-olds, the share of the day each language filled predicted how each was coming along, and for English, so did the number of different people the child heard it from.¹² A grandparent, a teacher and a family friend each add time in Portuguese and another voice.

When only one parent speaks Portuguese, the home language has fewer voices. In a survey of 1,899 families with children aged six to ten, in which at least one parent spoke a minority language, the best odds of a child speaking it were in homes where both parents used it and no more than one also spoke the community language; “one parent, one language” was neither necessary nor sufficient.¹³ In a mixed home, the Portuguese speaker’s minutes, and the grandparents’, carry more of the weight. The other parent does not need to switch; the AAP’s advice is to use the language you are most comfortable in.⁴

Some parents come to Portuguese as learners: they chose it, for a partner’s family or for its own sake, and are learning alongside their child. The native voices on this page give you the sound to copy, and the guide to teaching a language you don’t speak covers what to expect. And if your own Portuguese went quiet after childhood, you are far from alone: home languages are more likely than the community language to fade as children grow.³ A few words at breakfast are a fine way back in.

Paper, app, or both

The printable cards are free, with no sign-up, and can live on the fridge or beside a favorite book. The app starts with the same free words and phrases, with a woman’s and a man’s native voice on every card, no ads, and offline play; a switch of the language on the card turns the same picture from leite into “milk”. One $9.99 purchase opens the rest of the 1,000+ words and 500+ phrases, in all eight languages. Both are there for the word; the conversation over breakfast is yours. Neither is a treatment for language delay. You can come back to this page whenever you want to hear a word again.