English -al adjectives in Brazilian Portuguese

Level A2

English -al adjectives in Brazilian Portuguese

Many English adjectives ending in -al have close relatives in Brazilian Portuguese: normal, natural and original keep the same spelling. Others change their stems: personal becomes pessoal, professional becomes profissional, and international becomes internacional. These similarities help you recognize words, but English pronunciation does not carry over. Watch the meaning too: atual means current, and eventual usually means occasional or possible.

Actual, eventual, occasional and real: meanings to recognize

Recognize six familiar adjectives in everyday phrases

Inglês adjetivo em -al pode sugerir português adjetivo relacionado em -al, como original; confira o sentido e a forma. Em pessoal, profissional e internacional, o português muda o radical.

Stress the ending and use Portuguese adjective forms

In Portuguese, all six adjectives stress the final syllable: nor-MAL, na-tu-RAL, pes-so-AL, pro-fis-si-o-NAL, in-ter-na-ci-o-NAL and o-ri-gi-NAL. In most Brazilian accents, final l sounds like the w in English now, so don’t pronounce it like the unstressed ending in English normal.

These adjectives have the same singular form with masculine and feminine nouns, and their plurals change -al to -ais, as in “Essas são minhas coisas pessoais.” They usually follow the noun in these phrases: “Preciso do documento original” means “I need the original document.” In pessoal and profissional, ss represents an s sound, never a z sound.

“Minha temperatura tá normal” uses the casual spoken form tá for está; use está in formal writing. A gente is an everyday way to say we and takes a singular verb, as in “A gente tem uma equipe internacional.”

False friends: actual, eventual and real

Portuguese atual means current, as in “Esse é meu endereço atual,” while English actual can mean real, as in “Esse é o preço real?” Portuguese eventual often means occasional and can mean possible in some contexts; it does not normally mean something that finally happens. For occasional work or trips, use ocasional; possível means possible.

English eventual describes what happens in the end. In the phrases here, eventual winner is translated as vencedor final and eventual choice as escolha final. To express the broader idea of something that eventually happens, use que acaba acontecendo. When English real means genuine, use verdadeiro, as in “Este é um diamante verdadeiro” and “O sorriso dela é verdadeiro.” Verdadeiro changes to verdadeira with a feminine noun, so the English spelling real alone cannot tell you which Portuguese word or form to choose.

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