Expressing feelings and reactions in Brazilian Portuguese

Level B1

Expressing feelings and reactions in Brazilian Portuguese

Describe feelings that conflict or change, and explain what caused them. You will also practise acknowledging disappointment, concern and relief. The formal examples use standard forms suitable for polite conversation; o senhor adds respectful address to a man, while você is common in everyday conversation. Tô, tá and tava are conversational forms of estou, está and estava, best avoided in formal writing.

Words for feelings and expectations

Expressing two conflicting feelings with mas

Estou sentimento sobre algo, mas sentimento sobre uma ação relacionada.

Moving from worry to relief

No começo, eu estava sentimento, mas agora sentimento atual e motivo.

Explaining disappointment and unmet expectations

Fiquei sentimento com experiência porque expectativa não atendida.

Connecting feelings to their causes

Unlike English “feel,” sentir-se takes a reflexive pronoun when followed by a feeling adjective, as in eu me sinto animado; estou animado also describes a current feeling, and the adjective agrees with the person described, so animada, preocupada, decepcionada and aliviada are feminine forms. English “about” has no single equivalent here: com introduces what the feeling concerns, while por followed by an infinitive explains its cause, as in “Eu me sinto animado com a mudança, mas preocupado por deixar meus amigos.”

In com a ideia de ir sozinho, de links ideia to the action, while in aliviado por saber que todos estão bem, por introduces the reason and que introduces what the speaker knows. Agora que introduces a situation that now makes a reaction possible, as in “Agora que todo mundo está a salvo, me sinto aliviado.”

Estava describes an earlier state, fiquei describes the reaction it produced, and esperava describes the expectation held at the time; esperar here means “expect,” though it can also mean “hope” or “wait” in other contexts. Informal a gente means “we” but takes a singular verb, hence a gente ficou, and que pena acknowledges disappointment while que alívio and que bom express relief or pleasure at good news.

Responding sympathetically in polite conversation

Acknowledging disappointment and relief with a friend

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