Learn Your First 200 Portuguese Words: A1 Essentials Flashcards, Cleaned Up

The Portuguese Vocabulary A1 — Essentials deck (Flip It code DM3535, 260 cards) is a frequency list: the little words that make up most of any Portuguese conversation. That is the right place to start — but the deck has three quirks worth knowing before your first review.

Sample cards

What you'll learn

Articles o, a, os, as, um, uma; pronouns eu, tu, você, ele, ela, nós, vocês, eles, me, te, lhe, mim; possessives meu, minha, meus, teu, tua, seu, sua, nosso, nossa; question words quem, onde, quando, qual, quanto, como, porque; adverbs aqui, lá, já, agora, ainda, sempre, nunca, talvez, também, hoje, depois, antes, assim; indefinites tudo, nada, algo, alguém, ninguém, qualquer, todo, toda, todos; and everyday nouns casa, coisa, tempo, dia, noite, vida, pai, mãe, filho, homem, mulher, amigo, dinheiro, trabalho, nome, verdade.

Three things to fix first

1. Cards 101–154 replay cards 1–100. que, não, de, um, para, está, se, do, por, os… all come back with slightly different glosses. Suspend that block: the deck holds about 206 distinct words, not 260. Your real "new" material starts at card 155 (ainda).

2. About 40 cards are just seven verbs, scattered. é, foi, ser, era, são, sou, seja (ser); está, estou, estás, estava, estão, estamos (estar); tem, tenho, ter, temos, tens, tinha, têm (ter); vai, vou, vamos, vais, vão, ir, vá (ir); plus poder, saber and querer in four forms each. Learned one by one, they never click. Write seven table cards instead (front: "ter, present"; back: tenho, tens, tem, temos, têm) and treat the single-form cards as recall checks.

3. A few backs are wrong or misleading:

• Card 63: era is the imperfect of ser, not estar — estar's "was" is estava (card 72).
• Card 100: disse is the preterite ("I/he said"), not a past participle — that is dito.
• Card 59: você is the everyday "you" in Brazil, not the formal one; formality there is o senhor / a senhora (see card 202).
• Card 34: foi means both "was" (ser) and "went" (ir) — add "went" to the back.
• Card 174: write Deus with a capital; delete card 225 (oh).

Note the deck mixes Brazil-labelled cards with European tu forms (estás, tens, queres, podes, sabes, vais). Both are correct — just tag which variety you're targeting.

Study tip: learn contractions as a grid

Eighteen cards are fused prepositions: do, da, dos, das, no, na, nos, ao, à, às, pelo, pela, num, dele, dela, disso, daqui. Don't memorize them as vocabulary. Draw one grid — de / em / a / por down the side, o / a / os / as across the top — fill it in once, and every one of these cards becomes a quick check instead of a separate word.

Next step

Once the core is solid, move to the 300-word European Portuguese everyday vocabulary deck, which turns these function words into full sentences.

Find Portuguese Vocabulary A1 — Essentials (DM3535) in the Flip It library.