Master 300 Portuguese Business Words: A Brazilian Corporate Vocabulary Study Guide

Three hundred and two cards, English on the front, Portuguese on the back, and not a single verb or full sentence among them. Portuguese Business Vocabulary (code IN5707) on Flip It is a corporate glossary, and it is a Brazilian one: estoque, equipe, contador, aposentadoria and cadeia de suprimentos are São Paulo office Portuguese, where Lisbon would say existências, equipa, contabilista, reforma and cadeia de abastecimento. Know which market you are preparing for before you start.

What the deck covers

The 302 cards run through eight unlabelled blocks: general company life, strategy and projects, operations and quality, supply chain and trade, costs and pricing, marketing and customer relations, finance, banking, corporate law, and HR. You will master orçamento, lucro, prejuízo, receita, despesa, prazo, meta, acionista, conselho de administração, sócio, concorrência, desempenho, matéria-prima, fornecimento, armazém, alfândega, imposto, custo fixo, custo variável, ponto de equilíbrio, desconto, publicidade, marca, reclamação, reembolso, garantia, balanço patrimonial, demonstração de resultados, fluxo de caixa, auditoria, previsão, taxa de juros, empréstimo, dívida, saque, taxa de câmbio, cheque especial, falência, fusão, aquisição, filial, sede, tempo de inatividade, conformidade, advogado, cláusula, recrutamento, currículo, carta de apresentação, período de experiência, remuneração and licença maternidade.

Sample cards

Tip 1: study this deck in one direction only

Around fifteen English fronts collapse onto the same Portuguese back. Valuation, appraisal and assessment are all avaliação; duty and fee are both taxa; warranty and guarantee are both garantia; creditor and lender are credor; acquisition and takeover are aquisição; salary and wage are salário; staff and personnel are pessoal; candidate and applicant are candidato; lawyer and attorney are advogado; résumé and CV are currículo; business and deal are both negócio. English to Portuguese those pairs are free wins. Reversed, they are unanswerable, so keep the deck one-way and leave the reverse drill to a deck that has context.

Tip 2: the deck teaches no gender, so add it yourself

Every back is a bare noun, which means you are memorising half a word. Portuguese business nouns hide plenty of traps: o orçamento, o prazo, o saldo, o imposto, o lucro, o prejuízo but a fatura, a meta, a dívida, a taxa, a ação, a sede, a filial. Edit the article into the back of each card as you review it, and write one short sentence per block — o prazo de entrega venceu ontem — so the nouns come back attached to a verb.

Three backs worth a second look

Markup → Margem de lucro conflates two different figures: margem is calculated on the selling price, markup on cost. Legal → Legal is technically right but dangerous in Brazil, where spoken legal means cool; the office word is jurídico. And stock appears twice in two senses, ação (a share) and stock level → nível de estoque (inventory), which is worth noting on both cards.

At 30 cards a day the deck takes about ten days. Search for IN5707 in the Flip It library, and if you need the everyday grammar underneath this vocabulary, start with the B1 Portuguese study guide.