Top 50 phrases to get by Portugal: Essential communication

💬 Portuguese often drops the subject word, so Fala inglês? literally just says "Speak English?" You can reuse the pattern with other languages: Fala francês? or Fala espanhol?.

🇵🇹 This is a normal question to ask staff or strangers politely in Portugal. A small opener like Desculpe before it can make it sound softer.

🇵🇹 Time-of-day greetings are very common in Portugal and often sound more natural than a plain olá with strangers. Use bom dia until lunch time, roughly through the morning.

🇵🇹 Boa tarde is the usual greeting through the afternoon and can also work when entering a shop or speaking to staff. In Portugal, using the right time-of-day greeting often sounds especially natural and polite.

🇵🇹 Boa noite is used both when greeting someone in the evening and when saying goodnight as you leave. Context tells you which one it means.

🇵🇹 Use com licença to get past someone, interrupt briefly, or excuse yourself before leaving a table. It is the polite "excuse me" for movement and interruption, not an apology for a mistake.

💬 The stress is on the second syllable: polícia. In European Portuguese, unstressed vowels get reduced, so it sounds closer to (puh-LEE-see-uh) than the spelling suggests.