Two Weeks Until Your Trip to Portugal: A Speaking Plan
Portuguese for a trip to Portugal in two weeks: a spoken scene a day in trip order, and how to set your teacher to Lisbon before the Brazilian path starts.
Linguino · Nov 3, 2026 · 8 min read
You will not learn Portuguese in two weeks. You can prepare the dozen or so conversations a trip to Portugal is made of, in the order you will meet them, and say each one out loud until the first line comes without thinking. Ten minutes a day is enough for that.
One thing needs saying first, plainly: Linguino's Portuguese path is Brazilian. Its scenes are set in Rio and São Paulo, and its lines are Brazilian lines. You can change that. Tell your teacher you are learning European Portuguese, as spoken in Lisbon, and it speaks that way from the next lesson. This post is the plan, and how to set that up before day one.
Set your teacher to Portugal before day one
After you sign in, open your notebook (Notebook in your account menu, top right) and find "Your teacher". For Portuguese, choose Portugal (Lisbon). The setting saves right away and your next lesson uses it. Choose where your teacher's language comes from explains the choices.
From then on the teacher speaks the way people do in Lisbon. Here is what that changes, as the product defines it:
- tu with friends, and o senhor or a senhora to be polite, where Brazilians say você.
- European words: autocarro (bus), comboio (train), telemóvel (mobile phone) and pequeno-almoço (breakfast), where Brazilians say ônibus, trem, celular and café da manhã.
- The Lisbon accent, with unstressed vowels swallowed and an s at the end of a syllable said like "sh". This is the part that surprises people who learned from Brazilian audio, because the vowels you expect to hear are partly not there.
A scene set in Brazil moves to a similar place in Lisbon. When a line from the lesson is said differently there, the teacher shows you the local way once and says what is different. Either form is fine when you answer; it is the same language.
There is no link that sets this for you yet, so do it by hand. It takes a minute.
What this plan cannot do
Be careful with the written parts. The lesson notes and the lines on screen were written for Brazil, and so were the pronunciations in them. Your teacher speaks the Lisbon way and shows you the local form of a line when it differs. When the screen and the voice disagree, trust the voice and copy it. If a Lisbon speaker you know can listen to a day or two with you, that is worth more than anything here. The accent is the hardest thing to learn from a screen.
The plan: one scene a day
Each day is one situation, practiced as a spoken scene with your teacher playing the other person. The scenes below are the Brazilian path's, in trip order; with Portugal chosen, the places move to Lisbon.
| Day | Scene | Where you are |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hello and goodbye | A small bakery in the morning: greet the woman at the counter, answer when she asks how you are, say goodbye |
| 2 | Numbers and prices | A fruit stall in a street market: what the mangoes and the strawberries cost |
| 3 | At the beach kiosk | A kiosk on a hot afternoon: greet, ask what a coconut water and a pastel cost, buy one |
| 4 | Ordering a meal | A busy lunch place: the menu, a main dish, a drink, a tip on what is good today |
| 5 | Days 1 to 4 again, the two that went worst | |
| 6 | Buying a ticket | The ticket window at a big station: across town and back tonight, and where it leaves from |
| 7 | Days 3 and 6 again | |
| 8 | Across the city | Leaving your hotel an hour before a match: which line, the ticket, the platform, a taxi back |
| 9 | Hotel check-in | A hotel after a long day: breakfast time, the wifi password, an air conditioning that works |
| 10 | At the pharmacy | A pharmacy on the corner with a pounding head and a stuffy nose |
| 11 | Days 8 to 10 again | |
| 12 | Day 1 and day 8 once more | |
| 13 | The scene that still worries you | |
| 14 | Day 1, then stop |
Days 1 to 4, 6 and 8 are A1 scenes from the first three units of the path, and day 3 and day 8 are the unit checkpoints. Days 9 and 10 are A2 scenes, which are harder; that is the point of doing them after a week of talking.
Two honest notes. The ticket scene is a train station ticket window, which suits a trip that includes a train between cities; it is not a metro scene. And no path scene is about a pastel de nata at a pastry counter, which you will want. Make it a custom scene: describe it and the teacher plays the person behind the counter. Custom scenes need practice time.
Day four: a busy lunch place
Day one is the shortest scene, and the one Brazilian and European Portuguese share most, a greeting said out loud. The Brazil version of this plan shows its lines. Here is a scene from the middle of the week, because ordering a meal is where most people first feel the gap between a list and a conversation. You sit down at a busy lunch place. You need the menu, a main dish, a drink, and a tip from the server on what is good today.
| Say | Sounds like | Means |
|---|---|---|
| Eu vou querer o frango grelhado, por favor. | eh-oo voh keh-REHR oo FRAHN-goo greh-LAH-doo, poor fah-VOR | I'll have the grilled chicken, please. |
| O que você recomenda? | oo keh voh-SEH heh-koh-MEN-dah | What do you recommend? |
| Para beber, uma água sem gás. | PAH-rah beh-BEHR, OO-mah AH-gwah seng GAHSS | To drink, a still water. |
| Só um minutinho, por favor. | saw oong mee-noo-CHEE-nyoo, poor fah-VOR | Just a minute, please. |
Those are the lesson's lines and its Brazilian pronunciations. Two things to expect with Lisbon chosen. Você is the Brazilian "you", and in Portugal the polite form to a server is o senhor or a senhora, so your teacher shows you the local way of asking for a recommendation, and says what is different. And the sounds shift: the same words with swallowed vowels and an s like "sh". Say the line the teacher says, not the one in the table.
Keep two things from the scene that travel. Só um minutinho, por favor buys you time without sending the server away, and the lesson's tip is that it sounds softer than a plain "just a minute". And sem gás or com gás has to be said, or the server will stop and ask.
How to spend the ten minutes
- Minutes 1 to 3: the scene, live. Do the day's conversation once. Say the lines, hear the reply, deal with it. If a word is missing, say what you can and ask again.
- Minutes 4 to 6: the same scene again. The first line should come faster and the reply should need less thinking. If it does not, a third time is better than a new scene.
- Minutes 7 to 10: one old scene. Pick the day that went worst and run it once.
Count turns, not minutes. A day where you spoke twenty times in Portuguese is a good day. The five-minute language habit explains why a short daily session beats a long weekend one.
If listening is what worries you, understanding spoken Portuguese covers speed and sounds, and how to read Portuguese explains the spelling. Both can wait until after the trip.
If your trip is on the calendar
Free: 3 sessions a day, 3 minutes each. That covers a scene a day at a short length. If you want longer sessions, or scenes for your exact trip (a wedding in the Algarve, a week of work in Lisbon), a mission plans the scenes backwards from your travel date: path scenes like the ones above, two or three custom ones, a dress rehearsal near the end, and a short list of key phrases for the day itself. Missions come with Starter, Fluent or the mission pack.
Linguino is built for this: every lesson is a live spoken conversation with an AI teacher who plays the other person and reacts to what you say. When you get stuck, a Help button gives you a way in, and what you practice goes into your phrasebook for the plane. You start with just your email.
Choose Portugal in your notebook, then start with the lunch place. It takes three minutes, and you will order your first meal in Portugal already having done it once.