Whenever I try to explain the difference between Brazillian Portuguese and Portuguese from Portugal to an English speaker I usually say "they're more different than American English and Commonwealth English."
Actually, it's more than that.
This morning Randal was having a (Brazillian) Portuguese lesson. One of the sentences on that lesson was "O cachorro está pulando", meaning "The dog is jumping."
Here's how it would be in Portuguese from Portugal: you'd use "cão" instead of "cachorro" (we only use that word to refer to hot dogs: "cachorro quente"), and instead of the verb "pular" (which is rather uncommon in Portugal) you'd use the verb "saltar."
Furthermore, most Portuguese people wouldn't use the form "saltando", but rather "a saltar".
Thus, the sentence, as said by a Portuguese person, would be "O cão está a saltar".
As you can see, it's really different. Words like "cachorro", "pular", and many, many others are really, really uncommon in Portugal.
Other Portuguese words used in Portugal are, of course, rather uncommon in Brazil, or have completely different meanings.
In Portugal, "rapaz" and "rapariga" mean "boy" and "girl", but if you call a Brazillian girl "rapariga", her father or her brothers (or both) will probably be very interested in why you think she's a whore.
On our way to lunch we were discussing all this, and pretty soon we realized that the sentence about the dog is really stupid and you'd only use it to complain about the fact that the dog was jumping (unless you were very happy about it), in which case you would probably word it differently and perhaps even use slang (yes, I understand that would change from person to person)...
Portuguese speakers, do be warned that through the rest of this journal entry you'll experience some of the most popular slang in Portugal...
You've been warned.
First, you'd probably say something like "O raio do cão não pára quieto", meaning "The damned dog doesn't stay still", or perhaps "Rais parta o cão, que não pára quieto", meaning "Damn the dog, he doesn't stay put" (I'm mispelling "Raios" on purpose).
In the north, you'd probably hear "Caralho do cão, que não pára de pinchar", meaning pretty much the same thing, with a nastiest expression for "Damned dog" and an alternate Northern verb for "jump", "pinchar".
And then we got to the final expression which we agreed would probably be the most caracteristic: "Foda-se!!! Caralho do cão, que o filho da puta não pára quieto... Puta que pariu!!!"
[slight pause for most of our Portuguese readers to start breathing again]
That would mean something like "God damn it!! Damned dog, the son of a bitch doesn't stay put... God damn it!!!", but with more appropriate and stronger words.
At this point the speaker would also say, directly to the dog: "Ai o caralho... tás aqui tás a levar um bofardo que te fodo!", meaning "In no time you'll be slapped and be fucked!", but with much better and more appropriate wording.
