Water in Portuguese: How to Say Água

Water in Portuguese: how to say "água" the right way

The word for water in Portuguese is água. That's it. One word, spelled the same whether you're in Rio de Janeiro or Lisbon, with an accent mark over the first "a" that you should never skip.

It rhymes roughly with "AH-gwah" if you say it out loud right now. Go ahead, try it. You'll use this word more than almost any other Portuguese noun, because you need it every single day: at restaurants, on hikes, at the gym, when you're thirsty and someone hands you a bottle. Every major dictionary agrees on the translation. Cambridge Dictionary lists água as the direct match for water, and so does Collins and WordHippo.

Here's the part that trips people up. Brazil and Portugal speak two different flavors of the same language, with real differences in slang, accent, and even some vocabulary. But water isn't one of those differences. Both countries, and every other Portuguese-speaking nation from Angola to Mozambique, use the exact same word: água. According to Wikipedia's overview of the Portuguese language, core vocabulary like this stays remarkably stable across the more than 250 million speakers worldwide. You can check the full entry yourself on Wiktionary, which breaks down the word's origin, pronunciation, and every grammatical form it takes.

So if you only remember one thing from this whole page, remember this: água. Not agua, not water pronounced with a Portuguese accent. Água.

How do you pronounce "água"?

This is where most beginners get stuck, and it's not their fault. English doesn't really have a sound like the one in the middle of água.

Break the word into two parts. The first part is "á", a stressed, open "ah" sound, like the "a" in "father". The second part is "gua", which isn't "g" plus "wah" said separately. It's one smooth motion, a glide, almost like the "gw" in the English word "iguana". Put them together and you get something close to "AH-gwah", with the stress landing hard on that first syllable.

In the International Phonetic Alphabet, linguists write it as [ˈaɡwɐ]. If IPA symbols make your eyes glaze over, that's fine, most people never learn to read them fluently. The short version: stress the first syllable, keep the "gu" as one soft glide instead of two separate sounds, and let the final "a" fade out quietly instead of holding it. Portuguese has some vowel-reduction habits that English speakers aren't used to, and the Wikipedia entry on Portuguese phonology is a good rabbit hole if you want the full technical picture of why that final vowel sounds so light.

The best way to actually learn this, though, isn't reading phonetic symbols. It's hearing real humans say it. Forvo has audio clips of native speakers from different regions pronouncing água, so you can compare a Brazilian accent to a European Portuguese one. YouGlish goes a step further and pulls real YouTube clips of Brazilians saying the word in context, mid-sentence, at natural speed. Listening to a dozen different people say the same word teaches your ear more than any written guide ever will.

If you'd rather practice saying it out loud and get told, in real time, whether your "gu" glide actually sounds right, that's the whole idea behind Comigo. You talk to a capybara companion named Capy, and he listens to you say words like água and gives you instant, word-by-word feedback instead of just letting you guess.

Is "água" masculine or feminine?

Água is a feminine noun. In Portuguese, that means it pairs with feminine articles: "a água" for "the water", and "uma água" for "a water" or, in casual speech, a bottled water someone orders for you. If a friend hands you a bottle, you'd say "obrigado pela água" (thanks for the water), keeping that feminine agreement consistent.

Now here's the twist, and it's the exact reason this section exists. If you've studied even a little Spanish, you probably remember a strange rule: Spanish uses "el agua" instead of "la agua", even though agua is also a feminine noun in Spanish. That happens because Spanish avoids putting two stressed "a" sounds back to back at the start of a word, so it swaps in the masculine-sounding article purely for the way it flows, while every adjective still agrees with agua as feminine. You can see this quirk documented on the Wiktionary entry for the Spanish word agua, where the grammar notes spell out the exception in detail.

Portuguese has no such exception. None. It's simply "a água", every time, with no vowel-clash workaround needed. If you catch yourself wanting to say "o água" out of Spanish habit, stop and remember: Portuguese just doesn't do that trick. You can double check the full grammatical profile, gender included, on the Portuguese Wiktionary page for água itself.

Here's how the article changes depending on what you're saying:

Where does "água" come from?

Água comes straight from Latin. The Latin word was "aqua", and if you squint you can still see it hiding inside the Portuguese spelling. Over centuries, the "qu" sound in Latin softened into the "gu" glide Portuguese uses today, but the bones of the word never really changed. You can trace this on the Wiktionary entry for the Latin aqua, which lists água as one of its many descendants across the Romance languages, alongside Spanish "agua", Italian "acqua", French "eau", and Romanian "apă".

This shared root is why so many English words about water sound vaguely familiar once you know Portuguese. "Aquarium", the glass tank full of fish, comes from that same Latin aqua, as the etymology entry at Etymonline explains. So does "aquatic", meaning anything related to water, which you can trace at Etymonline's aquatic page. And "aqueduct", the ancient stone channels the Romans built to move water across cities, carries the same DNA, as shown on Etymonline's aqueduct entry.

So the next time you see the word aquarium at a pet store, you're actually looking at a distant cousin of água. Languages do this constantly: they borrow, they drift, they reshape old sounds into new ones, but the root often survives underneath, quietly, for two thousand years.

Talking about amounts: liters, gallons, and drops of água

Once you can ask for water, the next natural step is asking for a specific amount of it. Portuguese handles quantities of água pretty simply, but there are a few local habits worth knowing before you land in Brazil.

Brazil uses the metric system, so "um litro de água" (a liter of water) is the everyday unit you'll see on every bottle label and hear in every kitchen. Quantities like this get much easier once numbers in Portuguese are automatic for you, because a bottle label is really just a number plus a unit. Half that amount is "meio litro de água" (half a liter of water), which is roughly the size of a standard small bottle you'd buy at a corner store. You can check the base word on the Wiktionary entry for litro if you want to see how it behaves in other compound phrases.

Where it gets culturally specific is the big jug. Brazilian homes and offices very often have a large 20 liter water container sitting on a stand called a "bebedouro" (water cooler), and that big jug itself is usually called a "galão" or, even more commonly, a "garrafão". Technically, "galão" is the Portuguese word for "gallon" as a unit of measure, and you can see it defined that way on Wiktionary's entry for galão, but since Brazil doesn't actually use gallons for anything, the word has drifted in everyday speech to just mean "the big water jug", regardless of its exact liter count. If a coworker says "o galão acabou" (the jug ran out), they mean the office water cooler is empty, not that a precise gallon measurement matters.

Small amounts get their own word too. "Uma gota de água" is a single drop of water, from the noun "gota", which you can look up on Wiktionary's gota entry. And Portuguese loves diminutives, tiny suffixes tacked onto a word to make it sound smaller, cuter, or more casual, a pattern explained well on Wikipedia's overview of diminutives. Água becomes "aguinha" this way, literally "little water", and Brazilians use it constantly in warm, affectionate, or joking contexts. A parent offering a toddler a small cup might say "quer uma aguinha?" (want a little water?), and friends do the same thing to soften an ordinary request.

Ordering water in Brazil: água com gás vs sem gás

Walk into almost any restaurant in Brazil and order water, and the waiter is going to ask you a follow-up question: "Com gás ou sem gás?" That means "with gas or without gas", and it's asking whether you want sparkling water or still water.

Água com gás is carbonated, sparkling water. Água sem gás is still, flat water. If you just say "água" with no qualifier, most places will assume you mean still water, but plenty of waiters will still ask to be sure, because sparkling water is genuinely popular in Brazil. Getting this distinction right is worth learning by heart, and sites like Street Smart Brazil's guide to ordering bottled water walk through the exact phrasing locals expect to hear.

There's also a difference in temperature and type that's worth knowing before you sit down at a table:

A typical exchange at a restaurant table might go like this. The waiter says "Vai querer água?" (Are you going to want water?), and you answer "Sim, uma água sem gás, por favor" (Yes, a still water, please). That "por favor" is doing quiet work in every one of these sentences, and there is more nuance to saying please in Portuguese than a single translation suggests. If you want sparkling instead, you'd say "Uma água com gás, por favor" (A sparkling water, please). Both phrasings are polite, natural, and exactly what a Brazilian would say themselves. You can see similar phrasing broken down on Alura Lingua's article comparing água com gás and água sem gás, which is aimed at Brazilians learning English but works just as well in reverse.

Water is rarely the only thing you order, so it pays to pair this with the rest of the menu: the words for food in Portuguese and for wine in Portuguese cover almost everything else a waiter will ask you about.

One more detail: restaurants in Brazil almost never bring water automatically the way some American restaurants do. You usually have to ask for it, and you'll usually pay for it, since free tap water isn't the norm. Keep that in mind so you're not caught off guard by a small charge on the bill for something you assumed would be free, a detail also flagged by WordReference's discussion threads on Brazilian restaurant customs.

Is tap water safe to drink in Brazil?

This depends heavily on where in Brazil you are, and it's worth taking seriously rather than guessing.

In big, well-developed cities like São Paulo, tap water is treated and generally meets chemical safety standards. But the pipes carrying it into individual buildings are often old, and infrastructure varies wildly block by block, so a lot of locals still filter their tap water at home or drink bottled water out of habit rather than genuine risk. Most travel guides recommend that visitors stick to bottled water anyway, simply because your stomach isn't used to the local water even where it's technically safe, a point made clearly by Brazil Safe Travel's guide on whether tap water is safe in Brazil.

In the Amazon region, including cities like Manaus, Belém, and Porto Velho, and in rural areas generally, the advice shifts from "probably fine, but be careful" to "just don't". Stick to sealed, bottled water there. Infrastructure in remote regions doesn't get the same investment as it does in São Paulo or Rio, and the risk of contamination climbs. Street Smart Brazil's dedicated piece on tap water across the country breaks this regional difference down city by city, which is worth a read before any trip that takes you outside the major metro areas.

If you decide to buy bottled water, which most travelers do, look for well-known brands regulated by ANVISA, Brazil's national health regulatory agency, similar in role to the FDA in the United States. You can check ANVISA's official site directly at gov.br/anvisa for their food and water safety oversight. Trusted bottled brands you'll see everywhere include Crystal, Bonafont, Indaiá, São Lourenço, and Minalba. Whatever brand you grab, always check that the plastic seal around the cap is fully intact before you drink. A broken seal is the single easiest warning sign that a bottle has been refilled and resold, which does happen in some tourist-heavy areas. For a broader, non-Brazil-specific look at how tap water safety is evaluated around the world, Wikipedia's tap water article is a solid general reference.

Hydration vocabulary: talking about drinking enough água

Water isn't just a travel topic, it's a health one, and health is one of those everyday subjects that comes up constantly once you start having real conversations in another language. A few words are worth knowing here.

"Beber água" simply means "to drink water", the verb "beber" (to drink) paired with água. "Hidratação" means "hydration", and the related verb "hidratar" means "to hydrate". You'll see it on sports drink labels, in gym conversations, and in doctor's offices, much like the Wiktionary entry for hidratar shows across its Portuguese usage examples. The opposite state is "desidratado" (dehydrated), a word you'll want to recognize if you're ever hiking somewhere hot in Brazil and someone asks if you're feeling okay: "você está desidratado?" (are you dehydrated?), which you can cross-reference on Wiktionary's desidratado entry.

How much água should you actually be drinking? Health authorities generally recommend somewhere around 11.5 to 15.5 cups of fluids a day depending on your body and activity level, though the exact number varies by person, climate, and how much you sweat. The Mayo Clinic's in-depth guide on water intake is a reliable, medically reviewed source if you want the full breakdown rather than a rough rule of thumb.

This is exactly the kind of small talk that shows up naturally once you start speaking a new language instead of just studying it silently: a friend asking if you've had enough água today, a gym buddy reminding you to hidratar before a workout, a doctor asking about your habits. Vocabulary like this earns its keep because it's the stuff of real, ordinary conversation, not just travel-phrasebook material.

Water-related vocabulary you'll actually use

Água is just the starting point. Once you know it, a whole family of related words opens up, and most of them show up constantly in everyday conversation, weather small talk, travel, and even complaints about your apartment's plumbing.

Notice the pattern in words like garrafa d'água and copo d'água. That little apostrophe is standing in for the word "de" (of), so "garrafa de água" gets contracted down to "garrafa d'água" in casual, fast speech. You'll see and hear both forms, but the contracted one is far more common when Brazilians actually talk.

A handful of related words go beyond the basics and cover the kind of situations that only come up once you're actually living somewhere, dealing with weather, plumbing, or nature up close. "Cascata" is a small waterfall or cascade, a gentler cousin of "cachoeira", and you can see it defined on Wiktionary's cascata entry. "Maré" means tide, as in the ocean's rise and fall, listed on Wiktionary's maré page, while "onda" means wave, the kind surfers chase along Brazil's coastline. "Gotejar" is the verb "to drip", built right off "gota" (drop), useful for describing that annoying dripping faucet again.

Plumbing problems bring their own vocabulary. If your faucet breaks, you call an "encanador" (plumber), a word you can check on Linguee's translated example sentences for encanador. The pipe itself is a "cano", which WordReference's cano entry defines clearly, and if that pipe breaks, you've got a "vazamento" (leak) on your hands, a word you can dig into further on Wiktionary's vazamento page. Weather and climate add a few more: "umidade" (humidity, extremely relevant in coastal Brazilian cities and covered on Wiktionary's umidade entry), "orvalho" (dew, the thin film of water that forms on grass in the morning), and "neve" (snow, water's frozen cousin, rare in most of Brazil but common vocabulary in the mountainous south).

If tables like this make your head spin a little, you're not alone. Most people can memorize a word list for about five minutes before it slides right back out of their head. That's exactly why speaking practice matters more than flashcards. Comigo turns vocabulary like this into short spoken games instead of a wall of text to stare at, so words like torneira and cachoeira actually stick because you said them out loud, not just because you read them once.

Words and expressions derived from água

Beyond água itself, Portuguese has built a small family of related words, adjectives, and verbs directly off the same root, and knowing them will make your vocabulary sound a lot richer than a beginner's.

The verb "aguar" means "to water down" or "to dilute", the same idea as adding extra water to weaken something. You'll hear it literally, as in "aguar as plantas" (to water the plants, interchangeable with "regar"), but it also has a great figurative use. "Aguar a festa" literally means "to water the party", and it's used exactly the way English speakers say someone "dampened the mood" or "put a damper on things". If someone shows up grumpy and ruins the vibe at a gathering, a Brazilian friend might say "não vem aguar a festa" (don't come dampen the party). You can see the verb's full range of meanings on Wiktionary's entry for aguar.

The adjective form is "aquático" (or "aquática" for feminine nouns), meaning "aquatic", used constantly in sports and nature contexts. "Esportes aquáticos" means "water sports", covering everything from swimming to jet skiing, and "vida aquática" means "aquatic life", the fish and plants living underwater. Wiktionary's entry for aquático shows the word working across both its masculine and feminine forms.

Then there's "aguado", the adjective describing something that's been watered down and gone weak because of it, usually food or drink. "Café aguado" is weak, watery coffee, the kind that tastes like it barely touched actual coffee grounds. "Sopa aguada" is a thin, watery soup that needed more simmering. Even "molho aguado" describes a sauce that split or thinned out and lost its body. It's a mildly critical word, the kind you'd use complaining about a bad meal, never a compliment. All three of these words, aguar, aquático, and aguado, trace straight back to the same root as água itself, proof of just how far one basic word can stretch once a language starts building on it.

Full phrases and sentences with água

Knowing the word água is a start, but sentences are what you'll actually need in real conversations. Here's a set of phrases worth memorizing, roughly in order from most useful to most situational.

That word "cadê" deserves a quick note, because it's not something you'll find in a formal grammar textbook. It's a very casual, colloquial contraction, roughly meaning "where's" or "what happened to", and Brazilians use it constantly in everyday speech even though you'd never write it in a business email. "Cadê a água?" is something you'd say to a roommate, not to a hotel manager. If you want to see native speakers actually debate and explain colloquial expressions like this, WordReference's forums are full of exactly that kind of real-world usage discussion, contributed by both learners and native speakers.

A few more situational lines worth having ready: "Aqui tem água?" (Is there water here?), useful when you're not sure if a place offers it. "A água não está saindo" (The water isn't coming out), useful if you're dealing with a plumbing problem. And "Essa água é potável?" (Is this water drinkable?), a genuinely important question to know how to ask if you're ever unsure about a tap or well.

Portuguese idioms and proverbs about água

Water shows up constantly in Portuguese idioms, the same way it does in English with phrases like "water under the bridge" or "still waters run deep". Learning a handful of these will make you sound a lot less like a textbook and a lot more like someone who actually spends time around Brazilians.

Água mole em pedra dura, tanto bate até que fura. Literally: "soft water on hard rock, it hits so much it makes a hole." This is a proverb about persistence. Keep trying, even slowly, and you'll eventually wear down even the toughest obstacle, much like the English saying "slow and steady wins the race" or "water dripping day by day wears the hardest rock away". You might hear it said to someone struggling to learn a new skill: "Continua estudando, água mole em pedra dura" (Keep studying, persistence pays off). The proverb is old enough that entire blog posts are dedicated to unpacking it, like this breakdown from barreto.home.blog on the saying and a Portuguese-language explainer from escreva.ai on what água mole em pedra dura means.

Água na boca. Literally: "water in the mouth." This is the Portuguese equivalent of "mouth-watering" in English, used constantly around food. If a dish smells amazing, you'd say "isso está me dando água na boca" (that's making my mouth water). It stretches beyond food too, describing anything tempting or desirable, whether that's a new pair of shoes or a good deal on a trip. Portuguesepedia's entry on água na boca has a nice collection of example sentences showing how naturally it fits into casual speech.

Tempestade em copo d'água. Literally: "storm in a glass of water." This is the exact Portuguese cousin of the English idiom "storm in a teacup" (or "making a mountain out of a molehill" in American English), used when someone is overreacting to something genuinely small. If a friend is panicking over a minor mistake, you might say "calma, isso é tempestade em copo d'água" (relax, this is a storm in a teacup). The English version of this idiom has its own Wikipedia page dedicated to the phrase, and the Portuguese usage is explained in detail on escreva.ai's article about tempestade em copo d'água.

Água passada. Short for the longer proverb "água passada não move moinho", meaning "water that has already passed doesn't turn the mill." Once water has flowed past a mill, it can't be used to power it anymore. It's Portuguese for "what's done is done", equivalent to the English "no use crying over spilled milk" or "water under the bridge". You'd use it to move on from an old argument: "deixa isso pra lá, é água passada" (let it go, that's water under the bridge).

Balde de água fria. Literally: "a bucket of cold water." Used exactly the way English uses "a bucket of cold water" or "a cold shower" on someone's excitement, meaning a piece of disappointing news that deflates the mood. If someone was thrilled about a plan and then it fell through, you'd say "isso foi um balde de água fria" (that was a bucket of cold water). The imagery translates so directly between the two languages that it barely needs explaining, which makes it an easy one to add to your vocabulary early.

Quem vai com muita sede ao pote se lambuza (often shortened to the warning "não vá com muita sede ao pote"). Literally: "whoever goes to the jug with too much thirst gets messy." This proverb is a caution against rushing into something with too much eagerness, because haste makes you sloppy and you end up failing at the very thing you were so eager to do. It's close in spirit to "haste makes waste" or "look before you leap". A native speaker might say it to a friend rushing into a big decision without thinking it through. There's a good explanation of the phrase's origins on Portuguesices' article on the saying, and native speakers debate its exact nuance in a WordReference forum thread on quem vai com muita sede ao pote se lambuza.

Common mistakes English speakers make with "água"

Even learners who've studied for months tend to trip on a handful of specific things with this word. Here's what to watch for.

Forgetting the accent mark. Água needs that acute accent over the first "a". Drop it and you get "agua", which changes how the stress and vowel sound are marked in writing. In casual texting between Brazilians this happens constantly and people still understand each other, but if you're learning the language properly, get in the habit of including it. Portuguese uses accent marks for real grammatical reasons, not just decoration, and the Wikipedia article on Portuguese orthography explains exactly how the accent system works if you want the full picture.

Borrowing the Spanish "el agua" rule. As covered earlier, Spanish uses the masculine article "el" before agua purely to avoid an awkward vowel clash, even though agua stays grammatically feminine. Portuguese has no such workaround. It's always "a água", full stop, and applying the Spanish exception here is one of the most common errors bilingual Spanish-Portuguese learners make.

Splitting the "gu" glide into two separate sounds. English speakers often want to pronounce água as "AH-goo-ah", treating the "g" and the "u" as two distinct pieces the way English syllables usually work. Portuguese runs them together into one smooth glide, closer to "AH-gwah". This is a listening habit more than a spelling one, so going back to those Forvo and YouGlish clips from earlier and repeating them out loud is genuinely the fastest fix.

Confusing água with similar-sounding words in fast speech. When Brazilians talk quickly, água can sound uncomfortably close to "agora" (now), especially to a beginner's ear still adjusting to the rhythm of the language. Context almost always saves you here. Nobody's going to ask you to pass the "now", so if you hear something that sounds like água in a sentence about drinking or thirst, trust your instinct.

Sample conversation

Here's a short, realistic dialogue between a customer and a waiter at a Brazilian restaurant, the exact kind of exchange you'd actually have on a trip.

Garçom: Boa noite! Vão querer beber alguma coisa? (Good evening! Would you like something to drink?)

Você: Boa noite. Uma água, por favor. (Good evening. A water, please.)

Garçom: Com gás ou sem gás? (Sparkling or still?)

Você: Sem gás, bem gelada, por favor. (Still, very cold, please.)

Garçom: Perfeito. Mais alguma coisa? (Perfect. Anything else?)

Você: Só isso por enquanto. Estou com muita sede depois da caminhada. (Just that for now. I'm really thirsty after the walk.)

Garçom: Já trago a água. Se precisar de mais alguma coisa, é só chamar. (I'll bring the water right away. If you need anything else, just call me.)

Notice that the whole exchange opens with "boa noite", which is one of those greetings you'll use every single evening, and worth getting right alongside the rest of goodnight in Portuguese. Notice too how naturally "água" folds into an ordinary conversation, no different from how you'd order water in English. That's the whole point of learning phrases like this: not to memorize grammar rules in isolation, but to be ready the moment a real waiter asks you a real question.

A restaurant isn't the only place this word comes up, though. Here's a much more casual version, the kind of exchange you'd have crashing on a friend's couch after a long day.

Amigo: Cara, cadê a água? Tô morrendo de sede. (Dude, where's the water? I'm dying of thirst.)

Você: Tá na geladeira, pode pegar. (It's in the fridge, go ahead and grab it.)

Amigo: Valeu. Quer uma também? (Thanks. Want one too?)

Você: Quero sim, bem gelada se tiver. (Yeah, I do, nice and cold if there's any.)

Notice how different this sounds from the restaurant exchange. Shorter sentences, "tá" instead of "está", "tô" instead of "estou", "cara" thrown in the way you'd say "dude" or "man", which is one corner of the wider set of words for friend in Portuguese. That's the gap between textbook Portuguese and the Portuguese people actually speak at home, and closing it takes hearing and repeating real, casual lines like these until they stop feeling foreign.

Frequently asked questions

How do you say "I'm thirsty" in Portuguese? "Estou com sede" is the standard way to say it. Literally it translates to "I am with thirst", which sounds odd in English but is completely natural Portuguese grammar. For extra emphasis, you can say "estou com muita sede" (I'm really thirsty).

What is "agua" in Portuguese slang? Água itself isn't slang, it's the standard, everyday word. But it shows up in a lot of slang expressions, like "dar água na boca" for something mouth-watering, or "balde de água fria" for disappointing news. There isn't really a separate slang word for water the way English sometimes has playful alternatives, água just does all the work.

Is "agua" the same in Spanish and Portuguese? The spelling is almost identical, Spanish drops the accent mark and writes it as "agua" while Portuguese writes "água" with the acute accent, but they come from the exact same Latin root and mean the same thing. The main grammatical difference is that Spanish pairs it with the masculine article "el" for pronunciation reasons, while Portuguese always uses the feminine "a água". Overlaps like this are part of why Portuguese is not as hard to learn as its reputation suggests, especially if you already speak a bit of Spanish. You can compare the two side by side on PONS' English-Portuguese translation page for water and Linguee's English-Portuguese entry for water, both of which show real translated example sentences pulled from actual documents.

How do you say "water bottle" in Portuguese? "Garrafa d'água" is the standard term, literally "bottle of water" with that contracted "de" turning into "d'água". You'll also hear "garrafinha de água" (little water bottle) for a small personal one, especially the kind people carry to the gym.

How do you say "sparkling water" in Portuguese? "Água com gás" is the phrase you want, covered in more detail earlier in this guide. If you just want still water instead, ask for "água sem gás".

What's the difference between "água" and "chuva"? Água is water in its general, all-purpose sense, the liquid itself. Chuva is specifically rain, water falling from the sky as weather. They're related concepts but never interchangeable: you'd never say "está aguando" to mean "it's raining", you'd say "está chovendo", from the verb "chover".

How do you say "waterfall" in Portuguese? "Cachoeira" is the everyday word, used for the thousands of waterfalls scattered across Brazil's countryside and a hugely popular hiking destination. "Cascata" works too for a smaller, gentler cascade rather than a dramatic drop.

Is there a formal and informal way to ask for water? Yes, though it's more about phrasing than vocabulary. "Poderia me trazer uma água, por favor?" (Could you bring me a water, please?) is the polite, formal version you'd use with a waiter or in a professional setting. "Me vê uma água" or the very casual "cadê a água?" fit friends, family, or relaxed situations. Portuguese also has a broader formal-informal distinction built into pronouns and verb conjugation, similar in spirit to what linguists call the T-V distinction, which shapes how polite or casual a whole sentence sounds, not just the water-related words in it.

Practice saying it, not just reading it

If you want to keep going without spending anything, the same approach works across the whole language, and there are plenty of ways to learn Portuguese for free once you know what to look for.

You now know more about a single Portuguese word than most people learn in months of casual study: how to pronounce it, why it's feminine, where it came from, six idioms built around it, and a full set of real restaurant phrases. That's a lot to hold onto just by reading.

The truth is, reading a word and being able to say it out loud, at full speed, in a real conversation, are two completely different skills. You can stare at "água" on a page a hundred times and still freeze up the moment a waiter actually asks you "com gás ou sem gás?" That gap between knowing and speaking is exactly where most language apps let people down, because tapping the right answer on a screen never once made you open your mouth.

That's the entire reason Comigo exists. You talk out loud to Capy, a capybara companion who listens to how you actually say words like água and gives you instant, word-by-word feedback, the same way a patient friend would if you were practicing together over coffee. No silent tapping through multiple choice questions, no guessing whether your pronunciation is even close. Just talking, out loud, until it feels natural.