Business

Business Portuguese

The Portuguese your MBA didn't teach you.

Business
Individual · Online · Industry-customized

Who Business Portuguese is for

The Portuguese your MBA didn't teach you.

For professionals and executives who need Brazilian Portuguese that actually works in business — meetings, negotiations, emails, presentations. Classes combine functional language, specialized vocabulary, and the cultural context of doing business in Brazil.

What you'll be able to do

Lead meetings and present in Portuguese with confidence
Negotiate terms, push back, and close deals in your target language
Write professional emails, reports, and proposals
Hold your own on phone calls and video conferences with Brazilian counterparts
Read industry materials — contracts, reports, market analyses — without a translator
Navigate Brazilian corporate culture without making the mistakes that quietly cost relationships

How the program works

This isn't an off-the-shelf business Portuguese course. Each program is built around your industry, your role, and the situations you actually face at work.

Core textbook — Bons Negócios: Português do Brasil para o Mundo do Trabalho (Good Business: Portuguese for the Workplace)
Custom materials — Real cases, corporate documents, simulations, and worksheets developed in-house by HappyPortuguese
Entry level — From A2 (elementary) and up
Skills covered — Oral and written communication in professional contexts
Format — Individual classes · Online · Customized to your industry

What's covered

Professional introductions and networking in Portuguese
Meetings and negotiations — vocabulary and communication strategy
Emails, reports, and formal written communication
Phone calls and video conferences in Portuguese
Industry-specific vocabulary — technology, agribusiness, finance, healthcare, tourism
Brazilian corporate culture — business etiquette and intercultural communication
Oral presentations and pitches in Portuguese

Why Carla

Dra. Carla Regiane Dias has prepared executives, lawyers, consultants, and physicians for professional work in Brazil — from relocation to São Paulo, leading Brazilian teams, to working with subsidiaries in Belo Horizonte. Her PhD in Portuguese Philology from USP isn't just an academic credential — it means she can explain why Portuguese works the way it does in business contexts, not just what to say. Executives don't have time for vague rules. Carla teaches the patterns and the reasoning together.

Most students achieve functional professional Portuguese within 3–4 months of consistent weekly study.

Pricing

From $133/mo · or $35 per single class

A professional-language system

Build the Portuguese you need for your actual work

Generic conversation practice rarely prepares someone to lead a meeting, defend a recommendation, interview for a role, or explain technical work. Carla starts with your real communication demands and turns them into a focused curriculum: the situations, documents, vocabulary, and professional relationships that matter in your role.

1

Diagnose

Map the calls, meetings, presentations, written messages, and high-pressure moments where Portuguese currently limits you.

2

Rehearse

Practice realistic scenarios with role-play, targeted vocabulary, pronunciation coaching, and direct feedback on clarity and register.

3

Transfer

Apply the language to your real week through prepared talking points, revised emails, meeting notes, and repeatable communication frameworks.

What the curriculum can cover

The sequence changes with your level and role. An engineer presenting risk needs different practice from a manager giving feedback or a clinician explaining a procedure. The shared goal is communicative control: saying the right thing, in the right register, with enough confidence to keep the interaction moving.

  • Meetings: joining the discussion, clarifying, disagreeing, summarizing, and assigning next steps
  • Calls: opening, confirming details, handling connection problems, and closing with an agreed action
  • Email and chat: concise requests, follow-ups, updates, boundaries, and professional warmth
  • Presentations: structure, transitions, data commentary, questions, and recovery when you lose a word
  • Negotiation: conditions, trade-offs, objections, concessions, and documenting an agreement
  • Industry language: the terminology and recurring situations from your field, company, and market

A realistic first month

From diagnosis to workplace transfer

  1. Week 1Assess your speaking and writing, choose one priority situation, and define what successful communication looks like.
  2. Week 2Build the phrases and structures for that situation, then rehearse them in a realistic role-play.
  3. Week 3Add pressure: interruptions, follow-up questions, disagreement, or an unfamiliar accent. Review what breaks down.
  4. Week 4Repeat the scenario with less support and create a practical reference you can use at work.

Communication playbook

What professional fluency looks like in practice

Professional fluency is not knowing every word in an industry dictionary. It is being able to read the room, structure a message, manage a misunderstanding, and leave people with a clear next step. These are the abilities the program develops across your real workplace situations.

Enter a meeting and earn your turn

Brazilian meetings can be relational and fast-moving. You may need to open with brief personal conversation, recognize when the agenda truly starts, and enter without sounding abrupt. We practice short entry signals, ways to connect your point with the previous speaker, and language for holding the floor while you explain. You also learn how to invite a quieter colleague, redirect a tangent, and confirm whether a discussion produced a decision or only explored possibilities.

Practical outcome: You can contribute early, ask for clarification, disagree constructively, summarize the decision, and name the owner and deadline for the next action.

Write messages that are direct without sounding cold

A grammatically correct email can still feel too blunt, too vague, or translated. We work with the structure Brazilian colleagues actually need: a useful subject line, a human opening, the request or update, enough context to act, a clear date, and a natural close. You compare email with WhatsApp or workplace chat, where brevity, greeting choices, voice notes, and response timing create different expectations. Exercises use your own recurring messages with confidential details removed.

Practical outcome: You can request, remind, escalate, decline, and follow up while preserving both clarity and the working relationship.

Present an idea and handle the questions after it

Slides do not carry a presentation when the speaker cannot frame the decision. You learn to announce the route, connect evidence to a recommendation, describe charts without reading every number, and signal what the audience should remember. We rehearse interruptions and questions because they expose the real language gap: paraphrasing a technical idea, acknowledging uncertainty, correcting a misunderstanding, and returning to the main thread without losing authority.

Practical outcome: You can open, transition, compare options, recommend, answer, and close with a concise decision request in Portuguese.

Negotiate conditions without creating accidental promises

Negotiation language needs precision. Small choices around conditionals, time, quantity, and commitment can make a possibility sound like an agreement. Practice separates what is confirmed from what still depends on approval. You learn to explore priorities, state constraints, propose an exchange, test a condition, pause for internal review, and document the final understanding. Role-plays use realistic pressure so the phrases remain available when the conversation speeds up.

Practical outcome: You can distinguish an idea, a proposal, and a commitment—and close by confirming exactly what each side agreed to do.

Repair misunderstandings before they become expensive

Strong professionals do not pretend to understand. They notice uncertainty early and repair it efficiently. We practice asking someone to repeat only the missing detail, checking a number or date, paraphrasing what you heard, and naming the word you need through a definition when vocabulary fails. You also learn to correct your own sentence without apologizing repeatedly. The goal is not error-free speech; it is reliable communication under real constraints.

Practical outcome: You can keep a call moving, surface ambiguity, and verify high-risk details without losing confidence or rapport.

How progress is measured

A vague goal such as “be fluent for work” is difficult to practice and impossible to measure. Carla turns it into observable performance: lead a ten-minute project update without a script; write a follow-up that needs no clarification; explain one chart and answer three questions; conduct an interview response with a clear example; or finish a call with an accurate spoken summary.

You repeat comparable tasks and review more than grammar. The review looks at whether the message was understood, the organization was easy to follow, the register fit the relationship, critical details were accurate, pronunciation supported comprehension, and repair strategies worked when the conversation changed direction.

Progress is documented in language you can use outside class. After a practice cycle, you may leave with a concise meeting opener, a corrected email pattern, a personal bank of transition phrases, or an annotated recording that shows where listeners could lose the thread. At the next checkpoint, you complete a similar task with less preparation and fewer prompts. That comparison reveals whether the new language is becoming available spontaneously, not merely recognizable on a worksheet.

The measures also stay connected to business consequences. Faster speech is not automatically better if dates become unclear. More sophisticated vocabulary is not progress if a client cannot identify the recommendation. A successful performance is one that helps the other person understand, decide, or act. When accuracy, tone, and efficiency compete, the lesson identifies which one matters most for that specific interaction and rehearses accordingly.

This makes the program suitable for learners from A2 upward who already have some Portuguese but cannot yet rely on it professionally. A beginner may first need a broader foundation; an advanced speaker may need only targeted rehearsal for leadership, interviewing, client communication, or a move into a Brazil-facing role. The free first class is used to decide which path is appropriate before you enroll.

Professional Portuguese library

Prepare for the moments that matter

Use these practical guides before a meeting, interview, presentation, negotiation, or client interaction. Each one teaches a communication framework and gives Brazilian Portuguese examples you can adapt.

Portuguese for business meetings and calls in Brazil

Professional fluency is not the absence of mistakes. It is the ability to open a meeting, make the purpose clear, manage turns, repair misunderstanding, and leave everyone knowing the next action.

Read guide →

How to write professional emails in Brazilian Portuguese

A strong business email is clear about the action, respectful about the relationship, and easy to answer. Portuguese register matters, but structure matters even more.

Read guide →

Portuguese job interview phrases that help you answer, not memorize

Interview preparation works when you can adapt a clear story to a new question. Memorizing a long paragraph creates fragile fluency; learning a reusable structure creates control.

Read guide →

How to give a business presentation in Brazilian Portuguese

A presentation becomes easier to follow when the audience always knows where you are, why a number matters, and what action should follow. Signposting is a language skill and a design skill.

Read guide →

Brazilian Portuguese for negotiation: clear language without unnecessary friction

Negotiation language needs to protect both the substance and the relationship. The most useful phrases reveal interests, make conditions explicit, and convert a tentative conversation into a shared written record.

Read guide →

Brazilian business culture and meeting etiquette without stereotypes

Brazil is too large and professionally diverse for one etiquette script. Useful cultural preparation teaches you what to observe, what to clarify, and how to adapt without turning tendencies into rules.

Read guide →

Brazilian Portuguese professions and workplace vocabulary

A job title is useful only when you can explain what the person actually does, where they work, and how their role connects to yours. Learn vocabulary in professional relationships, not as a disconnected list.

Read guide →

Brazilian Portuguese for healthcare professionals

Clinical language is not only terminology. It is the ability to invite a complete history, explain uncertainty, confirm critical details, and make the next action unmistakable.

Read guide →
FAQ

Common questions

What level of Portuguese do I need to start?

Business Portuguese classes start from A2 (elementary) and up. If you are a complete beginner, we recommend starting with Adult Classes to build a functional foundation, then transitioning to the Business program once you reach A2.

How is the curriculum customized to my industry?

In the intake session, Dra. Carla maps your industry, role, and the real communication situations you face — meetings, contracts, negotiations, client calls. Materials and vocabulary are then built around your specific context, not a generic business syllabus.

How long until I can function professionally in Portuguese?

Most students achieve functional professional Portuguese within 3–4 months of consistent weekly study, meaning they can hold meetings, write emails, and handle calls with Brazilian counterparts. Full professional fluency — including cultural nuance and complex negotiations — typically takes 6–12 months.

Can I do Business Portuguese and CELPE-Bras at the same time?

It depends on your goals and timeline. Many professionals preparing for work in Brazil benefit from both tracks. Dra. Carla will recommend the right sequencing after your first class.

Ready to start?

Book a 30-minute placement class. Dra. Carla will assess your level, understand your goals, and recommend the right path — no pressure to enroll.