Exclamatory Phrases

Expressing Wonder, Admiration, Compassion, Surprise with “QUE + WORD + !”

Portuguese is a very flexible language. One of the things that make it so flexible and easy to use are exclamatory phrases, since everything (from object’s qualities to personal emotions) can be expressed with the word “que”. Spanish and Italian also enjoy of this language feature and maybe this is one of the things that give natives of these languages that well-known ‘latin-emotional’ life-style. For example, English speakers don’t express personal necessities in the same way. They don’t say “what a hunger!”, or “what a tiredness!”, it’s not part of their language and culture to say these expressions.

So, basically, you can say: que fome! (what a hunger!), que chuva! (what a rain!), que bonito (that’s beautiful!), etc. Anything works with ‘que’ (in Spanish it’s the same word and in Italian the spelling is “che”) and that’s how exclamatory phrases, or phrases of wonder, admiration, compassion and surprise are expressed in Portuguese.

In English, adjectives usually are expressed with “that is” or “how”. For example: “That is beautiful!” / “How beautiful is that!”. Nouns are usually expressed with “what a”, such as: “What a beautiful house!”. But not all nouns will work in English, so translations may need to be adapted and because of this sometimes phrases may lose their exclamation strength and real meaning (eg: “Que fome!” is not exactly the same as “I’m hungry!”).

It’s funny that many translators are not aware of this feature. They make a common mistake when translating from English to Portuguese. As I have seen many times (especially in dubbed films and TV series) it’s common to find translations like:

Typical Wrong Translation: That’s good! = Isso é bom!
> Correct Translation: That’s good! = Que bom!

You would only say ‘isso é bom’ if you are pointing to an object and making a statement about it, not if you are expressing your pleasure or happiness.

I have studied this language feature deeply and compared it to all the languages that I have studied, which are French, Italian and Indonesian, and I hope that the following information may be useful for Portuguese learners of these other languages. Thus, in Italian the equivalent is “che” and in Indonesian “sekali”, with most translations being very close to the original meaning (slang and idiomatic expressions usually don’t apply). But in French the same doesn’t happen because ‘personal necessities’ are not commonly expressed in the same way. Also, there are more variations, since the equivalent words are “comme c’est, c’est, quel, quelle”.

Here is a table that I made with examples, comparing these 5 languages (Portuguese, English, Italian, French and Indonesian). Note that LIT stands for Literal Translation and FREE TR stands for Free Translation.

Portuguese natives use exclamatory phrases everyday. If you are learning Portuguese, I believe the most important phrases to memorize are:

Que bom!
Que pena!
Que fome!
Que sede!
Que chuva!

Related Curiosities:

The most famous ice-cream brand in Brazil is called Kibon (In the United Kingdom it’s “Wall’s” and in Portugal “Olá”). It has a different spelling than what it’s meant to be, but it sounds like “que bom!” (how good is that!).

There is a great Brazilian song called “Que Beleza!”, composed by Tim Maia. Click here to listen to it on YouTube.