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Lesson Transcript

INTRODUCTION
Exchanging money in Portugal is quite convenient. You can exchange money at airports, special money exchange kiosks and banks, or withdraw money from an ATM.
As a general rule, try to find one of the countless exchange offices or casas de câmbio. They are easy to find in the larger cities because the English term “exchange” is often on the front of the building.
First, let's review some previous phrases and patterns we've already covered.
GRAMMAR POINT
In Portuguese, “Is there an ATM near here?” is
Há uma caixa automática por aqui? Pay attention on the intonation. You want to make it sound like a question not like a statement.
(slow) Há u-ma cai-xa au-to-má-ti-ca por a-qui?
Há uma caixa automática por aqui?
Now, to ask for a bank. We can just replace the word for ATM with the word for bank and the phrase works just fine. “Is there a bank near here?” is
Há um banco por aqui?
(slow) Há um banco por aqui?
Há um banco por aqui?
It is simple, as you may have noticed we just replaced uma caixa automática with um banco.
Let’s ask for an exchange office now. It is very similar. You just need to insert the expression - uma casa de câmbio.
(slow) uma ca-sa de câ-mbi-o.
uma casa de câmbio.
As you might have noticed, we changed um for uma, because the noun casa de câmbio is feminine.
Let’s ask the question.
Há uma casa de câmbio por aqui?
(slow) Há u-ma ca-sa de câm-bi-o por a-qui?
Há uma casa de câmbio por aqui?
For times when there is neither a bank nor an ATM, you can ask, "Where can I exchange currency?"
In Portuguese, this is Onde posso cambiar dinheiro?
Let’s break it down:
On-de pos-so cam-bi-ar di-nhei-ro?
Once again:
Onde posso cambiar dinheiro?
The first word, Onde, means “where.”
(slow) On-de.
Onde.
Then we have posso, which means “I can”
(slow) pos-so
posso
And cambiar is translated as “to exchange”
(slow) cam-bi-ar.
cambiar
And at the end we have dinheiro the word for “money”.
(slow) di-nhei-ro.
dinheiro.
All together, we have
Onde posso cambiar dinheiro?
Literally, this means “Where can (I) exchange money?”
When you exchange money in Portuguese, usually you will be asked tudo? A very short question that means “All of it?” Use the numbers for amounts we learned in our previous lessons to say how much of it you what to exchange.
Let’s hear the question one more time.
(slow) Tu-do?
Tudo?
Tudo literally means everything but in this case, it means "all of the money."
The literal translation “everything” sounds very unusual in English. If you want to exchange all the money just say yes in Portuguese, which is sim.
In case you need smaller units you can go to any shop, supermarket, exchange office, oil station, present the bill to them and ask Poderia trocar para notas menores, por favor? In English “Could you exchange this for smaller bills?”
Let’s break it down:
Po-de-ri-a tro-car pa-ra no-tas me-no-res, por fa-vor?
Once more:
Poderia trocar para notas menores, por favor?
The first word Poderia is translated as “could you”.
(slow) Po-de-ri-a.
Poderia.
Then we have trocar, which in our question means “to break”. The literal meaning of this verb is “to change”.
(slow) tro-car.
trocar.
Next we have para that means “this”.
(slow) pa-ra.
para.
After that we have notas which means “banknote”.
(slow) no-tas.
notas.
Lastly we have menores, meaning “smaller”.
(slow) me-no-res
menores
And at the end as usual we have por favor.
Here’s the question again:
Poderia trocar para notas menores, por favor?
The literal translation is “Can you change this to smaller banknotes, please?”
Ask this when you have a big bill that you want to break.

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