Read Your First Portuguese Story

Explore a free beginner passage generated live with interactive translations.

Try a free A0 or A1 story in Portuguese, generated live, with tap-to-translate words and line-by-line translations.

A canja de galinha para a Joana

A Rute está na sua cozinha em Lisboa.

Rute is in her kitchen in Lisbon.

O vento frio sopra lá fora.

The cold wind blows outside.

A Rute faz uma canja de galinha.

Rute makes a chicken soup.

A canja está muito quente.

The soup is very hot.

Ela põe a canja num frasco.

She puts the soup in a jar.

A tampa do frasco é vermelha.

The lid of the jar is red.

A Rute fecha o frasco com cuidado.

Rute closes the jar carefully.

A amiga Joana está doente em casa.

Her friend Joana is sick at home.

A Rute veste o seu casaco verde.

Rute puts on her green coat.

Ela pega na mala pesada.

She picks up the heavy bag.

A Rute sai da sua casa.

Rute leaves her house.

Ela caminha para a paragem.

She walks to the stop.

O autocarro amarelo chega rápido.

The yellow bus arrives quickly.

A Rute entra no autocarro.

Rute gets on the bus.

Ela vai de autocarro para a cidade.

She goes by bus to the city.

Ela viaja até à casa da Joana.

She travels to Joana's house.

A Rute sai do autocarro.

Rute gets off the bus.

Ela toca à porta da amiga.

She rings her friend's doorbell.

A Joana abre a porta devagar.

Joana opens the door slowly.

A Joana tem a cara vermelha.

Joana has a red face.

A Rute entrega a canja à Joana.

Rute hands the soup to Joana.

O frasco ainda está quente.

The jar is still warm.

A Joana come a canja boa.

Joana eats the good soup.

A Joana sorri para a Rute.

Joana smiles at Rute.

A amiga doente fica muito feliz.

The sick friend becomes very happy.

Quick facts about Portuguese

Speakers

About 250 million people speak Portuguese as a first language (2012–2022 estimates), most of them in Brazil, and about 17 million more as a second language (2022).1

Did you know?

Stichos writes European Portuguese. It differs from Brazilian Portuguese in pronunciation, in where object pronouns go (European ele viu-me, Brazilian ele me viu, "he saw me") and in some vocabulary (comboio in Portugal, trem in Brazil, for "train").2

The main challenge

Listening to European Portuguese: unstressed vowels are reduced or dropped, so setembro can sound like "stembro" and speech sounds more compressed than the spelling suggests.2

Sources

  1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_language
  2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilian_Portuguese

About the Portuguese language

Language familyIndo-European → Romance → Iberian Romance → West Iberian (Galician–Portuguese)1
SpeakersAbout 267 million in total: roughly 250 million native (2012–2022) and 17 million second-language speakers (2022). Brazil accounts for most native speakers, but Stichos writes European Portuguese only.1
Primary scriptLatin script, with accent marks and the cedilla (as in ã, é, ç)2
Word order & typologyGenerally subject–verb–object, though less rigid than English, and a null-subject language: verb endings usually show who acts. Its verbs keep a future subjunctive, uncommon among Indo-European languages, and a personal (inflected) infinitive, a distinctive trait shared with few other Romance languages.3
Official statusOfficial in nine countries (Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, East Timor, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Portugal and São Tomé and Príncipe) and in Macau; one of the 24 official languages of the European Union.1,4
  1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_language
  2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_orthography
  3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_grammar
  4. https://european-union.europa.eu/principles-countries-history/languages_en

Portuguese reading proficiency benchmarks (CEFR & CAPLE)

Stichos levelApproximate framework equivalentReader profile
A0Pre-A1Early Beginner
A1CEFR A1 (CAPLE ACESSO)Beginner
A2CEFR A2 (CAPLE CIPLE)Elementary
B1CEFR B1 (CAPLE DEPLE)Intermediate
B2CEFR B2 (CAPLE DIPLE)Upper Intermediate

CAPLE, at the University of Lisbon, sets one European Portuguese exam at each CEFR level, so its exam names are shown beside the levels. This is a rough guide, not an official equivalence: Stichos levels describe reading difficulty and are not exam preparation.

Reference corpora

Stichos writes European Portuguese (português europeu). Portugal’s main reference corpus is compiled in Lisbon.1

  • CRPC: The Reference Corpus of Contemporary Portuguese (Corpus de Referência do Português Contemporâneo), compiled at the Centre of Linguistics of the University of Lisbon (CLUL), holds about 311 million words of written and spoken text: mostly European Portuguese, with material from Brazil, the African Portuguese-speaking countries, Goa, Macau and East Timor.1
  • One variety per text: Each Stichos text stays European throughout: tu with European verb forms, and words such as sumo, pequeno-almoço and empregado de mesa, never Brazilian suco, café da manhã or garçom in the same text. Regional slang is avoided.
  1. https://clul.ulisboa.pt/en/recurso/reference-corpus-contemporary-portuguese

Readability design principles

Flesch-style formulas have been recalibrated for Portuguese, mostly on Brazilian texts; European Portuguese work has turned to machine-learned classifiers.1,2

  • Adapted Flesch: Martins, Ghiraldelo, Nunes and Oliveira Jr. (ICMSC-USP, 1996) adapted the Flesch Reading Ease index to Brazilian Portuguese textbooks, and later Brazilian readability studies still apply their version.1
  • European Portuguese: Curto, Mamede and Baptista (CSEDU 2015) built a classifier for teaching Portuguese as a second language that extracts 52 linguistic features from a text and places it at one of five levels, A1 to C1; their best model was about 75% accurate.2
  • Stichos: Stichos sets difficulty with level-by-level grammar rules and sentence-length limits. A0 sentences have at most five words and no conjunctions; connectives then open in a fixed order, from e at A1 to mas, ou and porque at A2 and se, embora and todavia at B1.
  1. https://repositorio.usp.br/item/000906089
  2. https://www.scitepress.org/Papers/2015/54283/

Script & grammar scaffolding

  • Past tenses: A0 uses only the present (Presente do Indicativo). A1 adds the Pretérito Perfeito for completed actions and the future with ir plus an infinitive. The habitual past (Pretérito Imperfeito) follows at A2, so the two past tenses arrive one level apart.
  • Subjunctive: The present subjunctive (Presente do Conjuntivo) arrives at B1, with the conditional and the synthetic future. The imperfect and future subjunctive, the personal infinitive (Infinitivo Pessoal) and passives with ser or se follow at B2.
  • Object pronouns: Direct object pronouns are first allowed at A2, while combinations with indirect object pronouns are still excluded there. Mesoclisis, a pronoun inside the verb (levá-lo-ia), is a C1 stylistic option.
  • Requests: At A0 and A1 a request is a noun plus a politeness phrase (Um café, se faz favor). A1 adds five informal imperatives: olha, vem, toma, espera and senta-te.

Related academic & framework resources

Frequently asked questions

What writing system does Portuguese use?
Latin script, with accent marks and the cedilla (as in ã, é, ç)
Is Stichos suitable for complete beginners with zero prior knowledge (A0)?
Yes. A0 is a primary focus, designed for readers with no prior knowledge. A1 then adds basic everyday vocabulary and simple connected clauses as your foundation grows.
Are Stichos levels the same as CEFR levels?
Not exactly. Stichos levels use the familiar CEFR names, from A0 to B2, and are modelled on the CEFR (the Common European Framework of Reference), so a Stichos B1 is meant to feel close to a B1 in your course book. They aren't an official CEFR rating, and different books and exams draw the lines in slightly different places. A0 is Stichos's own addition, just below the framework's first level.
Are the stories written by AI, and how accurate are they?
Yes. Stories are generated by AI and then checked by further automated steps against the grammar and vocabulary rules for your level. That catches most problems, but it isn't a human editor, so an occasional unnatural phrase or slip can get through. Treat Stichos as practice material, and check anything you're unsure of with a teacher or a reference.
Can I read stories with explanations in my native language?
Yes. Stichos allows you to pair any target language with any native support language. You can read a Croatian story with French glosses, or a German story with Spanish explanations.
How does word lookup work while reading?
Tap or click any word for its meaning in that sentence, explained in your own language. In the full version, you can save any word to your Vocab Bank for later review.
Is the preview free, and what happens to my email?
Yes. The preview is free and needs no account. If you join the Reading List, we use your email to send your 3 free sample stories (PDF, after you confirm your address) and to let you know when we fully open. Our Privacy Policy explains how we handle it.
Do stories include audio or narration?
Story narration isn't part of the preview. At launch, the Premium Audio add-on reads every story aloud in a natural-sounding AI voice, in 39 of our 40 languages (Esperanto doesn't have audio support yet).

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