Looking for job opportunities in Brazil

The short answer is a resounding......   NO

While English is considered to be the "universal language of commerce" in the rest of the world, it definitely is NOT so here in Brazil. English is not widely spoken anywhere in Brazil, not even in the workplace. I have taught in many large multi-national companies in Brazil and you'd be lucky to find one out of twenty employees that can speak English well enough to carry on a basic conversation.

For the time being, it would be almost impossible to get by in the workplace without a reasonable level of fluency in Portuguese. Otherwise you would have extreme difficulty in communicating effectively with your superiors, co-workers and clients/customers.

Not being conversant in Portuguese would also severely limit you in day-to-day living situations. Speaking only English would tend to isolate you within the expat community here for one thing. You would need to have somebody with you most of the time to act as an interpreter in most situations. It could also put you at RISK in some cases:

1.  If you were injured or seriously ill and needed emergency medical care, how would you communicate with doctors and nurses?

2.  You would stand out in a crowd speaking only English, and potentially make yourself a "target" for criminals.

3.  You would constantly be charged, much higher "gringo" prices for everything you wanted to buy.

4.  Not having a clear and immediate understanding that PUXE means PULL and EMPURRE means PULL could be extremely dangerous when most buildings here have glass door that only open one way.

I strongly recommend that anyone coming to Brazil for anything other than a short vacation learn as much of the language as they possibly can before they arrive here.

Cheers,
James      Expat-blog Experts Team