Walk into almost any jiu jitsu academy in the world and you'll hear Portuguese. It might be the professor counting down a round, a training partner saying valeu after a roll, or the whole room answering something in unison that you've been mouthing along to for months without knowing what it meant.

You don't need to be fluent to stop feeling lost. Jiu jitsu runs on a surprisingly small core of Portuguese — a few dozen words that come up every single class. Learn those and the room changes. Here's that core, organized the way you'll actually meet it: the greetings, the gear, the positions, the belts, the commands, and the counting.

The Short Answer

The Portuguese you need first is not the Portuguese a textbook starts with. It's about forty words: a handful of greetings (bom dia, valeu, tudo bem?), the academy nouns (tatame, kimono, faixa, treino), the position names you already half-know (guarda, montada, raspagem), the belts (faixa branca through faixa preta), the numbers one to ten, and about ten one-word commands a coach shouts across the mat. That set covers the overwhelming majority of what gets said in a class.

Start With the Greetings

Brazilian mat culture is warm and verbal. People greet everyone on the way in, thank each other after every roll, and say goodbye on the way out — and doing the same is the fastest way to stop being the quiet foreigner in the corner.

The two that matter most are the smallest. Oi is "hi," usable with anyone at any time. Valeu is the one you'll say fifty times a night — an informal "thanks" that Brazilians use constantly, especially after a round. It's warmer and more casual than obrigado, and on the mats it's the default.

One catch worth knowing early: obrigado changes depending on who is saying it, not who is receiving it. Men say obrigado; women say obrigada. It's agreeing with the speaker's own gender, which is why you'll hear both in the same conversation.

Portuguese	Pronunciation	English
Oi	OY	hi
Bom dia	bohng JEE-ah	good morning
Boa noite	BOH-ah NOY-chee	good evening
Tudo bem?	TOO-doo bayng	all good?
Valeu	vah-LEH-oo	thanks
Obrigado	oh-bree-GAH-doo	thank you (said by men)
Obrigada	oh-bree-GAH-dah	thank you (said by women)
Por favor	pohr fah-VOHR	please
Desculpa	dehs-KOOW-pah	sorry
Com licença	kohng lee-SEHN-sah	excuse me
Tchau	TCHOW	bye

The Academy Itself

Next come the nouns for where you are and what you're wearing. Most of these you've already absorbed — kimono and tatame get used in English-speaking gyms without translation — but knowing them properly means you can follow a sentence built around them.

Academia is the gym. Note that it doesn't mean "academy" in the university sense; in Brazil it's the everyday word for any gym, jiu jitsu or otherwise. Tatame is the mat, borrowed from Japanese tatami and now thoroughly Portuguese. Kimono is what most of the English-speaking world calls a gi — Brazilians almost always say kimono, and "gi" can draw a blank look.

Portuguese	Pronunciation	English
Academia	ah-kah-deh-MEE-ah	gym
Tatame	tah-TAH-mee	mat
Kimono	kee-MOH-noo	gi
Faixa	FAH-ee-shah	belt
Treino	TRAY-noo	training
Aquecimento	ah-keh-see-MEHN-too	warm-up
Professor	proh-feh-SOHR	teacher
Equipe	eh-KEE-pee	team
Rolar	hoh-LAHR	to roll

The Positions

Here's the good news: you already speak some Portuguese. If you know what the guard is, you know guarda. If you've heard someone call a sweep a raspagem, you've already got one.

The position vocabulary is where jiu jitsu Portuguese is densest, and a few of the names are genuinely charming once translated — side control is cem quilos, literally "a hundred kilos," named for exactly what it feels like underneath. We go through the whole map, including the submissions and what their names literally mean, in Jiu Jitsu Positions in Portuguese.

Portuguese	Pronunciation	English
Guarda	GWAHR-dah	guard
Montada	mohn-TAH-dah	mount
Cem quilos	sayng KEE-loos	side control
Costas	KOHS-tahs	the back
Raspagem	hahs-PAH-zhayng	sweep
Passagem de guarda	pah-SAH-zhayng jee GWAHR-dah	guard pass
Queda	KEH-dah	takedown
Finalização	fee-nah-lee-zah-SOWN	submission

The Belts

Belt is faixa, and the color goes after it — Portuguese puts the noun first and the adjective second, the reverse of English. So it's faixa azul, "belt blue."

Because faixa is a feminine noun, the colors that can change gender have to match it, which is why purple belt is faixa roxa and not faixa roxo. We pulled that thread all the way in What Does "Faixa Roxa" Mean?, and the full ladder with the IBJJF's age and time requirements is in The BJJ Belt System Explained.

Portuguese	Pronunciation	English
Branca	BRAHN-kah	white
Azul	ah-ZOOW	blue
Roxa	HOH-shah	purple
Marrom	mah-HOHNG	brown
Preta	PREH-tah	black
Graduação	grah-doo-ah-SOWN	belt promotion

What the Coach Shouts

Instructions come at you fast and loud, and they're almost always a single word. The one to learn before anything else is bate — "tap." If a Brazilian coach is shouting bate! at you, stop reading this and tap.

The rest are just as short: vira (turn), solta (let go), respira (breathe), calma (easy). They sound abrupt in translation, but that's the register of a coaching voice across a noisy room, not rudeness. There's a full breakdown, including why every one of these is one word, in What Your Brazilian Coach Is Shouting.

Portuguese	Pronunciation	English
Bate	BAH-chee	tap
Vira	VEE-rah	turn
Solta	SOHW-tah	let go
Respira	hehs-PEE-rah	breathe
Calma	KAHW-mah	easy
Devagar	deh-vah-GAHR	slowly
Bora	BOH-rah	let's go

Counting to Ten

You'll hear numbers constantly — rounds counted down, reps counted up, minutes called out. Ten of them gets you through a class.

Portuguese	Pronunciation	English
Um	OONG	one
Dois	DOH-ees	two
Três	TREHS	three
Quatro	KWAH-troo	four
Cinco	SEEN-koo	five
Seis	SAYSS	six
Sete	SEH-chee	seven
Oito	OY-too	eight
Nove	NOH-vee	nine
Dez	DEHS	ten

Every word above — and hundreds more — is taught with native-speaker audio and mat-ready phrases in the Fala BJJ app.

Three Pronunciation Rules That Do the Most Work

Reading the words is half the job. These three rules fix most of what makes an English speaker sound like one:

1. R at the start of a word sounds like English H. Rolar is hoh-LAHR, not "roh-lar." Raspagem is hahs-PAH-zhayng. The same goes for a double R in the middle of a word — which is why porrada is poh-HAH-dah.

2. Final -de and -te sound like "jee" and "chee." Sete is SEH-chee. Tarde is TAHR-jee. Bate is BAH-chee. This one single-handedly makes your Portuguese sound Brazilian rather than European.

3. The letter X usually sounds like "sh." Faixa is FAH-ee-shah. Puxa is POO-shah. Never "ks."

Get those three working and you'll be understood even when your vocabulary runs out.

The Slang Comes Next

Once the basics land, the slang starts making sense — and jiu jitsu has a lot of it. The two you'll meet first are oss, the all-purpose salute that isn't actually Portuguese at all, and porrada, the word for the hard training everyone claims to love. After that come the nicknames, which are their own education — we translated the best of them here.

Frequently Asked Questions

What Portuguese words should a jiu jitsu beginner learn first? Start with valeu (thanks), bate (tap), bora (let's go), the position names you already use in English — guarda, montada, raspagem — and the numbers one to ten. That handful covers most of a normal class.

Do I need to learn Portuguese to train jiu jitsu? No. But the sport's vocabulary is Portuguese whether you learn it or not, and knowing a few dozen words makes instruction easier to follow, travel easier, and Brazilian teammates much easier to talk to.

Is jiu jitsu Portuguese different from regular Portuguese? It's Brazilian Portuguese with a specialized vocabulary on top. The grammar and pronunciation are the everyday language; the position names and mat slang are the specialty layer.

Why do Brazilians say kimono instead of gi? Because kimono is simply the Portuguese word for the uniform. "Gi" is the Japanese term that took hold in English-speaking gyms; in Brazil it's kimono, and saying "gi" may not register.

What does valeu mean? Thanks — the casual version. It's the standard thank-you between training partners, warmer and more informal than obrigado.

Why is obrigado sometimes obrigada? Because it agrees with the gender of the person speaking. Men say obrigado, women say obrigada, regardless of who they're thanking.

How do you say tap in Portuguese? Bate (BAH-chee) as a command — what a coach shouts. The tap itself is bater, "to tap."

The Bottom Line

Jiu jitsu hands you a shortcut into Portuguese that no textbook can match: you already care about the vocabulary, you already hear it several times a week, and you already know what most of it refers to. The words above are the core — greetings, gear, positions, belts, commands, numbers — and they're enough to follow a class, thank a partner properly, and stop nodding along to things you don't understand.

That's exactly what Fala BJJ is built for. Short daily lessons taught entirely through jiu jitsu, with native-speaker audio on every word, a word bank for drilling, and a sentence builder for putting them together — so the Portuguese you've been standing in for years finally starts making sense.

Beginner Portuguese for Jiu Jitsu: The Words You'll Actually Hear