‘Caraca cara!’ Rio 2016 offers guide to speaking like a carioca ahead of Carnival
If you don’t want to stand there with a blank look on your face when a Rio local speaks to you, check out our Carioca Dictionary
More than 500 ‘bloco’ street parties will rock the streets of Rio between Saturday and Wednesday (Getty Images/Mario Tama)
If you’re planning on coming to Rio de Janeiro for carnival, which begins this Saturday (6 February), or the Rio 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games, you’ll probably be wanting to mix with the locals.
And perhaps more important than a basic grasp of Portuguese is a vague understanding of the common slang terms used by cariocas, as Rio’s residents are known.
For example, if someone bounds up to you and says “Caraca cara, aquele bloco foi irado” you don’t want to stand there with a blank look on your face.
Luckily, help is at hand: the Rio 2016 social media team has produced a Carioca Dictionary to help you get by without pagando mico – which literally means ‘paying monkey’ but is carioca slang for making a gaffe.
So, before you apply the suncream and put on your fancy dress, click here to find out how to speak like a carioca.
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