Discourse markers in conversation

What it is

Discourse markers (marcadores conversacionais) add almost no content: they manage the conversation. They hold the floor while you think, ask for agreement, soften a refusal, signal that a story is moving on, react to news. Brazilian speech is full of them. Without markers a learner sounds like a book; with too many, like a parody. At C1 the goal is the right marker, in the right place, in the right dose.

The main markers and their jobs

Most of them are short, unstressed and come at the edges of a sentence: então and olha at the start, né?, sabe? and entendeu? at the end, tipo and quer dizer in the middle.

How they combine

Markers work in sequences that follow the shape of a turn:

1. Open and take the floor: Então…, Olha…, Cara…
2. Soften or hedge: tipo, meio que, sei lá, de repente
3. Tell: aí…, aí…, quando eu vi…
4. Check the listener: sabe?, entendeu?, né?
5. Close: enfim, resumindo, pois é

Então, tipo, eu tava pensando em mudar de emprego, sabe? Aí apareceu uma vaga em Curitiba… Enfim, ainda não decidi.

Listeners answer with backchannels that show they're following: aham, uhum, sei, pois é, nossa!, sério?, é mesmo? Silence on the phone sounds cold in Brazil; a steady aham… sei… nossa… sounds attentive.

Register

Markers belong to speech and to writing that imitates speech: chats, informal emails, dialogue in fiction. In a presentation or meeting, então, na verdade, quer dizer and enfim are fine; tipo, cara and mano are not. In an essay none of them belongs: use written connectors (além disso, no entanto, em suma).

Address markers also carry region and age: mano and meu sound like São Paulo, véi like Brasília and Goiás, mermão like Rio. Cara is national and fairly neutral among friends.

In context

Listen for the markers in this exchange between two colleagues in Goiânia:

— Véi, cê viu o e-mail do diretor? — Vi. Então, tipo, eu achei meio estranho, sabe? Ele pede o relatório pra sexta, aí na reunião fala que é pra segunda. — Pois é. Na real, acho que nem ele sabe. — Enfim, eu vou mandar na sexta e pronto.

Véi opens with friendly address, então and tipo buy time and soften the criticism, aí links two events, pois é agrees, na real adds a franker opinion and enfim closes the topic. Remove them and the content stays the same, but the conversation sounds cold and abrupt.

Contrasts and traps

• de repente means "maybe" in Brazilian speech (De repente eu passo lá), and "suddenly" in narration (De repente, a luz acabou). The verb tense usually tells you which: present or future → maybe; past → suddenly.
• pois é is agreement ("yeah, exactly"), not an explanation. Pois alone is formal "because" or "since".
• né is a contraction of não é: it can follow almost anything, but ending every sentence with it sounds like a tic.
• é que justifies: É que eu tava sem bateria is softer than Eu tava sem bateria.
• aí is not only "there": in stories it means "and then".

If you speak Spanish

Several markers look familiar but behave differently. Pois é is not pues es: it means así es or ya. O sea becomes ou seja or quer dizer. The Spanish tag ¿no? is né?, and bueno at the start of a turn is usually bom or então. De repente = "maybe" will feel natural if you know Andean Spanish, where it means the same. And tipo exists in River Plate Spanish too, with almost the same hedging use.