How do you say Umbrella in Brazil?

Here in Brazil people say Sombrinha, guarda-chuva and guarda-sol.

Sombrinha is a feminine word, then you must say: a sombinha or uma sombrinha. Guarda-chuva and guarda-sol are masculine words, so you have to say o guarda-chuva, um guarda-chuva, o guarda-sol, um guarda-sol.

The plural form of sombrinha is sombrinhas. Then you must say: as sombrinhas, umas sombrinhas.  

For guarda-chuva and guarda-sol, you make the plural form a little bit different. When you have two words forming just one, you call it “palavra composta”. If the first word is a verb, like guardar in guarda-chuva and guarda-sol, and the second word is a noun, like chuva and sol, only the noun will receive the S plural. Then, the plural for guarda-chuva is guarda-chuvas and guarda-sol is guarda-sóis. As sol finishes in L, it will be inside of another plural rule in Portuguese.

Sombrinha is a word that comes from sombra + inha, meaning a small shadow that an umbrella would make if you are in the sun. When you say guarda-chuva, you have the word “guarda”, to protect and “chuva”, which means rain. So, guarda-chuva will protect you from the rain. We also have the word guarda-sol. In this case, you have the word “guarda”, to protect and “sol”, meaning sun. In other words, guarda-sol will protect you from the sun, in case you use the literal meaning of the words.

However, if you need a protection either from the sun or from the rain, you can use these three words. Depending on the region of the country, you may hear one or the other, but you are save to use sombrinha and guarda-chuva to protect you from the rain and sombrinha and guarda-sol to protect you from the sun.

The word guarda-chuva is quite interesting. It has a remarkable similarity in meaning in French which is parapluie, “para” to protect and “pluie”, meaning rain. In Spanish, we have “paraguas”, with the same prefix “para” as in French. “Para” to protect and “aguas”, water.

In brazil, the prefix “para” is very similar to “parar”, to stop, in this case, in French, parapluie is to stop the rain. In Spanish, paraguas is to stop the water.

However, in Italian the word umbrella is ombrello, which comes from the Latin word umbra, meaning shade. In this case, in Italian it means a small shade. This word is quite similar to umbrella in English. In turn, it is very similar to sombrinha in Portuguese spoken in Brazil because sombrinha is a word that resembles  “umbra” + “inha”, where “umbra” is shade in Latin and “inha” is a Portuguese suffix to make things smaller, like sombra, shade in its normal size and sombrinha, shade in a smaller size.