Garota de Ipanema
Tom Jobim & Vinícius de Moraes
- Language
- Portuguese
- Released
- 1962
- Genre
- bossa nova
- Level
- B1
- Difficulty score
- 790
- Special
- Legend
- Duration
- 2:31
Two things here are worth more than everything else on the card. The first is inteirinho, which is inteiro with -inho bolted onto it. Portuguese uses that ending constantly and it does not simply mean small: it adds warmth, or emphasis, or affection, depending where you put it, and no English ending does the same job. The second is se ela soubesse, an imperfect subjunctive, and that single structure is what pushes a seventeen-word card to B1. The rest is gentle: menina, moça, balanço. Bossa nova is sung softly and just behind the beat, so it is harder to catch than the tempo suggests. Small card, high ceiling.
How to study this song
“Garota de Ipanema” carries 17 Portuguese words, 7 adjectives and 10 verb forms — 34 study entries in all, graded B1. Begin with coisa, graça and menina: get those and most of the lines stop being guesswork. Nothing dominates this card: 17 words against 10 verb forms, so the study time splits evenly. At this level part of the list will already be familiar; the rest is what closes the gap.
The words of this song, in several languages
Every word below is taken from this song and translated by us. Nothing here is the lyric itself — these are the individual words you need in order to follow it.
Vocabulary
| PT | EN | ES | IT | FR | NL | DE |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| coisa | thing | cosa | cosa | chose | ding | Ding |
| graça | grace | gracia | grazia | grâce | gratie | Anmut |
| menina | little girl | niña | bambina | fillette | meisje | kleine Mädchen |
| balanço | sway | balanceo | dondolio | balancement |
What this song teaches you
Level · B1
- Vocabulary words
- 17
- Adjectives
- 7
- Word combos
- 10
- Expressions
- 10
- Verb forms
- 10
- Quiz questions
- 35
More Portuguese songs at this level
Background
About the song
“Garota de Ipanema” (“The Girl from Ipanema”) is the song that carried bossa nova to the world.
Written in 1962 with music by Antônio Carlos (Tom) Jobim and Portuguese lyrics by the poet Vinícius de Moraes, it grew out of a real sight: the composers watching a strikingly beautiful teenage girl — Heloísa “Helô” Pinheiro — stroll past a bar toward the beach in the Ipanema district of Rio de Janeiro.
Its gently swaying rhythm and bittersweet melody capture the cool, understated elegance that defines the whole bossa nova style. Jobim and Vinícius de Moraes wrote it in 1962 about a real teenager, Heloísa Pinheiro, who walked past the Veloso bar in Ipanema each day.
Astrud Gilberto sang the English lines on the 1963 session simply because she was the only Brazilian present who spoke English well, and she was paid a flat $120 with no royalties.
Did you know?
The 1964 recording from the album “Getz/Gilberto”, featuring Astrud Gilberto’s unaffected English vocal alongside João Gilberto and the saxophonist Stan Getz, became a global hit and won the Grammy Award for Record of the Year in 1965.
English lyrics were added by Norman Gimbel, and the song is often cited as one of the most recorded popular songs in history, with hundreds of versions across jazz and pop.
Charts & streaming
A worldwide standard for more than half a century, “Garota de Ipanema” has generated an enormous catalogue of recordings and remains one of the best-known Brazilian songs ever written.
It continues to earn heavy streaming, radio play and film and advertising use, a permanent fixture of the global jazz and bossa repertoire. The single reached five on the American Hot 100 and 29 in Britain, entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2000 and was added to the United States National Recording Registry in 2004.