de vez em quando

By James Hall / / (3) Intermediate Portuguese
de-vez-em-quando

Once in a while.

Portuguese does a lot with the word vez .

It's important to get up-to-speed on the way vez is used. Almost none of it is intuitive - you need to memorize these.

Think about how English uses time and once to say different things:

The time of my life.
Once upon a time.

Look at some of the ways that Brazilian Portuguese uses vez:

De vez em quando. > Once in a while.

Literally, of time and when.

mais vezes > more times > Apareça mais vezes!

In English we would just say, again. You could say for example, O que devíamos falar mais vezes = What we ought to say more often.

Deveríamos viajar mais vezes. » We should have traveled more often.
Deveríamos nos falar mais vezes. » We should have spoken more often.

*this one looks tricky because of the "nos" added. This nos is just there because falar is being used in a reflexive way. It's the "ourselves" as in We should have spoken (to one another) more often.

Era uma vez. » There was a time. --> Once upon a time!

Literally, there was time, is said all the time when talking about the times long passed. (or, fairy-tales) See here for more about this.

From the video learning course, INTENSIVO.