Meu cunhado vai me dar carona até o centro depois do almoço.

Vai dar is the very common near future construction in Brazilian Portuguese:

• ir + infinitive
• vai dar = is going to give / will give

So:

• Meu cunhado vai me dar carona = My brother-in-law is going to give me a ride

Portuguese does have a simple future:

• Meu cunhado me dará carona

But in everyday Brazilian Portuguese, that sounds more formal or less conversational. Vai + infinitive is much more natural in normal speech.

Cunhado means brother-in-law.

It can refer to:

• your spouse’s brother, or
• your sibling’s husband

The feminine form is cunhada = sister-in-law.

So meu cunhado is simply my brother-in-law.

Yes. Dar carona is a very common expression meaning:

• to give someone a ride
• to give someone a lift

Literally, dar means to give, but carona is not something you usually translate word-for-word. Together, dar carona functions as an idiomatic expression.

Examples:

• Você pode me dar carona? = Can you give me a ride?
• Ela deu carona para o amigo. = She gave her friend a ride.

A related expression is:

• pegar carona = to catch/get a ride

This is about object pronoun placement.

In Brazilian Portuguese, the most natural everyday order is:

• vai me dar carona

Here, me means to me / me, and it comes before the infinitive dar.

Other possibilities exist, but they sound different:

• vai dar-me carona — grammatically possible, but more formal and less natural in everyday Brazilian Portuguese
• me vai dar carona — generally not the usual choice here in modern Brazilian Portuguese

So for normal spoken Brazilian Portuguese, vai me dar carona is the form learners should focus on.

Me is the object pronoun meaning me.

In this sentence:

• Meu cunhado vai me dar carona
• literally: My brother-in-law is going to give me a ride

So me is the person receiving the ride.

You could also say:

• Meu cunhado vai dar carona para mim

But that is less compact. Me dar carona is very common and natural.

Yes, you can.

These are both understandable:

• Meu cunhado vai me dar carona
• Meu cunhado vai dar carona para mim

The first one is more natural and concise in most everyday situations.

A small detail:

• me is the unstressed object pronoun
• para mim is a prepositional phrase

In many cases, Portuguese prefers the shorter clitic pronoun when possible, especially in common expressions like this one.

Here, até means up to / as far as / to.

So:

• até o centro = to the center / to downtown

In context, it means the ride will go as far as the city center.

Examples:

• Vou até a escola. = I’m going to the school.
• Ele me levou até o trabalho. = He took me to work.

In this sentence, até helps show the destination or endpoint of the ride.

Because centro here is being used as a noun meaning the center / downtown, and Portuguese commonly uses the definite article in this kind of expression:

• o centro = the center
• até o centro = to downtown / to the city center

Also, after até, the article remains:

• até + o centro = até o centro

In English, we often drop articles in some location expressions, but Portuguese often keeps them.

It often means downtown or the city center, depending on context.

So:

• até o centro can be understood as
  • to the center
  • to downtown
  • to the city center

In everyday Brazilian Portuguese, o centro very often refers to the central part of town.

Because de + o normally contracts to do.

So:

• depois de o almoço → depois do almoço

This contraction is standard Portuguese.

Breakdown:

• depois de = after
• o almoço = the lunch
• depois do almoço = literally after the lunch, but naturally after lunch / after lunchtime

Other similar contractions:

• de + a = da
• de + os = dos
• de + as = das

Examples:

• antes do jantar = before dinner
• depois da aula = after class

That is a common difference between English and Portuguese.

Portuguese often uses an article where English does not. So:

• depois do almoço literally looks like after the lunch
• but the natural English translation is simply after lunch

This is completely normal in Portuguese. You should not try to match article usage directly to English.

Yes, but the meaning shifts slightly.

For example:

• Meu cunhado vai me levar até o centro depois do almoço.

This means:

• My brother-in-law is going to take me to downtown/the center after lunch.

That is also natural.

The difference is:

• dar carona emphasizes giving someone a ride/lift
• levar emphasizes taking someone somewhere

In many situations, both work well.

Usually it means after lunch, but not necessarily immediately after.

It generally places the event in the time period following lunch. The exact timing depends on context.

So it could mean:

• right after lunch, or
• later in the afternoon, if that is clear from the situation

If someone wanted to emphasize immediacy, they could say something like:

• logo depois do almoço = right after lunch

Yes, it sounds very natural.

It is a normal everyday sentence in Brazilian Portuguese:

• Meu cunhado = everyday family vocabulary
• vai + infinitive = very common future expression
• me dar carona = very common colloquial phrasing
• até o centro = natural destination phrase
• depois do almoço = natural time expression

So this is the kind of sentence a Brazilian speaker could easily say in real life.

A learner-friendly approximation would be:

• Meu cunhado vai me dar carona até o centro depois do almoço
• roughly: meh-o koo-NYAH-doh vai mee dar kah-ROH-nah ah-TEH oo SEN-troo deh-POYS doo aw-MOH-soo

A few useful pronunciation notes:

• cunhado has nh, which sounds like the ny in canyon
• carona has stress on ro: ca-RO-na
• até has stress on the last syllable: a-TÉ
• centro in Brazilian Portuguese often sounds like SEN-tro
• almoço has stress on mo: al-MO-ço

Yes. You can say:

• Meu cunhado vai me dar carona...
• O meu cunhado vai me dar carona...

Both are possible.

In Brazilian Portuguese, possessives are often used with the definite article:

• o meu irmão
• a minha mãe

But the article is not always required. Without the article, the sentence still sounds completely natural.

So meu cunhado is perfectly fine here.