Archive for 'Grammar'
Showing Surprise Posted by Transparent Language on Mar 24, 2008
There are a rich array of ways to display surprise in Brazilian Portuguese. Let’s look at some of them. 1. Nossa Senhora or Nossa! [Noh-sah Seen-yor-ah]This is a very common Brazilian expression. The full expression is “Nossa Senhora Aparecida,” which is the patron saint of Brazil. It’s a nicer way of saying “Oh my god!”…
Not me! Posted by Transparent Language on Mar 19, 2008
One of my favorite little expressions in Portuguese is “Eu não!” It literally means “Not me!” but is used as a negative response to a question. Here are some examples:Você vai trabalhar no feriado? Are you going to work on the holiday?Eu não! No! Você gosta do Big Brother? Do you like Big Brother?Eu não!…
Do you want to… Posted by Transparent Language on Mar 16, 2008
Happy Monday! Let’s work on some useful questions. There are a few ways to ask someone if they want to do something in Portuguese. We have the main way, which we can use in the present simple and present continuous tenses: a. querer (to want) 1. Você quer…? [Voh-say kehhr] Do you want to…Example: Você…
Deixa! Posted by Transparent Language on Mar 3, 2008
Deixar [day-shar] is a useful verb in Portuguese because there quite a few expressions that use it. Literally, it means several things: “to leave”: Deixei meu cachorro com minha irmã.I left my dog with my sister. “to stop”: Ela deixou de fumar.She stopped smoking. “to allow”: Nos deixamos nosso filho sair com os amigos.We allow…
Portuguese Treebank Posted by Transparent Language on Nov 8, 2007
Here’s one for the linguistics enthusiasts out there! A treebank, according to Wiki… …is a text corpus in which each sentence has been annotated with syntactic structure. Syntactic structure is commonly represented as a tree structure, hence the name treebank. Treebanks can be used in corpus linguistics for studying syntactic phenomena or in computational linguistics…
To Be Posted by Transparent Language on Oct 2, 2007
Here are the different ways of saying ‘to be’ into Portuguese Like many verbs, the verb to be has not one, but several direct translations (ser, estar, ficar) in Portuguese, so it is important to learn and practice the correct verbal usage for each situation. 1. Ser is used: With an adjective: Ele é alto…
Porque, Por que and Por quê Posted by Transparent Language on Oct 1, 2007
A common error in Portuguese is the misuse and confusion of these three similar phrases (and two more words). Let’s clarify briefly: Por quê (two words, with circumflex accent on ‘e’) can only occur at the end of an indirect or direct interrogative phrase: Interrogação direta: Eline não chegou ainda, por quê? Interrogação indireta: Eline…