Portuguese Language Blog
Menu
Search

Archive for 'Grammar'

Showing Surprise Posted by 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!”…

Continue Reading

Not me! Posted by 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!…

Continue Reading

Do you want to… Posted by 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…

Continue Reading

Deixa! Posted by 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…

Continue Reading

Portuguese Treebank Posted by 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…

Continue Reading

To Be Posted by 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…

Continue Reading

Porque, Por que and Por quê Posted by 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…

Continue Reading

Older posts
Newer posts