Portuguese/Contents/L1/Lesson Six - The Train
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Dialogue 6Ricardo: O senhor pode me dizer a que horas parte o próximo comboio para o Porto? |
Here Ricardo is buying a ticket on a train station (o comboio in Portugal, "the train" is translated as o trem in Brazil). He also asks some other questions about the train he wants to catch. In this lesson we're going to learn how to ask question in Portuguese. We've already seen one way of asking questions, when we looked at verbs like "gostar".
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Você gosta de Lisboa? - Do you like Lisbon? O senhor gosta da viagem? - Do you like the voyage/trip? |
These are almost exactly the same as stating something.
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Você gosta do gato. - You like the cat. A senhora gosta da amiga - You like the friend. |
In fact, the only difference between these sentences are that there is a question mark at the end of the questions. In Portuguese, you can ask a yes/no question by just stating something, and putting a question mark at the end of it. In the spoken language, you should pronounce with a raising entonation to the end of the sentence, just like in English. This is an extremely easy way to form a question.
STATEMENT & QUESTION MARK = YES/NO QUESTION
And how do we answer such questions? Well, of course, with a "Yes" or a "No". When Alberto asks Ricardo
O senhor tem bilhete?
Ricardo could answer with...
| Yes | No |
| Sim | Não |
We've also encountered another way to ask questions. Back in lesson three we learnt how to ask someone what they were going to do on a certain day. Do you remember?
O que vai fazer na terça-feira? - What are you going to do on Tuesday?
O que eles vão fazer no domingo? - What are they going to do on Sunday?
The two words 'O que' mean "what?"
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O que é que ela quer comer? - What does she want to eat? De que é que tu gostas? - What do you like? |