Portuguese/Contents/L1/Lesson Six - The Train

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Dialogue 6 Ricardo: O senhor pode me dizer a que horas parte o próximo comboio para o Porto? Alberto: Às três horas. O senhor tem bilhete? Ricardo: Não. Posso comprar um bilhete? Alberto: Sim. Quer um bilhete de segunda classe? Ricardo: Sim. Quanto custa? Alberto: Três euros. Ricardo: De que plataforma parte o comboio? Alberto: Da plataforma três.

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 make questions in Portuguese. We've already seen one way of asking about things, when we looked at verbs like "gostar".

Você gosta de Lisboa? - Do you like Lisbon? O senhor gosta de viajar? - Do you like travelling?

These are almost exactly the same as stating something.

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 is that there is a question mark at the end. 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 intonation 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?" You can also ask "o que é que...", which literally means "what is it that...".

O que é que ela quer comer? - What does she want to eat? De que é que tu gostas? - What do you like? (note that "gostar" must always be accompanied by "de" and you can never end a sentence with "de")