For example “king” is taught as “o rei”, but then what is “the king”? If I want to say “a king” it’s not “um a rei” it’s “um rei”. Why is PP set up to teach words this way? So far it’s the thing I find most frustrating using the platform.
If I want to learn the word water, I just want to be taught the Portuguese translation for water. Not have “the water” be taught, but “water” be depicted. Am I missing something?
In Portuguese, since every noun has a gender, in order to use the noun you have to know what gender it is. A common way of doing this is to include the article, o or a, along with the noun. The article is not part of the noun; it is included only to let you know the gender. So, king is rei, the king is o rei, and a king is um rei.
I have the opposite opinion to moessingert. I wish all of the nouns in the lessons had the appropriate pronoun before it. When I first started learning the nouns, I didn’t learn the pronoun to go with it, and now I get mixed up as to the gender of the non-obvious nouns!
Could be nice if the articles were greyed out and there was a dismissible tool tip detailing the reasoning behind showing them. I don’t mind them appearing now that I know the reason, but I found it needlessly confusing at first.
@moessingert, @azafran341 perfectly explained our reasoning behind this approach. In the past, we tended not to include the articles and just focused on the noun itself, but the feedback we received over the years showed that this was really a major need for our members, considering how heavily gendered the Portuguese language is. We’ll also take your feedback into account - thanks for that.
Totally understand, and once it was explained it made sense. If not greyed out or a tool tip, maybe putting it in parentheses or simply changing the prompt from “book” to “the book”? But it’s a minor note, super appreciate the platform. 