De da do na no em ao ou When to use

Portuguese Questions Grammar
1

I am having trouble finding when and how to use these For example: Ele mora perto ?-- cinema.
I would love someone to be able to explain the rules for these, so thanking anyone and everyone that can help in advance. :slight_smile:

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Hi @Kellie.williams
I know it’s a tricky one but we somehow manage to do it :slight_smile:

First, it’s important to distinguish de from em.

“De” is used when we want to talk about origins, materials, and ownership. Sentences like “Sou de Lisboa” (I’m from Lisboa), “A garrafa Ă© de plĂĄstico” (The bottle is made of plastic) and “O livro Ă© do Diogo e a garrafa Ă© da Kellie” (the book belongs to Diogo and the bottle belongs to Kellie).
Then we use “do” in masculine names and “da” in feminine, Diogo and Kellie.

“Em” is used about being in places and specifics transportation.
Sentences like “Estou em Lisboa” or “Estou em casa” (I’m in Lisboa / I’m home") and have the same rule about masculine and feminine.

It’s a tricky one, especially if you’re not used to talking with masculine and feminine names all the time as English natives do.

I hope it helped a little bit.

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3

What about the other words, which are also confusing?
NA NO AO OU?

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5

Half of those words can be considered masculine/feminine variations, as @DiogoCarvalho already said. We’re really just talking about 3 different prepositions, and understanding that should make it more manageable already.

  • de (of/from/to
) - base preposition

    • do = de + o (masculine definite article) - used when followed by a masculine noun
    • da = de + a (feminine definite article) - used when followed by a feminine noun

  • em (in/on/at
) - base preposition

    • no = em + o (masculine definite article) - used when followed by a masculine noun
    • na = em + a (feminine definite article) - used when followed by a feminine noun

  • a (to
) - base preposition

    • ao = a + o (masculine definite article) - used when followed by a masculine noun
    • Ă  = a + a (feminine definite article) - used when followed by a feminine noun

Ou is not a preposition, but a conjunction. It means or (as in “this or that”) and it’s used just like you would use the English counterpart, so that one should be easy to handle. As for the others, because each one of them can be used in so many different ways, it’s hard to provide a thorough explanation without it becoming long and overwhelming. For now, I’ll defer to some useful Learning Notes that have already been written on the subject:

Hopefully, these will already be a good help, @Kellie.williams . I can then clarify things further, if you still have some specific questions. I can tell you that in your example, you would say “Ele mora perto do cinema” :wink:

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Thanks, Yes I am understanding it, I think, but will need to keep reading and going over it to get it fixed in my mind. :slight_smile:

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That is excellent and I think easy to understand, I will look at the links tomorrow, It’s past my bedtime now.
I was going to ask if there was a search facility to find specifics throughout the site.

EntĂŁo, muito obrigada

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8

Hi Kellie! It’s not perfect, but we’ve been improving some of the browsing and searching on the site. For now, you can start on a page like our Learning Notes, which are what we call these grammar articles: https://www.practiceportuguese.com/learning-note/

Then you’ll notice that the search filters are pre-populated to display only Learning Notes:

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Most of the filters currently apply to the other content types like Podcasts, Videos and our new, stealthfully-released Shorties, but you can use the Search box there to search within these Learning Notes, or even adjust that “Type” filter to search across all content types.

That might be a bit nerdy, but we wanted to have the power there for those who really wanted to drill down into the types of content we have. We’ll be improving this in the near future as well.

What do you think?

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9

The learning notes are helpful, but I have found better how to use the site now and am working through the units.
I am back tracking too, so that I complete each unit 100% before moving onto the next, I think, it is helping to keep what I am learning in my head
 or at least I hope it is.
Thank you all so much for this site, it is helping me more than the classes I am currently taking where I can’t even remember what I learned by the time I get home, so again Thank you all x

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10

You may have a point here. Backtracking does help a bit. Otherwise it is a bit hard to remember everything we have read. The hardest is to understand the spoken word. If there is a written sentence to go along, it is easier to understand the spoken. Otherwise the spoken gets lost in the overbearing slurring of speech.

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11

Glad to hear you’re making great use of the Learning Studio, Kellie. We are finalizing some updates that will bring more visibility to the Learning Notes (which can easily be overlooked in the Lesson tabs), so hopefully that will help. Some may notice we have been restructuring some of the Units, which also has some Learning Notes shifting around
 just like our fabulous members’ Portuguese, we’re always working hard to evolve :innocent::nerd_face:

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I find using em vs no/na very confusing at the moment. Thanks for clarifying them a bit!

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13

I have a question related to this with em vs a
One of the sentences in the lessons is ‘Eu vou à praia aos sàbados’ - I go to the beach on Saturdays.
Another one is ‘Nós trabalhamos no sábado’ - We work on Saturday.
What’s the difference? Why does one use ao and the other no? Are they interchangeable?

14

@pauladwg, we tend to prefer the preposition a (Ă s/aos) over em (nos/nas) when pluralizing days of the week. When mentioning days of the week in the singular form, we normally use em (no/na) by default.

15

Thanks Joseph. Good to know.

16

Why sometimes de + a, o , as, is connects and becomes do, da, das, dos and sometimes it remains as de? Example:
A cĂąmara municipal fica depois do posto de correios.

I don’t understand why it’s not ‘dos correios’

I need to read that section again :slightly_smiling_face:

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17

I think in this case it’s one expression formed by two words I guess like, ’ dia de casamento ‘ etc

18

I had this flashcard in my smart review today:

Eu compro um envelope no posto dos correios

I buy an envelope at the post office

So it appears that ‘dos correios’ is no less valid.

19

In such case, we need to wait for some wise person. :slightly_smiling_face:

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20

Olá, @filip.wawer! The definite article, as the name says, defines what exactly you’re talking about. But when just talking in a general way, it is idiomatic for us to optionally leave it out in a number of cases, especially in writing - in speech, I’d say we tend to retain them more often than not. For example:

  • Posto dos correios / Posto de correios (both are acceptable)
  • Esquadra da polĂ­cia / Esquadra de polĂ­cia (both are acceptable)
  • Cesto da fruta / Cesto de fruta (both are acceptable)
  • Paragem do autocarro / Paragem de autocarro (both are acceptable)

On the other hand, in contexts where we are being more specific, the definite article is mostly required. For example:

  • Esquadra da PSP → We don’t say “esquadra de PSP”, because we are talking about a specific subgroup of the Portuguese police and defining that it is their police station, not anyone else’s.
  • A escola da minha filha → We also don’t say “de minha filha” here. From the moment we are defining specific elements of a group (i.e. not any school, but my daughter’s school), we usually need to keep the definite article to sound idiomatic. Just keep in mind that Brazilian Portuguese is more flexible in this aspect.
  • A paragem do autocarro 10 → If we are talking about a specific bus, we need the definite article. But when simply referring to the bus stop itself, “paragem de autocarro” is sufficient, as noted above.

So, the usage of definite articles depends partly on how specific you want or need to be.

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I would like to say a Big Thank You :slightly_smiling_face:

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