Olá, “A experiência é mais importante do que a inteligência.” In this example do is a contraction of de and o but why is do used if the word inteligência is feminine?
@igormashnin1, this do que is not connected to the word inteligência. It stands alone as part of our structure for comparisons, and it’s always in this fixed form, not varying in gender or number. So, regardless of the concerned terms, we always use mais do que (more than) or menos do que (less than), never mais da que or menos dos que, for example.
Thanks. This is interesting. It seemed strange at first, but now that I think about it, we have similar structures in Russian that are always in the masculine gender and I have never even noticed that. It’s a matter of habit.
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@igormashnin1, exactly. There are many little quirks like that in most languages, if not all. It’s just more noticeable to us when studying foreign languages, because we want to make sense of every single thing. But yes, maybe because of the absence of neutral forms, the grammatical masculine tends to be the default in Portuguese, even in these cases where no specific gender is actually involved.
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