In the Practice Portuguese lessons is the sentence:
(1) Nenhuma destas gravatas é tua?
though in the Smart Review, I have always constructed this sentences as:
(2) Nenhuma destas gravatas são tuas?
BECAUSE as “gravatas” is plural, I thought the verb and pronoun had to be plural also. Is (1) a mistake in the lessons? If not, what is the reasoning for this?
Here are two other sentences from the lessons, where the noun, verb and pronoun are all plural:
Estas meias são tuas
Estas gravatas são tuas?
which also back up what I feel I have been taught.
Here is another sentence from the Practice Portuguese lessons:
Os vossos amigos são muito educados
and instead of “muito”, I would have thought the the correct adjective is “muitos” (plural). Is the original sentence correct Portuguese or a typo?
@josef.jurek, all of the sentences you’ve listed from PP are correct
(1) Nenhuma destas gravatas é tua?
→ In this case, the quantifier Nenhuma is the grammatical subject of the sentence, and the agreement is made only with this word. This is why the verb and possessive pronoun remain in the singular form. It might help if you look at the sentence in a different order: Destas gravatas, nenhuma é tua?
(2) Nenhuma destas gravatas são tuas?
→ For the reason mentioned in (1), this sentence is incorrect. It could be fixed by using the plural form of the quantifier (grammatically acceptable, but less frequent): Nenhumas destas gravatas são tuas?
(3) Estas meias são tuas. / Estas gravatas são tuas?
Yes, these sentences are correct. Let me note that unlike in (1), the words meias and gravatas are forming the subject of each sentence.
(4) Os vossos amigos são muito educados
This sentence is correct. Muito is not an adjective/quantifier here (meaning “many”, “a lot” or equivalent), but an adverb (meaning “very”). As an adverb, it only has one fixed form, which is the one you see here - adverbs are always invariable words. It would only be variable if it were a quantifier. Some examples:
Tens muitos amigos! (You have many friends!)
Não tenho muita paciência (I don’t have a lot of patience)
