I have been doing the employment unit and am confused by these 2 sentences:
Os empregados tem ( I know I need an accent here but cannot do it in this box) direito a subsidio de ferias.
and
O Joao nao tem direito ao subsídio de desemprego .
Why is one a and one ao?
Sorry for the lack of accents, I struggle a lot in this discussion forum to even post my questions. Sometimes I cannot post my drafts, not sure what I should be doing to actually post, but this is yet another attempt
Olá, @roberta.a.page. Either way is possible in both sentences. It’s simply a choice between expressing the information in a more general/abstract manner or in a more concrete, specific way.
The first sentence shows a more general approach, where no definite article is used before subsídio. So all you have left is the preposition a. The second sentence is more focused, maybe because we’re talking specifically about João’s situation. So, along with the preposition a, there’s also the definite article o before subsídio. This results in ao (a + o). There’s no change in meaning or grammatical correctness, only this nuance of expression.
(About your troubles posting, maybe we can help you via the support channel? Feel free to shoot us a message with more details about where the process is failing for you. Glad to see that at least this question came through!)
Roberta,
If you are using Microsoft Windows, I think that the best way to get the diacritical marks (^, ', ~, etc) for Portuguese is to use the English International keyboard. The article in the link below (from Microsoft) explains its installation and use. Boa sorte!