The use of muita in slang (gíria)

Portuguese Questions Vocabulary
1

I have been on working on the slang units and noticed in Lesson 3 that ‘muita’ is used even though the noun and adjective are masculine. I thought at first it was a typo but it occurs regularly and even where the standard portuguese is given it reverts back to muito. I checked through the notes but could not find anything on this. Have I missed something? Is this just a slang way of using ‘muito’?

Many thanks

2

I found a good discussion about using muito here:

Basically, the two rules to remember are:

1- If the word “muito” is followed by an adjective, then the word does not vary. If it is followed by a noun, then it will change.

2 - When you are talking about degree (when the translation is very) never change the word. When you are talking about quantity (when the translation is many or a lot of) you have to vary it according to the word that comes after.

I hope this helps you!

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Thank you for taking the trouble to send me this but it doesn’t answer my original question which is why the feminie form is used with a masculine noun / adjective in the slang version whereas it retains its masculine form in the standard Portuguese.

4

@michael.pearce, muita, as slang, is a variation of muito (very), which is an adverb. Adverbs are invariable words, so the standard word muito and the slang variation muita both retain their fixed form no matter what. Muita happens to look feminine, but in fact, it doesn’t really have a gender.

On the other hand, we also have the quantifiers muito, muita, muitos and muitas (many, a lot). These are variable words and will adjust accordingly. Muita as slang is not related to these.

  • Aquele gajo é muita bacano. -> That dude is very cool. [slang adverb]
  • Os filmes são muita bons! -> The movies are very good! [slang adverb]
  • Há muitas opções. -> There are many options. [non-slang quantifier]
  • Tenho muitos amigos. -> I have a lot of friends. [non-slang quantifier]

For other common slang terms, we have this detailed Learning Note (you’ve seen it, @michael.pearce, just leaving it here for reference): https://www.practiceportuguese.com/learning-notes/portuguese-slang/

We also had some fun on this other forum topic: How to say slangy phrases in Portuguese

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Thank you, Joseph. I hadn’t realised fully that muita was a slang form and couldn’t see it in the notes. I have just looked again and of course it now jumps off the page at me. I should have looked more closely yesterday! Thank you for the detailed and prompt response.

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