Trying to understand ser/estar & em/na/no

Portuguese Questions Grammar
1

I’ve been asked to write this simple sentence in Portuguese: “Portugal is in Europe.”

I wrote “O Portugal e em Europa.” I checked Deepl and saw it should be written as: “Portugal esta na Europa.”

Obviously, I’m wrong in many ways! :slightly_smiling_face:

  1. Why is there no “o” to start the sentence? Shouldn’t it be “O Portugal…”? I thought you always need an article if you’re starting with a country?
  2. Why is it esta? Isn’t Portugal permanently in Europe so it should be e?
  3. Why is it “na” instead of “em” if “em” means “in”?

Thanks!

2

Olá – Here’s my take on your questions. Not saying they are accurate, as I’m learning too.

  1. Portugal is one of those few countries that doesn’t have a related article. It is just Portugal; vs O Canadá, A Turquia

  2. why está vs é? ?? good question

  3. We use “na” as Europe does have an article, a Europa. So em+a = na Europa

3

Thanks!

I am told that Portugal is considered “neutral” so there’s no need for “O” in front. I guess it’s just one of those things I need to remember! :smiley:

Yeah…still puzzled by the “e” and “esta” in this sentence context. LUckily, I am sure any Portuguese I am talking to will know what I mean and will understand that I’m just learning.

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Is DeepL wrong with the use of estar versus ser??

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I get conflicting resources on whether estar or ser is the correct verb in this case. The answer (according to Anthropic’s Claude AI) was: it depends on what the sentence is trying to subtly convey. If the sentence is trying to purely indicate location, then “estar” or “ficar” would be best, whereas if it is trying to indicate that the “character”, i.e., all aspects of Portugal are European then “ser” would be correct. I’m still not sure that Claude AI got it entirely correct, so if I want to indicate location, I’ll probably use ficar, since that seems to be indisputable.

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Olá, @sfaznpinoy!

  1. Portugal is one of a few countries for which we don’t use articles, as explained here: Where Are You From? | Practice Portuguese
  2. To refer to locations, it’s usually fine to use estar, ser or ficar. “Portugal fica na Europa”, “Portugal é na Europa”, or “Portugal está na Europa” are all acceptable options.
  3. Na = em + a. We use “na” because we say “A Europa”, not just “Europa”. It’s a different logic from English.
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thank you!

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A post was merged into an existing topic: De da do na no em ao ou When to use