Sometimes I am surprised to find that no article is used in Portuguese, whereas it is in English. For example, why does “ O quarto dela não tem janela” not include the indefinite article?
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@pvreed, it’s normal for English and Portuguese not to be always aligned, because the languages work differently. It happens with articles and also happens a lot with prepositions, among others.
Indefinite articles are often omitted when we are describing jobs or roles, for example:
- Ela é médica. (She is a doctor)
- Ele é pai. (He is a father)
They’re also usually omitted in cases where we’re making general references to people or things (as is the case in your example):
- Tens carro? (Do you have a car?)
- A sala tem varanda. (The living room has a balcony)
- Tu tens namorada. (You have a girlfriend)
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I have trouble with your use of the word “often” here. Do you mean the article is optional, but equally correct and understood whether used or not, but that it is frequently not used? Or do you mean that the article is grammatically required in some of these contexts (jobs or roles) and is required to be omitted in others? For instance, can I say either of these with equal grammatical correctness?
Eu sou médico no hospital,
Eu sou um médico no hospital?
@sheepdog, to be clear, for jobs/roles and generic references to people/things, by default, the indefinite article is not used. We’d normally just say “Eu sou médico no hospital”. It would still be grammatically correct to use the indefinite article, and not necessarily awkward for the most part, but wordier. Strictly speaking, we tend to look at it less as an omission, but more as not adding something we don’t expect to see everywhere by default.
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