Brazilian Portuguese everyday grammar

Describe things, identify their owners, explain what is available, and share preferences. These lessons connect Portuguese grammar to relationships you can picture and communicate.

Describe things and identify their relationships

Adjectives explain what a noun is like, while possessives connect it to an owner. Their agreement follows the described or possessed noun, which may have a different gender or number from the owner. Use concrete belongings and people to make those relationships visible before adding more complicated sentences.

Separate possession from existence

Having something and saying that something exists are different messages. Brazilian conversation often uses ter for both, but the constructions do not have the same subject relationships. Compare personal possession with impersonal existence, and recognize haver as a useful choice in more formal writing. A nearby plural noun does not always control the verb.

Express a preference with its own construction

Gostar de places the person doing the liking in the subject role and keeps a preposition before the liked thing or activity. Other preference verbs have different complement patterns. Change one detail at a time, such as a person, activity, or degree of liking, and explain why the rest of the sentence stays stable.

Sources

• IFSul e Tec Brasil: Compras no antiquário
• University of Texas at Austin, Orlando R. Kelm: Possessive Pronouns
• Araujo and Dantas, Letrônica: Os verbos ter e haver existenciais no português falado em Luanda Angola
• Brazilian Federal Senate: Concordância verbal
• Priberam: gostar
• IFSul e Tec Brasil: O cinema, características dessa arte