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- Empregado de mesa: Boa tarde, bem-vindo ao nosso restaurante!
- Cliente: Boa tarde e obrigado.
- Eu quero fazer o meu pedido, mas a minha mesa não tem o vosso menu.
- Empregado de mesa: Eu tenho dois menus para o senhor.
- Um tem as nossas entradas, pratos, e sobremesas e o outro tem as nossas bebidas.
- Cliente: E qual é a sua recomendação?
- Empregado de mesa: Eu recomendo o nosso menu do dia, que é muito bom.
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os amigosfriends as bebidasdrinks, beverages a canetapen A cenouraCarrot clientecustomer, client completocompleted, complete disponibilidadeavailability, readiness, willingness o empregadoemployee, worker masc. as entradasappetizers, starters EntãoSo, Then fazerto do, to make o geladoice cream a mesatable O morangoThe strawberry a opçãooption o pedidorequest, order perfeitoPerfect os pratosplates, dishes RecomendaçãoRecommendation o restauranterestaurant SatisfeitoSatisfied sobremesasdesserts a sopasoup TalvezMaybe VegetarianaVegetarian ÓtimoGreat
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O empregado de mesaThe waiter masc. Boa tardeGood afternoon Com certezaCertainly, Of course, Absolutely, Sure Não precisa de pedir desculpaNo need to apologize Bem-vindoWelcome Peço desculpaI apologize, Excuse me, I beg your pardon
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Help me understand the switch in the “Your”
Cliente “E qual é a sua recomendação” – here, sua is used for your, because it is singular and spoken to “you” – the waiter
Empregado de mesa: Obrigado pela sua caneta – here, sua is use for your, because it is singular and spoken to “you” – the client?
Cliente “quero um dos vossos gelados” – here, vossos is uses because the you refers to you – the owners of the restaurant?
Did I get that right?
That’s absolutely correct 🙂 It’s common for Portuguese speakers to use the plural in contexts like these, referring to the owners or even to the people who work there in general (as if they owned what they sell!).
“O vosso menu inclui …” Can you explain this conjugation? I looked up the verb INCLUIR – is this the correct infinitive? If so, why isn´t it “inclue”?
Thanks
“O vosso menu inclui” translates to “Your menu includes”. So, this is the verb “incluir”, conjugated in the third-person singular of the simple present: “ele/ela inclui”. “Inclue” doesn’t exist 🙂
O cliente não pede bebida … 🙂
I like your support for vegetarians and for dog lovers…
Hi,
“… para sua caneta” refere-se à “caneta” e não nos “clientes”, certo?
Olá, Manfred. Sim! Na frase “Obrigado pela sua caneta”, pela refere-se à caneta, não ao cliente.
Fica o de morango
O have serious problems with the verb « ficar ». It tends to have several meanings and uses ! Please assist
This is just a very idiomatic way of saying “Ok, so strawberry it is” 🙂 It’s as if the waiter were saying that the strawberry option is the one that will “stay” (ficar) on paper, written down, disregarding all the other options. You’re right when you say that “ficar” is a very versatile verb! We’ve had a few helpful discussions about it on our forum, which I invite you to check by clicking here. Feel free to also add your comments/questions!
I really liked the “speed” of this one. Easy to understand as it was slow enough for my ears. As a multi linguist myself, including some French going back50 years to 1970, I find reading Portuguese fairly easy but it is the pronunciation and the talking speed of local people that messes me up. Having said that I know it is always the same with languages, once you get into it and become more and more fluent it is not as fast as you think in the beginning, and mostly the same speed as your own language.
Other shorties are faster but I do appreciate that as well, knowing this is what you need to improve.
Thanks so much for the feedback, that’s helpful to know. We do try to include a variety of speeds and difficulty levels.
I like linguistic challenges!
I think que was translated as which in one sentence, ‘ que e muito bom’. Then who in another, ‘ tenho amigos que conhecem’
I still get confused with this.
Im ok with qual and quer [I think!]
The translation will depend on the context. So if it refers to a person, you could translate it as “who”, and if it refers to a thing, it could be “which”. It could also translate to “that” sometimes, or “what” in questions. All of these words serve basically the same function (just as a way to refer to something), so the choice just comes down to making it sound natural in English when you translate. For example, in the sentence “Eu recomendo o nosso menu do dia, que é muito bom.” it wouldn’t make sense to translate to “who”. But “which” makes sense because of the structure of the sentence and because the “menu do dia” is the thing that is being referred to with “que”. Does that help at all?
Yes, thank you. I am beginning to think I need English grammar lessons as well! It’s been a long time since I was at school. Great stuff online, loving the units and reviews.
:01:13Tenho amigos que conhecem este restaurante e falam muito bem deles.
I have friends who know this restaurant and speak very highly of them (the ice creams).
I was surprised in this lesson to realize that ‘deles’ can refer to things, not just people. (For me, this is not adequately explained in the previous lessons of this unit so perhaps you may want to clarify this in the lessons.) Does this mean then that ‘dele’ can refer to one single thing and be translated as ‘it’? In addition to physical objects, can dele,
dela, deles and delas also refer to concepts and abstract ideas?
When the waiter apologises, why does he use Peço instead of Eu. Why Peço desculpa and not Eu deculpa? I’m loving this way of learning, by the way. I feel I am making progress.
The full sentence would be “Eu peço desculpa”, but the waiter has omitted the pronoun “Eu” because the verb is already conjugated in the first-person singular, and that’s enough of a cue for us. “Eu desculpa” is not grammatically correct; it needs the verb (peço).
Could someone reply to Whit Sanders question please as so far dele/deles has referred to something belonging to that person(s). It is assumed that in this case he is referring to the gelados though not covered so far in the course and it translates to “and they speak very well ( highly ) of them (the Gelados)
Yes that’s correct — in this case “deles” is not being used as a possessive. It is just the literal translation: “of them”, with “them” referring to the gelados (a plural, masculine noun).
de = of
eles = them
de + eles = deles
We mention briefly in the Learning Note about verbs and personal pronouns that ele(s) or ela(s) can refer to inanimate objects, depending on whether they are masculine or feminine nouns. I’ll also add something to the Learning Note about possessives to clarify that dele(s) and dela(s) are not only possessive words.
Many thanks for the clarification . Perhaps a unit on these uses of the contractions might be considered.
No problem! Yes that’s a good idea. We don’t have a full unit, but it could be useful. In the meantime, here’s a learning note with a chart of contractions.
Huge jump in comprehension at this point!
thanks
I was just wondering why he says ‘obrigado pela sua disponibilidade’.
Is this a particular Portuguese phrase or idiom?
I cannot imagine saying ‘thank you for your availability’ to a waiter in an English restaurant and I cannot quite grasp what the English equivalent would be.
It’s something natural to say in Portugal, when you want to express appreciation for someone’s nice service and readiness to help. In other words, we’re saying “Thank you for being nice and helpful” (i.e. available to help).
The English translation for “os gelados são excelentes* was given as “the ice creams are excellent”. This might be literally correct but sounds a bit awkward to my Canadian ears (and I’ve eaten a lot of ice cream!). I don’t think I’ve ever used ice cream in a plural context in cases like this. A more natural English translation would be something like “the ice cream here is excellent” or “our ice cream is excellent”. In both cases the use of “ice cream” would refer to the collective whole. Just my two cents! -Peter
I completely understand, Peter! “Ice creams” sounds unusual to my American ears, too. And I agree that “the ice cream here is excellent” sounds much more natural in English. Many people would only use a plural form if they were referring to the “vessel” for the ice cream (ice cream cones, ice cream bars, cups of ice cream, etc.)
However… it’s not technically wrong, as in some English dialects it’s common to say “ice creams”.
With these translations, we often have to make a decision between what will match the wording of the phrase best and what will match the meaning best. In this case, we felt it made the most sense to just use the plural form, instead of using completely different grammar/wording from the Portugguese sentence. We figured that even though the plural form of ice cream would be odd for some people, that they would still understand the meaning, whereas many people would not be able to decipher what’s going on with the differences in wording/grammar as easily.
Lesson eight ……“Elas são minhas filhas”…why is “as” omitted before minhas?
It’s possible to write both “Elas são minhas filhas” and “Elas são as minhas filhas”. However, each of them has a different level of emphasis to it.
With “Elas são minhas filhas”, you’re simply saying that these people are children of yours, with no special emphasis. It’s even possible that you have more children aside from the ones you’re talking about at the moment.
With “Elas são as minhas filhas”, you’re really stressing that these are your kids. Maybe you’ve talked about them before and you finally have a chance to introduce them, or maybe there are more children around and you want to clearly identify which ones are yours. With this one, you may also be implying that these are all the children you have. You could also be meaning that these are all the daughters you have, even if you also have sons. If you said “filhos” instead you could be talking about sons only or your children in general (boys and girls).
So, the choice between one and the other depends on context. In the absence of it, the most general option would be “Elas são minhas filhas.
🙂
Thanks, so is this dropping a word like “as” only OK before people, eg family members, amigas? Not before pets or cars?
Can the “as” also be dropped if filhas is the subject of the sentence as in “Minhas filhas são lindas”, assuming you also have sons, who are not so lindos.
That’s right. In European Portuguese, in sentences with this wording, it is idiomatic to drop the article when describing familial/social relationships, but not really for other objects. So, we say “Elas são minhas filhas”, “Eles são meus amigos”, etc., but not “Estes são meus cães” or “Estes são meus carros”. We would use an article in these cases.
However, with a slightly different wording/word order, we do have the option of dropping or adding the article as preferred. For example:
– Estes carros são meus / Estes carros são os meus (These cars are mine) – both acceptable
– Estes cães são meus / Estes cães são os meus (These dogs are mine) – both acceptable