Learn grammatical gender
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Thássia: Oi pessoal. |
| Braden: Braden here! This is Absolute Beginner Season 1, Lesson 10 - It's All Brazilian History. Hello and welcome back to PortuguesePod101.com, the fastest, easiest and most fun way to learn Portuguese! I'm joined in the studio by... |
| Thássia: Thássia. Hello everyone. |
| Braden: In this lesson, we'll cover grammatical gender. |
| Thássia: This conversation takes place in front of a snack shop. |
| Braden: And it's between Michael and Mariana. |
| Thássia: They are friends; so they'll be speaking informally. Let's have a listen to the conversation. |
Lesson conversation |
|---|
| (Informal) |
| Michael: É este o lugar, Mariana? |
| Mariana: Sim, é esta a lanchonete. |
| Michael: Eu estou cansada e com sede. Você quer tomar um suco? |
| Mariana: Michael, se diz, "eu estou cansado," porque você é homem. E sim, um suco seria ótimo. |
| Braden:One time slowly. |
| (Informal) |
| Michael: É este o lugar, Mariana? |
| Mariana: Sim, é esta a lanchonete. |
| Michael: Eu estou cansada e com sede. Você quer tomar um suco? |
| Mariana: Michael, se diz, "eu estou cansado," porque você é homem. E sim, um suco seria ótimo. |
| Braden:One time, natural native speed with translation. |
| Michael: É este o lugar, Mariana? |
| Braden: Is this the place, Mariana? |
| Mariana: Sim, é esta a lanchonete. |
| Braden: Yes, this is the snack shop. |
| Michael: Eu estou cansada e com sede. Você quer tomar um suco? |
| Braden: I am tired and thirsty. Do you want some juice? |
| Mariana: Michael, se diz, "eu estou cansado," porque você é homem. E sim, um suco seria ótimo. |
| Braden: You should say "I am tired," because you are a man. And yes, a juice would be great. |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Thássia: In the rush of the day, gender is often easy to forget. Did you have that problem, Braden? |
| Braden: Yes. Especially when I wasn't sure about the gender of the word I was using. |
| Thássia: It's very normal for Brazilian children to mess up on the gender of words when they are learning Portuguese. |
| Braden: What makes gender hard is that there isn't really any pattern you can follow to know if a word is masculine or feminine. Sure, there are a few guidelines and suggestions you can use to guess, but nothing that you can really trust. |
| Thássia: Yes, you have to learn to feel it. Sometimes I don't know the gender of a word but I can stop and kind of "fill out" the word in my mind and figure out if it is masculine or feminine. |
| Braden: Man. I wish I could do that. |
| Thássia: Let's take a look at the vocabulary for this lesson. |
| VOCAB LIST |
| Braden: The first word we shall see is… |
| Thássia: Descansar [natural native speed] |
| Braden: To rest |
| Thássia: Descansar [slowly - broken down by syllable]. Descansar [natural native speed] |
| Braden: Next, we have… |
| Thássia: ótimo [natural native speed] |
| Braden: Great. |
| Thássia: ótimo [slowly - broken down by syllable. ótimo [natural native speed] |
| Braden: Next is… |
| Thássia: Casa [natural native speed] |
| Braden: Couse |
| Thássia: Casa [slowly - broken down by syllable]. Casa [natural native speed] |
| Braden: Next… |
| Thássia: Cansado [natural native speed] |
| Braden: Tired |
| Thássia: Cansado [slowly - broken down by syllable]. Cansado [natural native speed] |
| Braden: And last, we have… |
| Thássia: Homem [natural native speed] |
| Braden: Man. |
| Thássia: Homem [slowly - broken down by syllable]. Homem [natural native speed]. |
| KEY VOCABULARY AND PHRASES |
| Braden: Let's take a look at the words and phrases for this lesson. |
| Braden: The phrase we’re going to look at in this lesson is.... |
| Thássia: "Eu estou cansado." |
| Braden: Which means "I am tired." That's a phrase I use every day because in Brazil, it's very hot. |
| Thássia: Exactly, right after a big lunch and its ninety-five degrees outside. I get very "cansada" too. |
| Brade: In the dialogue, Michael said "Eu estou cansada." So why did Mariana correct him? |
| Thássia: That's because he said "cansada." This word means "tired" but it indicates that the speaker is a women. |
| Braden: Ah that's right! |
| Thássia: As with the majority of Portuguese adjectives, there are both masculine and feminine forms of the word "cansado." |
| Braden: That means that if you are a guy, you say… |
| Thássia: "Eu estou cansado." |
| Braden: And if you are a girl, then you say… |
| Thássia: "Eu estou cansada." Usually, when you are talking about people, an "-o" at the end of a word indicates a man and an "-a" at the end of a word indicates a woman. |
| Braden: That's true. In a very broad sense, an "-o" at the end of any noun indicates that that noun is masculine. |
| Thássia: And if there is an "-a" at the end of a noun then it is a feminine word. |
| Braden: There are many, many exceptions to this so it's good to check a dictionary. Or you can always ask one of your Brazilian friends; trust me, they'll know. |
| Thássia: Let's take a look at today's grammar point. |
Lesson focus |
| Braden: The focus of this lesson is grammatical gender. |
| Thássia: In the dialogue, we heard Mariana correct Michael's use of grammatical gender. |
| Braden: That's right. Grammatical gender is a pretty intricate part of Portuguese so we decided to explain a bit about it first, before we teach you how to use it. |
| Thássia: Because understanding always precedes learning, the key thing you need to remember about grammatical gender is that it is an attribute of grammar and not necessarily a reflection of reality. |
| Braden: For example, the word… |
| Thássia: "Livro" |
| Braden: Is a masculine word that means "book." But that doesn't mean that only men can use it or that books are only for men or anything like that. |
| Thássia: That's right. Women use masculine words in the same way that men do and men use feminine words in the same way women do. |
| Braden: It's also worth mentioning that grammatical gender is not the same thing as gender relations. |
| Thássia: To a Brazilian, the grammatical gender is just grammar. |
| Braden: Okay, let's get on with a story. |
| Thássia: Yes. Once upon a time, there was a people who decided to organize their daily tasks according to who did what. |
| Braden: Male tasks became masculine words and things that women did were feminine words. |
| Thássia: Women would work with the "house" ("casa" - feminine), a feminine word, with the "children" ("crianças" –feminine), another feminine word, and at the "table" ("mesa" –feminine), one more feminine word. |
| Braden: The men would work out in the "field" ("campo" – masculine), masculine word, they would read "books" ("livros" – masculine), another masculine word, and take care of the "government" ("governo" – masculine), another masculine word. Then those people became the Romans and they called their language Latin. |
| Thássia: Their lives quickly became much more complicated. |
| Braden: Women began reading books and men started making food, and the simple divisions they'd created no longer worked. |
| Thássia: Now, over two thousand years later, Portuguese has remnants of this convoluted system of masculine and feminine. |
| Braden: It probably made a lot of sense three thousand years ago but now it's just a relic of an ancient time. |
| Thássia: Like spelling in English. |
| Braden: Exactly like spelling in English. Why do some words need two "-m's"? Or why is "enough" spelled "-e-n-o-u-g-h" instead of "-e-n-u-f?" There's no reason for it. It's because of similar linguistic baggage. |
| Thássia: I bet you didn't expect story time could be so intellectual did you? |
| Braden: I certainly didn't. That just about does it for today. |
| Thássia: Okay. Some of our listeners already know about the most powerful tool on PortuguesePod101.com. |
| Braden: Line-by-line audio. |
| Thássia: The perfect tool for rapidly improving listening comprehension. |
| Braden: By listening to lines of the conversation again and again. |
| Thássia: Listen until every word and syllable becomes clear. Basically we break down the dialogue into comprehensible byte size sentences. |
| Braden: You can try the line-by-line audio at PortuguesePod101.com. See you tomorrow. |
| Thássia: Até amanhã! |
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