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Lesson Transcript

Oi, meu nome é Paloma. Hi everybody! I’m Paloma.
Welcome to PortuguesePod101.com’s “Português em Três Minutos”. The fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn Portuguese.
In the last lesson, we learned how to ask "Where" questions in Portuguese.
This time, we’re going to ask questions with the interrogative word "When?"
Let’s go! Vamos lá!
Imagine you want to ask when your roommate is coming back home. You will ask him Quando você vai voltar para casa?
[slowly] Quando você vai voltar para casa?
So let’s break down this answer.
First we had...
Quando, which is the basic translation of "When" in Portuguese.
Then Você, which is "you".
Vai voltar means "will come back”
And finally para casa which is "home."
So, altogether it is Quando você vai voltar para casa?
"When will you come back home?"
So in Portuguese, "When" is generally translated as the word Quando. For example, if you want to ask "When were you born?" you’d say Quando você nasceu?
Like in English, the interrogative word is placed in the 1st position, but the order of the verb and the subject changes.
So let’s have a look at another example...
How can you say "When did you arrive?"
It’s really simple since it’s exactly the same pattern, Quando você chegou?
First we have Quando, which is "When"
Você is "you"
And finally chegou, which is the past form of the verb chegar, "to arrive."
Have you noticed any differences between the sentences Quando você vai voltar para casa? and Quando você chegou?
The first one is talking about a future action – "When are you coming back home?" Whereas the 2nd one is referring to the past "When did you arrive?"
The conclusion is that you can use the interrogative word Quando to talk about any moment, whether past or present.
If you want to ask a question about duration as in "Since when have you been teacher?" Then you will have to say Desde quando você é professor?
Here too, it’s exactly the same as in English, because "since" is Desde. So Desde quando means "Since when?"
[slow] Desde quando você é professor?
Let’s see how to ask "Until when?" in Portuguese. It’s very easy as you can translate it directly. It becomes Até quando?
So for example, if you want to ask a friend " " It will be Até quando você vai ficar aqui?
[slow]Até quando você vai ficar aqui?
But of course there are other ways to ask about time. You can even be more specific by asking about the year, the date, or the hour.
For example, you can ask-
- "What year Which year did you start working?" will be
Em qual ano você começou a trabalhar?
- "Which day is better for you?" will be
Qual dia é melhor para você?
Now it’s time for Paloma’s Points.
To ask how long an action has been taking place in Portuguese, we could say Desde quando, but there is another very simple way to do it!
You just have to use the pattern Faz quanto tempo que? As in Faz quanto tempo que você está esperando? That is "How long have you been waiting?"
Ok, so in this lesson, we learned how to correctly use the interrogative Portuguese word for "When", Quando, but also its different variations.
Next lesson we’ll learn more about asking questions with "Who". Do you know how to do this in Portuguese?
I’ll be waiting for you in the next Português em Três Minutos lesson.
Até mais!

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