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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 use the verb ter, "to have," in the negative form.
In this lesson, we will start to learn about Portuguese adjectives and how to use them properly.
You will see that for adjectives, things in Portuguese are not as easy as they are in English.
The basic rule in order to use adjectives correctly is that in Portuguese, adjectives always have to agree with the subject they are qualifying.
Let’s start with a concrete example - Ela tem um caderno vermelho. - "She has a red notebook."
[slowly] Ela tem um caderno vermelho.
Here the subject caderno is a masculine singular word, so the adjective vermelho is also in the masculine singular form.
Let’s see the same sentence with a feminine subject. It becomes-
Ela tem uma camiseta vermelha. - "She has a red T-shirt."
Here we substituted the last letter o for a of the adjective to make it feminine. In Portuguese we often change the o for a in adjectives to make them feminine, but not all the time. It depends on the adjective type.
Here are a few more examples to show the difference between masculine and feminine form.
Chato is the masculine for "boring, annoying”, whereas chata is the feminine.
Bonito is the masculine for "beautiful", whereas bonita is the feminine.
Frio is the masculine for "cold", whereas fria is the feminine.
Pequeno is the masculine for "small", whereas pequena is the feminine.
Now let’s find out how to turn an adjective from singular to plural. Basically the rule is to put an s at the end of the adjective to make it plural.
For example, Julia é bonita. means "Julia is beautiful", so if you change this to a plural example, it is the same Minhas amigas são bonitas, which is "My female friends are beautiful”. We just add the s is added to the end.
To practice this switch, let’s see some examples -
If you want to say "My garden is small" you will say Meu jardim é pequeno., as jardim is masculine.
But if you want to say "My kitchen is small" you will say Minha cozinha é pequena., you change the o for a in pequeno.
If you want to say "My brothers are small" you will say Meus irmãos são pequenos. Adding an s to pequeno.
If you want to say "My sisters are small” you will say Minhas irmãs são pequenas. Changing the o for a and an s to pequeno as it is feminine plural.
Now it’s time for Paloma’s Point.
As I said before, there are many exceptions in the feminine and masculine rule for Portuguese adjectives.
Some examples are -
Grande – A casa é grande. “The house is big.”\ O quarto é grande. “The room is big.”
Legal – Esse filme é legal. “This movie is nice, cool.”\ Ela é legal. “She is nice.”
Forte – Ele é forte. “He is strong”\ Ela é forte. “She is strong.”
If you pay attention, most of the words that don’t follow the rule are the ones ending in e, as grande “big”, forte “strong” and quente “hot”.
In this lesson, we learned how to properly use adjectives in Portuguese and how to agree them correctly with nouns.
Next time, we’ll learn the basic uses of verb ir, which is "to go," so that you will be able to say sentences like "I’m going to school." Where are you planning to go in Brazil?
I’ll be waiting for you in the next Português em Três Minutos.
Até mais!

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