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- Topic: Portuguese >
- "Eu leio o jornal."
36 Comments This discussion is locked.
Is this saying I read like past tense or is this saying I read the newspaper like I'm telling someone that I read it currently?
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I wondered that too! I think it's present tense..."I am reading the newspaper" I think "Li" is past tense..."Eu li o jornal"...."I have read the newspaper"
Yes. It's the present. Eu leio = I read. The past would be Eu li. (English word is the same...)
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Cool. Thanks.
In English the words are the same, but pronounced different!
present tense: I read the newspaper : pronounced like "reed" (in the morning I read the newspaper) (is that present tense??? I think present may be "I am reading the newspaper")
Past tense : I read the newspaper : pronounced like "red" (yesterday I read the newspaper)
Aaaah....now I need to go find out what tense that is!!!!
That's present simple (I read/write)
Same as "presente do indicativo" in Portuguese (Eu leio/escrevo)
There's the present continuous too (I am reading/writing)
Incredibly I, Brazilian native, don't know how to call this one....(Eu estou lendo/escrevendo)
I believe it's present as well, but someone corrects me if I'm wrong. I've been looking around, and looks like it's "Presente contínuo" too.
That is ok in Brazil as well. "Estou escrevendo" means the same as "estou a escrever".
If there are differences, they are so small I can't spot.
That's interesting, I know they mean the same thing but I thought there was a strong regional preference for one form over the other. This seems to be a common view:
http://blogs.transparent.com/portuguese/present-progressive/ which says:
This form is one where the continental (European) form is different from the Brazilian. In Portugal, the presente contínuo is comprised of the verb estar plus a and the infinitive. An example would be: Você está a escrever? Are you writing.
This difference is one of the first things to jump out at a student of Brazilian Portuguese when hearing continental Portuguese for the first time.
That's what my books call it too. It's constructed differently in European Portuguese though. In Portugal they would say, as far as I can tell, "Eu estou a ler/escrever" instead.
Hi Daniel ,(Eu estou lendo /escrevendo ) is called in Brazil : ( Gerúndio ). It is using when the action is happening in the same time .
Hey @someoneartsy, yes.
Estou fazendo, está comendo, estão olhando.....
There is another version, more popular in European Portuguese:
Estou a fazer, está a comer, estão a olhar.....
When you are saying something in present continuous in Portuguese, is it the same formula as in Spanish? (Person perfoming the action) + (temporary to be verb) + (congugated verb with endo/iendo/ando on the end) Portuguese: Eu estou fazendo um ovo. I am making an egg. Spanish: Yo estoy haciendo un huevo. Pardon me if I am wrong.
"I am reading the newspaper" is present progessive tense, but still present tense, just the ending is inflected (-ing)
Leio(i read) is present. I am reading...is called the present progressive or "gerund" in English
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WOW...that's crazy to look back!! Since writing that over a year ago....I have studied and qualified with Cambridge Uni on their CELTA course and become an English language teacher!
Duo has helped change my life!
Reminds me of that quote: "You don't know anything about language until you can speak at least two"
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progressive or continuous.
Have another wee look at "gerund"...it often takes the same form as PP, but it's a different thing.
How come no ones noticed that it describes the word 'O' as standing for 'The' which is fine but it also says it stands for 'You' which is totally untrue. Im learning this but my partners a Brazilian who is also an English teacher and says its wrong. How can we use this to learn proficiently if its got incorrect explanation.
The problem is that the hints are usually not context dependent and they often present translations which, while technically correct, don't necessarily apply to the sentence discussed (think of them as a simplified dictionary). Certainly there is no way the "o" in this sentence can mean "you" and can only be "the".
In some situations "o" can be translated as "you" though. In these cases "o" is the direct object of a verb and stands for "o senhor" which is the masculine formal "you". For example, I believe "Posso o ajudar?" can mean "Can I help you?" although it may be more recognizable in this form: "Posso ajudá-lo?".
I realize that the hints do give false options sometimes, which is a nuisance, but I hope the mysterious "o"/"you" issue you mention seems more reasonable now.
Perfect!
By the way. The first hint is always the most trustable one. The system selects it based on "are the words of the hints present in the best translation?".
In this case, only the first was, but the system always brings at least three hints if there are three available.
Thanks very much for the detailed answer as it really helped. Im trying my best to learn this language which at age 33 is difficult enough without the app adding confusion but thanks for clearing it up :)
33? I wish I had started learning Portuguese at such a young age! Take a look at this article as it may encourage you:
Apart from your relative youth, another advantage you have is that your partner is a Brazilian. This means your mistakes will be consistently corrected which is a key element for language learning success and you have a source of "implicit" tutoring. Good luck!
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Davu, there's a lovely quote from the linguist Steven Krashen about the time he met the Polyglot Kato Lomb and she metioned his age:
Can you see this ok: https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=349466241735954&id=111671952182052
This is very interesting: http://www.sdkrashen.com/content/articles/1996_notes_on_a_polyglot.pdf
And this Steven Krashen video is amazing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjAHPl1ACmQ
Yes, that video is a revelation.
Duolingo mangled your first link but it was possible to work out what it should have been (this is a Duolingo-proof version: http://tinyurl.com/kmdcmzb). The key quote being:
"Stephen, you're so young. (I was 54 at the time) So many years left. So many languages to acquire."
Krashen's article on Kató Lomb mentions an incident where she committed a translation error, was haughtily corrected and thereby made to feel "sick to her stomach". From this he concludes:
Error Correction, according to Dr Lomb, can have very negative effects, and can actually make language acquisition more difficult.
This appears to be a misrepresentation of her views. In her book Polyglot - How I Learn Languages she says:
If I discover an error I’ve made or if I am taken to task for a mistake, the emotional sphere tapped will conjure wonder, annoyance, or offense. They are all excellent means of fixation.
Later in the book, as part of a longer anecdote about a stay with some interpreter colleagues in England she says:
I asked them to correct my mistakes. Three weeks later, at our parting, I had to reproach them for not having corrected a single error.
So it seems she actively sought error correction; even if the effect on her feelings could be negative it helped language acquisition. That makes more sense to me.
Thanks for providing the links.
I truly believe it's a matter of belief. And it works!!!
31 and eating languages.
I'm thinking I'll have to sound more French than Spanish to get this accent. This is rough, because I'm coming from the Spanish tree and the accent is not at all the same. But I do have quite an edge on Portuguese visually because of it's similarity to Spanish.
You probably mean between lê and leio. It is the same as the difference between "(he/she) reads" and "(I) read" in English. They are different conjugations of "ler": http://www.conjuga-me.net/verbo-ler
you can also say journal instead of newspaper if you feel like it whenever it coud be newspaper you can also say journal.
"Jornal" and "journal" are cognate, both from the French "journal" (from the word "jour" and meaning in French something that is made everyday). In French, "journal" can mean both "diary" and "newspaper". Cognates don't always keep the same meanings, I think a "journal" in English is rather a "diário";
