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The word for dog is cão. So when I encountered cachorro and it said it was a dog, or puppy, I assumed it was meant more specifically for puppies. However, it corrected my translation of "The puppy is ours." to "The dog is ours."
It's rather simple:
E = AND É = IS (or Are when you have YOU)
O cachorro e o gato = The dog and the cat. O cachorro é meu = The dog is mine.
E sounds like "e" in "then"; é sounds like the first "e" in "better".
I hope that at some point they get a better sounding speaker than the robotic voice that they currently have.
O cachorro é nosso. - isn't it: The dog is our.. the correct answer? it is just one dog, why then nosso is translated as ours?
Os cachorros é nossos - The dogs are ours. - here it sounds ok for me :D
What confused me was OURS in the first translations.
Can somebody help me, thanks (:
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In English, "our" and "ours" do not indicate number. The difference between when to use which depends on its function in the sentence. If it precedes the noun, drop the s.
So: It is our dog. The dog is ours. They are our dogs. The dogs are ours.
However, in Portuguese the difference between "nosso" and "nossos" depends on the number of the noun.
You have to be grammatically correct in each language, which can be tricky when the two languages follow very different rules!
I hope this explanation helps!
Think of the s as indicating possession. Eg the cat's tail, the tree's leaves. So the dog is ours, the dog is yours. But ours dog is hard to say so we drop the s. It is our dog, it is your dog.
Nosso is used as "Our (singular object)". Nossos is used as "Our (plural objects)".
