"If we gave you a present, would you be happy?"
Translation:Se déssemos um presente para você, você ficaria feliz?
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I tried using 'a gente' and put 'Se a gente te desse um presente, você estaria feliz?'. It was marked wrong but the correct answer was given as 'Se a gente te desse um presente, você seria feliz?', which confused me because I thought happiness was a temporary state.
That's because você estaria feliz? sounds like you are asking if the person would be happy at a given moment - in this case, the moment you give them a gift. But it doesn't mean "happy at that moment because they're getting a gift", it just means "happy at that moment, regardless of the gift" - the gifting dictates the moment, not the source/reason for feeling/happiness. It's like asking them if they would be home (você estaria em casa?) - the gifting (or being home) plays no part in the way they feel (the way they are, the way "eles estão").
Does that make sense?
And that isn't actually wrong, it just sounds really weird. Because you're not even asking if they will be happy to get a gift - you're just asking if they think they would be happy at a certain moment in time - it just so happens that the moment, in this case, is a gifting moment, which then makes the whole thing sound really weird. One would assume you'd be more interested in their feelings regarding the gift.
Like I said, if you were to ask Você estaria em casa?, it doesn't sound weird at all, because while gifting involves feelings, being home doesn't. Se quiséssemos visitar você, você estaria em casa? = If we wanted to visit you, would you be home?
Am I of any help? heheheeh Feel free to ask further if you still have doubts! C:
I also used estar, but I was corrected with ficar. I read your post and I am beginning to understand a little more about ser/estar. Being fluent in Spanish is something I am finding as much a disadvantage as an advantage for me in Portuguese. I actually have seen estar very little in this course. I have seen ficar a lot where my Spanish logic tells me that estar should be. Can you help me effectively place ficar in this scheme of being with ser and estar?
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I omitted the second você and got it wrong, but surely, it is implied. Ficaria can’t relate to the ‘we’ in the first part of the sentence, I’m sure.
Yes, but the issue is that you know what the sentence is supposed to mean. It is after all not repeating a subject pronoun. The você is an object pronoun. We don't know the context. Without the você, the sentence could also mean would he or she be happy. Theoretically it could also be would I be happy, although that is a harder one to build context for as it is a strange question to ask someone else. But we constantly build sentences with different subject pronouns in them that look unusual except if you were part of the conversation which got to that point.
I think "be" in this sense is used in a sense of "become", which is the idea the verb "ficar" conveys, like "quedarse" in Spanish. "seria feliz" would sound like something more permanent state of happiness
I think because here the "be" is kind of a "become/get", something that happens in the moment when the present is given.
If I had a car, I would be happy = se eu tivesse um carro, eu estaria feliz. // He the "be" is not close to "become/get".
If my girlfriend returned, I would be happy = Se minha namorada voltasse, eu ficaria feliz" // Here "be" is closer to "become/get"
What's wrong with: "Se nos dessemos um presente para voce, ficaria feliz?" ?
