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- "Ele vem mesmo?"
34 Comments
It does, but, in this case, it emphasizes the question. A good translation would be: "Is he really coming?" See how "really" is doing the same job here? You'll get the hang of it as you dive deeper into the language. Brazilians are extremely casual, so... Learning informal Portuguese is highly recommended!
I think if the question is written, one would understand to translate better, most of my mistakes are made from oral questions,!!!
"Does he really come" sounds unnatural in English. I can't think of a situation in which I would say that...
If you were referring to someone who goes to a club everyweek or something you could say "Does he really come?"
Does Santa really come every year? Does the Tooth Fairy really come for for my baby teeth? Does the Easter Bunny really come to hide eggs?
I know, "really" with these imaginary beings is a bit oxymoronic but you could use it with movies such as, "It's a Wonderful Life" in saying, "Does Clarence really come to help George understand how valuable his life is?"
Or in real life, "Does he really come to help feed the homeless every week?"
Does he really come to play golf every weekend?
The meaning is the same. But i know.... its bad when we have to guess what we are supposed to answer!!!
Although referring to a future event, even in English we don't necessarily use a future tense. "Is he really coming" is present progressive. We could say it with a future tense such as "Will he really come", or "Will he really be coming", but that's less common.
I thought the most natural way to say this in English is "Is he really coming?" as I don't think the sentence translates very well literally.
I agree but I just resign in translating as literal as possible but make it grammatically English, if that makes sense.
That's the thing about Spanish and Portuguese that is the most frustrating to me sometimes. For all their specificity with the verb endings and whatnot, a question is just a statement with a question mark tacked to the end of it. :P
"You can do that in English too?" Yes you can. "It makes forming questions really easy?" Yes it does.
It's not really proper English, though. To be proper it has to have the "do." Sure, you can say "You want an apple?," but that wouldn't be very correct. You would have to say "Do you want an apple?" Or you could invert the sentence structure, depending on the situation.
You want an apple? as a echo question is not slang.
http://www.ecsscotland.co.uk/news/english-grammar-help-echo-questions/
That said, it is indeed an "echo question" and not really appropriate for all situations, especially language learning. Most especially because Duolingo does not really pay attention to punctuation (other than accents) and cannot discern intonation. So, Duolingo also does not accept this form, at least in the PT trees (and I am pretty happy about that).
It depends who's defining "proper". A descriptive (vs. prescriptive) linguist would note that intonating a statement as a question is common in the spoken language and so it's permissible in the rules of the language.
Could it also mean "is he coming himself?" as in he won't send someone else on his behalf? If not, how would you say this in Portuguese?
1209
Is "Ele está realmente vindo?" correct here? Or "Ele vem realmente?" ?
I mean can we use "realmente" here for English "really"?
- 1546
Just wanted to let you (the PT community) know that one of the alternative suggested solutions by DL was:
"Is he coming indeed?"
DuoLingo corrected my (nonsense) incorrect answer "Is he coming really?" and gave the above corrected solution (in red).
The question has been kind of asked, yet never answered:
how would you say "Is he even coming?"
As in, for instance, a conversation where we talk about a guy and how he could behave during some specific event, then someone asks "But hey, is he even coming in fact ?!?"
And so, by the way, how would you say "He is not even coming" ? Ele não vem mesmo ?
Muito obrigado !
That'd be the same way: "Ele vem mesmo?" or "Ele (es)tá vindo mesmo?"
"He's not even coming" > Ele não vem mesmo.
the use of the 'mesmo' to signify really is a very strange idiom in Portuguese. It reminds me of 'make up' to signify 'decide' in English, very odd.
