"The cat is an animal."
Translation:A gata é um animal.
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The cat = "O gato" (male) or "A gata" (female), The cats = "Os gatos" (male/male + female) or "As gatas" (female)
O gato AND a gata? Does this work with other animals?
For example, a bird is um pAssaro, can that be uma pAssara as well?
it depends on the animal... some of them we change the ending: o gato, a gata, o cachorro, a chachorra (called biforme). Others change a lot: o boi (the ox), a vaca (the cow) (called heterônimos). Others are the same, but you may add Macho (Male) or Fêmea (Female) to differeciate them: A girafa, O jacaré. (called Epiceno) So, you say "Pássaro (Macho)" or "Pássaro fêmea", but we generally just say pássaro
In the last example, would one say "o pAssaro fEmea" keeping everything else masculine?
Yeah....we would say "o pássaro fêmea" but thats not common. We just say pássaro
So we don't need to differentiate if a bird is feminine or masculine and just say 'Pássaro' without adding 'macho' or 'fêmea' ?
Yes, most of the time we don't specify whether it is a macho or fêmea. We just say "pássaro".
I wrote "a gata é uma animal" not realizing the 'uma' was describing animal which is masculine. It thought it was connected to gata
Some Portuguese words are always either masculine of feminine, the other version doesn't exist. "Animal" is always masculine, even if it refers to a female. Other examples include "pássaro" (bird) which is always masculine, or "formiga" (ant) which is always feminine.
Does the masculine normally cancel-out the feminine, can't both be correct?
The only answer that starts with "A gata" appears to be the correct one here.
"The cat" could be male or female, with that phrase we cannot know if it refers to male or female.
This sucks, I keep getting this one wrong, this is like the fifth time and it keeps changing the answer arbitrarily!!! I pick O gato one time, it's wrong. I pick A gata the next time, it's wrong! What the hell duolingo, fix this crap!!!!!!!!
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And what if I told you that this point says select ALL the correct answers.... Meaning that you have to select the two of them....
you're right,there's 2 correct answers,i only click 1 answer so i got it wrong,,,i have a bad habit of just skimming the answers so i often get a wrong answer
I click the two correct answers and I got it wrong. I reported that to duolingo; from my point of view it is a little mistake.
Previous example was As gatas... and now it is O gato.
Can you have Os gatos as well?
Sure, if it was plural, and here it is singular. Plus, for general sense use the masculine form.