- Forum >
- Topic: Portuguese >
- "A polícia"
14 Comments
Police officer...
In Brazil:
A polícia = The police
O polícial = The police officer (male)
A polícial = The police officer (female)
However, in Portugal (or all Portuguese outside of Brazil):
A polícia = The police
O polícia = The police officer (male)
A polícia = The police officer (female)
So, police officer, officer, and policewoman should all be accepted for this exercise; but are not.
Policeman though is not applicable here at all.
You could join the police force and that would be an occupation. "policeman" is "policial". The person is not the occupation. http://dictionary.reverso.net/english-portuguese/police
1924
The cedilla indicates that ç is pronounced /s/ (from a historic palatalization). By convention, s is written instead of etymological ç at the beginning of words.
The acute accent and the circumflex accent indicate that a vowel is stressed and the quality of the accented vowel and, more precisely, its height: á, é, and ó are low vowels (except in nasal vowels); â, ê, and ô are high vowels. They also distinguish a few homographs: por "by" with pôr "to put", pode "[he/she/it] can" with pôde "[he/she/it] could".
The tilde marks nasal vowels before glides such as in cãibra and nação, at the end of words, before final -s, and in some compounds: romãzeira "pomegranate tree", from romã "pomegranate", and vãmente "vainly", from vã "vain". It usually coincides with the stressed vowel unless there is an acute or circumflex accent elsewhere in the word or if the word is compound: órgão "organ", irmã + zinha ("sister" + diminutive suffix) = irmãzinha "little sister". The form õ is used only in the plurals of nouns ending in -ão (nação → nações) and in the second and third person singular forms of the verb pôr (pões, põe).
The grave accent marks the contraction of two consecutive vowels in adjacent words (crasis), normally the preposition a and an article or a demonstrative pronoun: a + aquela = àquela "at that", a + a = à "at the". It does not indicate stress.