"Qual é a sua idade?"
Translation:What is your age?
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as I wrote could be: how old are you? or what is your age? I do not understand what is wrong in my translation??
Hi, basically both answers are correct in their "meaning". How old are you and what is your age both mean the same thing however; because we are learning Portuguese via translation, in my opinion; the most correct answer/translation to English is, "what is your age"; which is perfectly acceptable in English and is the closest accurate answer/translation.
Is idade the word related to -idade the suffix, like humanidade and cidade?
Yes, you can see the same pattern in other languages (English -ity, Italian -ità, Portuguese -idade, Spanish -idad, French -ité, German -ität, Dutch -iteit).
Sometimes the letter "i" is missing (like Spanish "verdad"), and there are also varieties from time to time like in Italian "città" with "tt" instead of single "t".
city - città - cidade - ciudad - cité
university - università - universidade - universidad - université - Universität - universiteit
truth - verità - verdade - verdad - vérité
reality - realtà - realidade - realidad - réalité - Realität - realiteit
age - età - idade - edad - âge
Even languages like Russian have an equivalent (-итет = -itet) like in "университет = universitet)
805
Doubt since they have fairly different applications, with the "-idade" suffix being the equivalent of the "-ity" suffix in English
Its difficult to show a rule on it. Basically: o que / o quê = what, qual = which. But there are exceptions... http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=1700377
I understood the same thing. I'm a native and it was so clear to me that the robot said "Qual é a cidade" that I didn't even think I might've misunderstood it x.x
I also understood that. Portuguese is a little tricky because the words are similar and people speak very fast, I am native and have serious problems understanding what people are talking about.
I can't tell you how many times I've had to play one of the phrases 5-6 times on the slow speed just to try and understand what the robot is saying. Especially when it is a phrase that I have never heard before, it can be very difficult to understand her. Sometimes I wish there were two voice recordings to choose from (male and female, for example) to give a bit more clarity in the recording. But I can understand why that's not really feasible on a free software.
seu/sua = his, her, its, your, their,.
You can use "dela" to specify it is "her".
