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- Topic: Portuguese >
- "Ela lê os teus livros."
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Is it necessary to put "os" in front of "teu" if either way it ends up saying the same thing "(your)".
yes, there is no need to use the definite article with possessive adjetives.
Why is it 'Ele le os tues livros?' and not Ele le tues livros. What is the significance of articel 'os'? Why does it come before Tues?
Both are correct. In this case you dont need to omit "os" if you dont want to.
THANK YOU to the many who answered my question, I kept asking myself why OS was put infront of TEUS, I often trasnlate to spanish to see if it makes sense (since I speak both spanish and english). It made sense without OS (: what does OS make it say though?
It is an idiosyncrasy of the language, much like in English we say, "The Ukraine" or "The Netherlands" when neither needs that distinction. It is why so many people mistakenly call the city in Portugal, "Oporto" when it is linguistically O Porto, or simply, in English... The Porto. :D
JK, of course (on that very last bit, it is really just Porto in English; and there is a reason for it as it used to signify "the port"). :)
BTW, the articles in front of the possessives are more widely used in Portugal (and the other Portuguese speaking countries and territories which all follow the Lisboa lingual conventions) than Brazil.
Sorry but many people who speak english dont say the ukraine. To make it easier we but it out. Yeah distinction fine but your low key wrong about the english part
1272
Is "teus" the possessive form of "tu"? I understand that in Brazil você is used most of the time; is "teus" also the possessive form used with the você form?
You can't use teu(s) / tua(s) with você. That's why seu(s) / sua(s) is much more common.
- 1272
Ok that makes sense. There was no other choice except teu(s)/tua(s), in the exercise, so I wondered. I'm really enjoying learning Brazilian Portuguese. Thanks so much for your response. I noticed you're learning German, my first language ...
Do you mean it? Up to July i'll be focusing on French, but after that I'll throw myself into German ^.^
If past tense was used the sentence would be "Ela LEU os teus livros." "LEU" is the simple past conjugation of the "ler" (read) verb for the 3rd person.
strange - I know that when you use teus or seus it implies to the possession but you cannot determine for sure if the possession is to one or the other, since teus behaves the way it does because of the object it describes (livros - plural-masculine this case). So - answering - "She reads your books" is valid as - "She reads her books" or "She reads their books". For some reason the app only accepts the first option... :(
Because "teu(s)/tua(s)" is only applicable to "your(s)" (Second Person "tu" which is the familiar).
"Seu(s)/sua(s)" is the one that is ambiguous (because while "você" refers to the Second Person it is actually a Third Person treatment just as much as "o senhor/a senhora"). So, "seu(s)/sua(s)" could be "his/her/your/theirs" and "its" (and probably one or two I left out :D).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_personal_pronouns#Possessive_pronouns_and_adjectives
