"I have not eaten chicken since Saturday."
Translation:Eu não como frango desde sábado.
19 Comments
Comido = eaten. Como = eat. (For the 1st singular person in the presen tense). This sentence was translated in the present (eu não como = i dont eat) and not a literal translation (eu não tenho comido = i havent eaten)
Exactly. So "eu não tenho" would be the actual translation no? It's not just a weird grammatical rule in Portuguese?
Well... it's present perfect. This stuff was discussed many times here... Duo drives us crazy on it!!
There is a wiki piece referencing 6 morphological forms of "tenses, aspects and/or moods": present, preterite, imperfect, pluperfect, future, and conditional. When I came across it, I was under the impression that in Portuguese Present Perfect wasn't explicitly defined (evidently you can construct one as shown) hence some of the confusions seen (such as this Duo translation). Is there any truth in that piece or this case is a genuine mistake that needs correcting?
English Present Perfect is usually taken as simple past in Portuguese.
This is the most well-researched site for present perfect translations from English to Portuguese:
You would use the present tense here: eu não como frango desde sábado. Não comi frango sábado passado (last Saturday).
So "Eu não comi frango desde sábado." might be passable also but not present tense, right? Thanks again!
After many of those "present perfect" discussions, I've come up to this:
http://www.duolingo.com/comment/1483888?from_skill=0d4273bb5ba2d0dedb95127796e1e909
In constructions where you have ter/haver, ter is far more common. But the present perfect in English is translated as simple past in Portuguese.
no, "no" does not work here
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eu não como frengo desde sábado - I have not eaten chicken since Saturday
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eu não como frango no sabado - I do not eat chicken os Saturdays.
Can someone explain why it must be ‘como’ (present) rather than some other tense?
When you have the words "since" or "for" (present perfect tense), if is translated as the present tense in Portuguese.
