"A paciente perdeu sua fala há alguns dias."

Translation: The patient lost her speech a few days ago.

[deactivated user]

Does this mean that the patient lost the ability to speak, but not necessarily her voice?

[Paulenrique]

Yes... but it may also mean she lost her voice.

[deactivated user]

Thanks :) I had 'The patient lost her voice a few days ago' but it wasn't accepted. I will report it the next time I encounter it :)

[frederikp86]

I thought há means since and not ago?

[Paulenrique]

Here you can use "há alguns dias" or "alguns dias atrás" - they are the same! (Há also means "for")

[Davu]

I have a feeling this is a silly question. As you say, "há" can mean "for" so is "The patient lost her speech/voice for some days" a valid translation? This obviously doesn't mean quite the same as Duolingo's version.

[Paulenrique]

I compared "for" to "since" as in "present perfect" tenses. Here, to keep the same meaning, you have to use "por" :-)

[Davu]

Thanks, I knew it was a silly question. Your answer makes me wonder whether it is possible to translate this sentence as "The patient has not been able to speak for some days". Now "há" is translated as "for" and the sentence says much the same as the one with "ago".

[Paulenrique]

Exactly! This is it! :-)

[ueritom]

"Há" in this case means how long the action happened, and it is still true in the Present. :)

[Danmoller]

Actually, here it means "when" it started and doen't talk about continuity.

"Há" can assume both meanings, but in different sentence constructions, as Paulenrique and Davu discussed here.

Continuity vs Single action

• Ela não fala há 10 anos = She hasn't spoken for ten years
• Ela chegou há 10 anos = She arrived ten years ago

[YinParadies]

Actually, it should be 'she hasn't spoken for ten years'. What you have isn't grammatically correct English.

[Danmoller]

Sorry for the mistakes. Fixed that.

[o_scott]

isn't "faz alguns dias" better than "ha"

[JuanDazo]

The patient lost his speech a few days ago... Wrong...

[rogerehoward]

The best translation would be "The patient lost her ability to speak." She lost her speech would mean that she had written a speech (discurso) but then lost it.