"Eu concordo com você que nós devíamos tentar de novo."
Translation:I agree with you that we should try again.
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How can you tell when the imperfect has a conditional meaning? "Ele queria beber água" apparently means "He wanted to drink water," but "Ele devia beber água" means "He should drink water"?
Dever is used fluidly in Brazilian Portuguese.
Devemos usually means "must," while "devíamos" can mean "should".
Devíamos (imperfect) e deveríamos (conditional) are sometimes used interchangeably with the imperfect being used as a less formal version of the conditional.
I'm not understanding the extent to which "deviamos" can mean "should" and can mean "must". I wrote "I agree with you that we must try again". But that's wrong.
According to Whitlam's Modern Brazilian Portuguese, the use of "dever" covers a wide range of translations. Many depend on context and intonation.
These are examples from Whitlam:
• Você deve entregar essa carteira à policia./ You should/must hand that wallet to the police.
• Vocês não deveriam/deviam estar aqui dentro./ You shouldn't be in here.
• Não se deve mexer em direitos adquiridos./ One should not meddle with established rights.
• O Presidente deve fazer uma declaração amanhã./ The President is due to make a declaration tomorrow.
• O preço do petróleo não deve cair tão cedo./ The price of oil is not expected to fall any time soon.
• Vocês deviam/deveriam conhecer o nordeste do Brasil./ You ought to/should visit the Northeast of Brazil
From what I read in other comments
devo/deve/devemos/devem = must (command, obligation)
devia/deviamos/deviam = should (advice, suggestion, polite request)
It's not present. Eu concordo is present, but "devíamos" is another way to say "deveríamos" (we call it the future of the past or conditional, to use for situations that would/could happen but didn't, or in this case, situations that are a possibility). e.g.: "Eu acho/achei que ela ia/iria na casa da tia" (I think/thought she would go to the aunt's house), for some reason we like to use the imperfect past in place of the future of the past. So, in this case devíamos is not acting like an imperfect past.
Uuh, good question. The same way as in "I agree with you that we should have tried again": "Eu concordo com você que nós devíamos ter tentado de novo" or "Eu concordo com você que nós tínhamos que ter tentado de novo". And yeah, both sentences can mean a possibility that didn't happen or something that really happened.
505
"I concur with you that we should try again," should work, but does not. "Concur" is another way of saying "agree," and it's closer in its root to "concordo." Does anyone concur?
Devíamos (imperfect) e deveríamos (conditional) are often used interchangeably with the imperfect used as a less formal version of the conditional. Very common in BrP.
According to http://www.conjuga-me.net/verbo-dever, deviamos is Pretérito imperfeito. I get that it is maybe colloquially used as a conditional as well, but Duolingo should first teach the standard language and maybe then some colloquialisms in extra lessons or something. This is a bit annoying.
Most Brazilians will use the imperfect rather than the conditional.
The imperfect is easier to pronounce. As an example, a conditional form of "querer" is "querería" and the imperfect form is "queria". It's unusual to hear the conditional in day-to-day Portuguese, even amongst educated people.
Ciberdúvidas explains that the imperfect is preferred over the conditional because of the pronunciation of the extra syllable:
Ex. Eu deveria e eu devia. Como a vogal da segunda sílaba do condicional é átona, e a consoante seguinte, r, é pouco intensa, vemos que há tendência para a queda destes elementos. Este fenómeno fonético deu lugar a que o pretérito imperfeito tenha tendência para substituir o condicional simples.
Ciberdúvidas is based in Portugal, so I assume that EuPt does this as well. In fact, I am sure of it because there are many dropped/reduced syllables in EuPt, much like English. BrPt is slower and most syllables get some stress.
You might sound a bit pompous. A Brazilian friend with doctorate told me about a colleague of his who was teased (ridiculed) about his grammatically-correct Portuguese. It would be like saying "It is I" or "With whom did you go to the movies?"
