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Is anyone else reminded of toy story with this sentence? THERE'S A SNAKE IN MY BOOT!! hehe
It somehow sounded so harmless when he said it in the movie. I never expected it to spread to the other boot.
This is a silly sentence, but I guess the head could be in one boot and the tail in the other. Or the snake's inside a boot, which is inside another boot. Or there is one snake in one boot, but the boot is part of a pair, and it is not know which boot the snake is in, just that it is one of the boots which are part of the pair.
Or it is a valid - yet false - proposition, such as "all translations are wrong"
You can use it, but we "tem" is more common. But yeah, "Há" is also correct.
So what's a cobra in portugese? I answered there is a cobra in those boots and it is wrong
So, it's incorrect to say "there's a cobra in those boots", but correct to say "there's a snake in those boots"?
Cobra in the English language has a completely different name in Portuguese. Cobra is literally translated to snake.
Yes, "cobra" is a false cognate. The meanings of it in English and Portuguese are related - a cobra is a type of snake. But in English, the meaning is more narrow, a certain type of snake, while in Portuguese, the specific snake is "naja". Be careful with cognates and check to see how much of the meaning is the same.
This is an ambiguous sentence due to Portuguese being a null-subject language- the subject can be omitted in the sentence and you're left to speculate about what it is. So this could be interpreted as "[Ele/ela/voce] tem uma combra naquelas botas."
If there isn't a subject, or an understood subject, then "tem" mean there is/there are. It's used like the verb "haver" in this situation. Using "ha" for there is/there are is more formal, and "tem" more informal.
There is/are é como o verbo haver, como se estivesse dizendo "há uma cobra naquelas botas" que tem o mesmo significado que "tem". A diferença normalmente é que "have" é algo mais permanente: "I have a house" "I have a car". Agora o there is/are é algo mais no presente, que está acontecendo no momento: "There are a lot of people commenting about this" "There is a doubt about this sentence" "There is a snake in those boots".
I did read the comments, but I still would like to understand why this is not, S/He has/You have a snake in those boots (for instance telling the clerk at a shoe store, or telling someone about the owner of the shoe store I suppose).
What would make this sentence differ from, "S/He has/You have a snake in those boots"?
Or even "It has" as in a store (loja) for boots...
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It could be one of those things, but from doing these lessons I get the idea that Tem by itself with no subject means "It has", which is the way Romance languages say "There is". cf. Fr. Il y a and Sp. Hay.
Thank you. :)
This is another reason not to rely on the flexing of the verb to drop the 3rd Person pronouns when they apply.
Do you know which boot the snake is in?
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"Naquelas" indicates the boots are far away.
I'm confused about the proper use of ter versus estar. Is it okay to say "Está uma cobra..." ?
