Learn how to ask about someone's nationality
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| Oi, meu nome é Paloma. Hi everybody! I’m Paloma. |
| Welcome to PortuguesePod101.com’s “Português em Três Minutos”. The fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn Portuguese. |
| In this lesson, we are going to learn how to ask about nationalities, and we will also discuss how to answer where you are from. |
| When you meet a new person in Brazil, they might ask you De onde você é? which is the equivalent of "Where are you from?" |
| De onde means "from where?" |
| You’re familiar with você, the word for "you." |
| é is a conjugated form of the “to be” verb ser. |
| All together it's De onde você é? |
| [slowly] De onde você é? |
| Answering this question is very easy! You just say Eu sou. Eu, as you know, is I. And sou is “to be,” ser, conjugated for Eu. Then we have dos, meaning “from” and finally the name of your country. |
| For example: Eu sou dos Estados Unidos. |
| [slowly] Eu sou dos Estados Unidos. |
| I am from the United States. |
| Just replace “dos Estados Unidos” with your own country. |
| "I am for Germany" is Eu sou da Alemanha. |
| "I am from Italy" is Eu sou da Itália. |
| "I am from Japan" is Eu sou do Japão. |
| Be careful, because as you may have noticed, the word dos changed to da or do depending on the country. Almost all country’s names are either a feminine or masculine noun. If it is feminine, we use da or das for plural names such as The Philippines, Das Filipinas. If it is masculine, we use do or dos. |
| For example |
| “I am from France” is Eu sou da França. |
| “I am from The Philippines” is Eu sou das Filipinas. |
| “I am from Egypt” is Eu sou do Egito. |
| “I am from the United States” is Eu sou dos Estados Unidos. |
| Be aware that if you ask a Brazilian De onde você é, he will probably say the city or state he is from. |
| You can also say the name of your city or your state to answer this question. |
| For example, I would say Eu sou de São Paulo. |
| And finally, to return the question you can simply say e você? which is "And you?" |
| [slowly] e você |
| Now it’s time for Paloma’s Point. |
| It is more common to ask “Where are you from” instead of “What is your nationality” in a casual situation in Brazil. |
| We usually use the nationality when confirming. |
| For example, you can say |
| Você é brasileiro? |
| or |
| Você é portuguesa? |
| to confirm if someone is Brazilian or Portuguese. |
| In this lesson we learned how to talk about nationalities. |
| Next time we’ll learn another translation for the verb to be and we'll see how to use it to talk about locations. By the way, do you know how to ask someone where they are in Portuguese? I'll be waiting for you with the answer in the next Português em Três minutos. |
| Até mais! |
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