Learn about contractions and the mail system
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| INTRODUCTION |
| Sílvia: Bem-vindo ao PortuguesePod101.com! |
| Braden: Braden here! This is Upper Beginner Season 1, Lesson 10, Being Barraged by Bills in Brazil. Hello and welcome back to PortuguesePod101.com, the fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn Portuguese. |
| Sílvia: So Braden, please tell us what we’ll be learning in this lesson. |
| Braden: In this lesson, we’ll learn about contractions in Portuguese. |
| Sílvia: Where does this conversation take place and who is it between? |
| Braden: This conversation takes place at night in Laís and Carlos’s apartment, and it’s between Laís and Carlos. |
| Sílvia: What’s the formality level? |
| Braden: Well, it’s semi-formal and you’re gonna say why here in a little bit. |
| Sílvia: Let’s listen to the conversation. |
| DIALOGUE |
| Laís: Aquelas são as nossas correspondências? |
| Carlos: São sim, na verdade são todas suas. |
| Laís: Minhas? |
| - papeis - |
| Laís: Carta do banco, conta da água, contas, contas e mais contas… nenhuma carta da minha mãe. |
| Carlos: Não fique trista, Laís. Sua mãe escreverá em breve. |
| Laís: É que já faz mais de um mês que ela não me escreve. Acho que na segunda-feira vou ligar para ela. |
| Carlos: Acho melhor não. |
| Laís: Por que não? |
| Braden: One time slowly. |
| Laís: Aquelas são as nossas correspondências? |
| Carlos: São sim, na verdade são todas suas. |
| Laís: Minhas? |
| - papeis - |
| Laís: Carta do banco, conta da água, contas, contas e mais contas… nenhuma carta da minha mãe. |
| Carlos: Não fique trista, Laís. Sua mãe escreverá em breve. |
| Laís: É que já faz mais de um mês que ela não me escreve. Acho que na segunda-feira vou ligar para ela. |
| Carlos: Acho melhor não. |
| Laís: Por que não? |
| Braden: One time fast, with translation. |
| Laís: Aquelas são as nossas correspondências? |
| Laís: Is that the mail? |
| Carlos: São sim, na verdade são todas suas. |
| Carlos: Yes it is. Actually, they’re all yours. |
| Laís: Minhas? |
| Laís: Mine? |
| Laís: Carta do banco, conta da água, contas, contas e mais contas… nenhuma carta da minha mãe. |
| Laís: Letter from the bank, water bill, bill, bills, and more bills... no letters from my mother. |
| Carlos: Não fique trista, Laís. Sua mãe escreverá em breve. |
| Carlos: Don’t be sad, Laís. Your mother will write soon. |
| Laís: É que já faz mais de um mês que ela não me escreve. Acho que na segunda-feira vou ligar para ela. |
| Laís: It’s that it's already been more than a month since she's written to me. I think I'll call her on Monday. |
| Carlos: Acho melhor não. |
| Laís: I think it's better if you don't. |
| Laís: Por que não? |
| Carlos: Why not? |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Braden: How does the mail system work in Brazil? What are the key points to understand and to know? |
| Sílvia: Well, for the most part, letters in Brazil work the same way as they do in any other country in the world. There are just a few differences, however. |
| Braden: Such as? |
| Sílvia: First, the address to the recipient of the letter goes on the front of the envelope, and the address of the sender goes in the back of the envelope. |
| Braden: That’s right. I’ve actually had some letters returned to me because I put both in the front, which is the way we normally do it in the States. |
| Sílvia: Second, no self-adhesive envelopes, at least none I’ve ever seen. The humidity activates the adhesive and the envelope gets sealed before you’ve even used it. |
| Braden: What else? |
| Sílvia: Third, there’s a law that says you cannot send money via The Correios. |
| Braden: What’s that? |
| Sílvia: The Correios is the postal service. |
| Braden: Okay, the Brazilian postal service called Correios. |
| Sílvia: Yes, and it’s public. |
| Braden: So, it’s a government thing. |
| Sílvia: Yes. So, if you put money in the envelope, they actually are legally within their rights to take it and probably will. |
| Braden: I didn’t know that. If your money, you know, magically disappears, that’s probably why. I mean that’s kind of like what’s going on in here, ‘cause the laws are different. Let’s take a look at the vocabulary for this lesson. |
| VOCAB LIST |
| Braden: Our first word is… |
| Sílvia: correspondências [natural native speed] |
| Braden: letters, correspondence |
| Sílvia: correspondências [slowly - broken down by syllable] correspondências [natural native speed] |
| Braden: Next |
| Sílvia: verdade [natural native speed] |
| Braden: truth |
| Sílvia: verdade [slowly - broken down by syllable] verdade [natural native speed] |
| Braden: Next |
| Sílvia: carta [natural native speed] |
| Braden: letter |
| Sílvia: carta [slowly - broken down by syllable] carta [natural native speed] |
| Braden: Next |
| Sílvia: banco [natural native speed] |
| Braden: seat or bench |
| Sílvia: banco [slowly - broken down by syllable] banco [natural native speed] |
| Braden: Next |
| Sílvia: conta [natural native speed] |
| Braden: bill |
| Sílvia: conta [slowly - broken down by syllable] conta [natural native speed] |
| Braden: Next |
| Sílvia: conta [natural native speed] |
| Braden: account |
| Sílvia: conta [slowly - broken down by syllable] conta [natural native speed] |
| Braden: Next |
| Sílvia: mãe [natural native speed] |
| Braden: mother |
| Sílvia: mãe [slowly - broken down by syllable] mãe [natural native speed] |
| Braden: Next |
| Sílvia: triste [natural native speed] |
| Braden: sad |
| Sílvia: triste [slowly - broken down by syllable] triste [natural native speed] |
| Braden: Next |
| Sílvia: escrever [natural native speed] |
| Braden: to write |
| Sílvia: escrever [slowly - broken down by syllable] escrever [natural native speed] |
| Braden: Next |
| Sílvia: breve [natural native speed] |
| Braden: soon, short period of time |
| Sílvia: breve [slowly - broken down by syllable] breve [natural native speed] |
| Braden: Next |
| Sílvia: mês [natural native speed] |
| Braden: month |
| Sílvia: mês [slowly - broken down by syllable] mês [natural native speed] |
| Braden: And last, we have... |
| Sílvia: conto [natural native speed] |
| Braden: story |
| Sílvia: conto [slowly - broken down by syllable] conto [natural native speed] |
| VOCAB AND PHRASE USAGE |
| Braden: Let's have a closer look at the usage for some of the words and phrases from this lesson. |
| Sílvia: The first phrase we’ll look at is faz mais de um mês. |
| Brazen: Faz um mês literally translates to "make one month," but this is a special grammar that means "it has been one month." When the verb fazer is followed by some kind of time measurement, like a month or a year or an hour, whatever, then faz typically has the meaning of "it has been" or “this amount of time has gone by.” |
| Sílvia: Inside that faz mais phrase is the shorter phrase mais de, which literally translates to “more of,” but in this case, it means “more than.” |
| Braden: The whole phrase would be… |
| Sílvia: faz mais de um mês |
| Braden: Which translates to, “it’s been more than one month.” Could you break this down for us? |
| Sílvia: faz mais de um mês |
| Braden: And one time fast. |
| Sílvia: faz mais de um mês |
| Braden: Excellent! Okay. What’s our next phrase? |
| Sílvia: The next phrase we’ll look at is conta de. |
| Braden: Conta, when used as a noun, typically means "bill" as in an "electric bill." |
| Sílvia: To say electric bill in Portuguese, you say conta de luz or conta de energia. To say "water bill" you say, conta de água. |
| Braden: Okay, be careful not to mix conta up with the word… |
| Sílvia: Conto. |
| Braden: With an O on the end means “tale” as in like an old story. Conta with an A on the end means like an account or a bill or something like. Could you break this down for us? |
| Sílvia: conta |
| Braden: And one time fast. |
| Sílvia: conta |
| Braden: What’s our next phrase? |
| Sílvia: The next phrase we’ll look at is de um. |
| Braden: Okay, this one is actually, kind of a more of a pronunciation tip. In natural conversation, when de is followed by um, the sound tends to kind of meld together and become just… |
| Sílvia: jum |
| Braden: So, the whole phrase… |
| Sílvia: Mais de um mês. This is pronounced mais jum mês. |
| Braden: And one time fast. |
| Sílvia: mais de um mês |
| Braden: What’s our next phrase? |
| Sílvia: The next phrase we’ll look is - Por que não? “Why not?” |
| Braden: Por que means "why?" and porque não means "why not?" Different from English, the Portuguese não usually precedes the word it’s modifying, as in não estou which means "I am not." |
| Sílvia: In this case however, the não follows por que. Remember that por que as "why" is two words, but porque as "because" is one word. |
| Braden: Could you break this down? |
| Sílvia: Por que não? |
| Braden: And one time fast. |
| Sílvia: Por que não? |
| Braden: Let’s take a look at the grammar point. |
Lesson focus |
|---|
| Sílvia: The focus of this lesson is contractions in Portuguese. In the dialogue, we heard the phrase - São sim, na verdade são todas suas, which we translated as “Yes it is. Actually, they are all yours.” |
| Braden: English speakers are already very used to the concept of contractions. |
| Sílvia: Portuguese also contracts words. The difference is that in English, we usually contract verbs with other words. In Portuguese, usually, prepositions are contracted with other words. |
| Braden: In the previous lessons, we've gone over the prepositions "em," "de," "por," and "para." "Para” doesn't really contract but in spoken Portuguese, it kind of shrinks a little bit to become just… |
| Sílvia: "Pra." "De" and "em" contract with many of the same words in much the same way. The meanings are obviously different though. So, we'll go through them separately. |
| Braden: It's worth noting though that these contractions are not just for the spoken language, ‘cause you’re not only expected, but required in written Portuguese as well. |
| Sílvia: Yes. |
| Braden: So, onto the preposition “de.” |
| Sílvia: “De” contracts by dropping the "-e" and attaching it to the beginning of the next word. This word can be many words including - o, a, ele, ela, este, esta, esse, essa, isso, isto, aquele, aquela, aquilo. |
| Braden: And all of the plural forms of all of those words as well. We already talked about “de” contracting with “o” and “a,” so let’s look at de contracting with ele and ela. |
| Sílvia: De + ela becomes dela. And de + ele becomes dele. |
| Braden: Okay, this also happens with direction words like aqui and aquela. |
| Sílvia: Which would be daqui and daquela, respectively. |
| Braden: Now, remember the meaning doesn’t change. daqui means “of” or “from” here, just like de aqui, but a native Brazilian will never say “de aqui”. That’s very strange. Onto the preposition “em”? |
| Sílvia: Sure. "Em" also contracts with many words, such as esse, essa, ele, ela, aquilo, aquela. We already talked about o and a, so let’s look at the word isso and esta. |
| Braden: And remember “em” contracts so similarly to “de,” but we’ll just give you some other examples. They’re almost identical, the formats in which they will contract. So… |
| Silvia: Em + isso equals nisso. And em + essa equals nesta. These are necessary contractions. They always happen no matter the situation. |
| Braden: Next, we have the preposition… |
| Silvia: por |
| Braden: Por contracts a little differently. For example, when por contracts with a definite article like "o," the contraction becomes… |
| Silvia: Pelo. To me, this structure doesn't make much sense, so it's better to just accept it. That’s just the way we do. Por + o becomes pelo. And por + a becomes pela. |
| Braden: These are both number sensitive, so if the noun they’re modifying is plural, then you also need to use pelos and pelas. They need to be in their plural forms. |
Outro |
| Braden: We’ve got some great tables in the PDF with all the different variables and contractions and things, so we should check that out. Well, that just about does it for this lesson! Thanks for listening! |
| Sílvia: Follow! |
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