Dialogue

Vocabulary (Review)

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Lesson Transcript

INTRODUCTION
Sílvia: Olá! Bem-vindo ao PortuguesePod101.com!
Braden: Upper Beginner Season 1, lesson 22, Checking in with Portuguese. Hello and welcome back to PortuguesePod101.com, the fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn Portuguese. I’m joined here in the studio by…
Sílvia: Hello, everyone! Sílvia here. So Braden, please tell us what we’ll be learning in this lesson.
Braden: In this lesson, you’ll learn how to break down grammatical gender.
Sílvia: Where does this conversation take place and who is it between?
Braden: This conversation takes place at night, at the check-in desk, and it’s between Marcelo and Jaqueline.
Sílvia: What’s the formality level?
Braden: Well, they’re pretty close friends now, so it’s pretty informal.
Sílvia: Let’s listen to the conversation.
DIALOGUE
Jaqueline: Acho que aquela é a nossa fila para o check-in.
Marcelo: Espera um pouco, estas malas estão muito pesadas.
Jaqueline: Vamos aproveitar que o balcão está vazio.
Marcelo: Mais devagar!
Jaqueline: Eu vou na frente para garantir o nosso lugar.
Marcelo: ok
Jaqueline: Boa noite, aqui estão as nossas passagens...
Braden: One time slowly.
Jaqueline: Acho que aquela é a nossa fila para o check-in.
Marcelo: Espera um pouco, estas malas estão muito pesadas.
Jaqueline: Vamos aproveitar que o balcão está vazio.
Marcelo: Mais devagar!
Jaqueline: Eu vou na frente para garantir o nosso lugar.
Marcelo: ok
Jaqueline: Boa noite, aqui estão as nossas passagens...
Braden: One time fast, with translation.
Jaqueline: Acho que aquela é a nossa fila para o check-in.
Jaqueline: I think that is our line for the check-in.
Marcelo: Espera um pouco, estas malas estão muito pesadas.
Marcelo: Wait a minute. These suitcases are very heavy.
Jaqueline: Vamos aproveitar que o balcão está vazio.
Jaqueline: Let's use the empty counter.
Marcelo: Mais devagar!
Marcelo: Slower!
Jaqueline: Eu vou na frente para garantir o nosso lugar.
Jaqueline: I'll go in front to secure our place.
Marcelo: ok
Marcelo: Okay.
Jaqueline: Boa noite, aqui estão as nossas passagens...
Jaqueline: Good evening, here are our tickets.
POST CONVERSATION BANTER
Braden: What can you tell us about airports in Brazil and how they work and so forth?
Sílvia: Airports located in big cities like Rio, São Paulo, Curitiba, or Brasília are all very similar to airports around the world. Lines, check-ins, gates, and metal detectors are all a normal part of the larger airports.
Braden: There are three major Brazilian airlines as well. There is…
Sílvia: TAM
Braden: And…
Sílvia: GOL
Braden: And…
Sílvia: Azul
Braden: These are probably the three largest. TAM probably has the most destinations of all and it’s also one of the oldest ones of the three, but it’s also typically the most expensive of the three. And then GOL is typically the cheapest, but they also have the most restrictions on baggage and so forth, so if you’re taking a lot of stuff, you’ll probably end up paying the difference in extra baggage costs.
Sílvia: Azul is the youngest airline in Brazil. It doesn’t have as many destination as TAM or GOL, but the prices are cheaper than TAM.
Braden: And the planes are newer than GOLs and they let you take more luggage. Let’s take a look at the vocabulary.
VOCAB LIST
Braden: The first word we’ll look at is…
Sílvia: aeroporto [natural native speed]
Braden: airport
Sílvia: aeroporto [slowly - broken down by syllable] aeroporto [natural native speed]
Braden: Next
Sílvia: check-in [natural native speed]
Braden: check-in
Sílvia: check-in [slowly - broken down by syllable] check-in [natural native speed]
Braden: Next
Sílvia: desembarque [natural native speed]
Braden: disembark, arrival
Sílvia: desembarque [slowly - broken down by syllable] desembarque [natural native speed]
Braden: Next
Sílvia: pesado [natural native speed]
Braden: heavy
Sílvia: pesado [slowly - broken down by syllable] pesado [natural native speed]
Braden: Next
Sílvia: pesar [natural native speed]
Braden: to weigh
Sílvia: pesar [slowly - broken down by syllable] pesar [natural native speed]
Braden: Next
Sílvia: balcão [natural native speed]
Braden: counter
Sílvia: balcão [slowly - broken down by syllable] balcão [natural native speed]
Braden: Next
Sílvia: garantir [natural native speed]
Braden: to guarantee
Sílvia: garantir [slowly - broken down by syllable] garantir [natural native speed]
Braden: Next
Sílvia: vazio [natural native speed]
Braden: empty
Sílvia: vazio [slowly - broken down by syllable] vazio [natural native speed]
Braden: Next
Sílvia: passageiro [natural native speed]
Braden: passenger
Sílvia: passageiro [slowly - broken down by syllable] passageiro [natural native speed]
Braden: Next
Sílvia: fila [natural native speed]
Braden: line
Sílvia: fila [slowly - broken down by syllable] fila [natural native speed]
Braden: Next
Sílvia: aproveitar [natural native speed]
Braden: to enjoy, to take advantage of (in a positive sense) or to avail oneself of
Sílvia: aproveitar [slowly - broken down by syllable] aproveitar [natural native speed]
Braden: Next
Sílvia: devagar [natural native speed]
Braden: slow, slower
Sílvia: devagar [slowly - broken down by syllable] devagar [natural native speed]
Braden: And our last word is…
Sílvia: frente [natural native speed]
Braden: front
Sílvia: frente [slowly - broken down by syllable] frente [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 espera um pouco.
Braden: In the dialogue, we heard the phrase…
Sílvia: Espera um pouco.
Braden: And be careful not to misinterpret this to mean "wait a bit" or "wait a second." In many sentences, it does mean that, but not in this case.
Sílvia: Because of the context, we translated espera um pouco as "slow down." Marcelo isn't actually asking Jaqueline to slow down specifically, he's just pulling several very heavy suitcases around with him and is having a hard time pulling it all.
Braden: That’s right, so it’s difficult for him to pull everything, so it’s hey, slow down, wait up a little bit. Could you break this down for us.
Sílvia: Espera um pouco
Braden: And one time fast.
Sílvia: Espera um pouco
Braden: What’s our next word?
Sílvia: The next word we’ll look at is check-in.
Braden: This one is pretty easy. Check-in is actually a loanword from English that had its pronunciation Brazilianized. It’s just check-in pronounced…
Sílvia: check-in
Braden: Could you break this down for us?
Sílvia: check-in
Braden: And one time fast.
Sílvia: check-in
Braden: What’s our next word?
Sílvia: The next word we’ll look at is balcão. The word balcão has two meanings. Normally, it translates to “counter” as in “Could you put that on the counter?” But in this context, it means “ticket store” or “ticket counter,” the people you give your luggage to at an airport.
Braden: Could you break this down for us?
Sílvia: balcão
Braden: And one time fast.
Sílvia: balcão
Braden: Let’s take a look at the grammar point.

Lesson focus

Sílvia: The focus of this lesson is agreement in grammatical gender.
Braden: In the dialogue, we heard the phrase…
Sílvia: Acho que aquela é a nossa fila para o check-in.
Braden: Which we translated as, “I think that is our line for the check-in.”
Sílvia: So in this lesson, we’re going to break down this phrase piece by piece and examine all the grammar parts. Note the gender out of order and that we have both masculine and feminine in the same sentence.
Braden: First off, acho is a verb, so there is no masculine or feminine involved. Que is a preposition, so, still no masculine or feminine. Next, we have the word aquela. What is aquela?
Sílvia: Aquela means "that over there." It's called a demonstrative adjective and it’s gender sensitive.
Braden: Remember, demonstrative adjectives have to refer to a noun in some way. But we haven’t had a noun yet in the sentence, so how do we know what noun it’s referring to?
Sílvia: Well, Jaqueline knows, but we haven’t gotten there yet.
Braden: Okay, so what’s next?
Sílvia: é. é is a conjugated form of the verb ser. Since it’s a verb, there’s no gender.
Braden: What’s next?
Sílvia: I think it’s best if we take the next three words as one unit. It will make more sense that way. So, the next three words are a nossa fila. So, the noun in this phrase is fila and it means “line.” Fila is a feminine noun, so the adjectives and the articles attached to it need to be feminine as well.
Braden: What’s attached to it?
Sílvia: The a and the nossa. Nossa means “ours” and a means “the.” So a nossa fila literally translates to “the our line,” but it means “our line.”
Braden: What’s next?
Sílvia: The preposition para, which means “to” or “for.” Since it’s a preposition, there isn’t any gender here.
Braden: And next we have?
Sílvia: The last two words should be taken together as well. They are o check-in, which means “the check-in.” Check-in is a masculine noun, so the article o is used with it.
Braden: Check-in is an imported word. Are imported words usually masculine? Is there some kind of rule for knowing the gender of an imported word?
Sílvia: No, at least not that I know of.
Braden: Okay, just a few things we wanted to point out. First, notice how we have both genders in the sentence. This is not only normal, but pretty much necessary if you ever want to express any kind of a complicated thought. Also notice how Sílvia went through the items. She focused on the nouns and then expanded the gender based on the noun. That’s how gender functions in Portuguese, you start with the noun, and then expand outward to the adjectives and articles and everything around it.
Sílvia: To be able to use gender well, you need to know the gender of the noun. Then, it’s just a matter of adjusting a few things here and there to make everything agree.
Braden: Speaking of agreeing, we haven’t explained the word aquela from the beginning. So the question is, why is this word feminine? It doesn’t seem to be directly attached to a noun anywhere.
Sílvia: Aquela is interesting because as a demonstrative for noun, you can’t know what it’s referring to without some kind of demonstration.
Braden: Usually, the demonstration happens before you use a demonstrative pronoun to avoid confusions. For example, you’ll be pointing in some direction. But reality is that, often, Brazilians don’t talk that way. Here, the demonstrative adjective is used before the demonstration and thefore, the noun it’s referring to. So, we do this all the time in English too. So, it’s not something that’s unique to Portuguese. Aquela, in the end, refers to the line in the sentence, a nossa fila, fila is feminine and aquela which was way before, way at the beginning of a sentence was referring to that line. You can kind of imagine that Jaqueline was demonstrating, probably through pointing or looking or something in the direction of a line they’re going to - aquela é a nossa fila “that one is our line.” Our tip for this lesson has to do with the use of articles with geographic names.
Sílvia: Certain countries, states, and cities always have an article before their names, while others do not.
Braden: First, all countries (except Portugal) use an article before their names. For example…
Sílvia: o Brasil, os Estados Unidos, a Argentina, o Uruguay Portugal.
Braden: Second, some U.S. States use an article, others do not. Examples…
Sílvia: o Arizona, a Califórnia, o Colorado, o Havaí, o Texas, Utah, Idaho, Nova Iorque, a Carolina do Norte.
Braden: I’m not sure if it’s random, but almost to which State does what. Third kind of important thing we wanna talk about are cities. The two cities which you should be aware of that have required articles are…
Sílvia: o Rio de Janeiro
Braden: And…
Sílvia: o Porto.
Braden: So, if you have specific questions as to whether or not your city or your country needs an article, please post it on the website, put it on the comments on Facebook or send us an email and we will get back to you and tell you how it all works.

Outro

Braden: That just about does it for this lesson! Have a great week!
Sílvia: Tchau tchau!

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