Word order can important be
I’m no language expert (in fact I’m closer to the ‘Clueless’ end of the linguistic spectrum), but as far as I know, the Romance languages (such as Portuguese) tend to use a different word order to Germanic languages (such as English) when combining nouns and adjectives.
For example, in English we would say “the red car”, whereas in Portuguese they say “o carro vermelho“. In German: “das rote auto”; in French: “le voiture rouge“.
This may sound like the kind of thing that trips you up and leads to mistakes, but personally I found that I adjusted quite quickly to switching the word order. It probably helped that before Portuguese, I had spent some time learning Spanish, and during my school years (several æons ago) I occasionally attended French classes…
Sound like Yoda you will. Well, kinda… Apparently academic syntacticians have analysed Yoda’s speech and found what they describe as “object-subject-verb” word order. Nice way to justify your research grant guys… Source
However it isn’t only nouns and adjectives that change places. And depending on what you’re trying to say, sometimes it’s better to use the Germanic order!
Olha só
Wow – if I had a centavo for every time I heard this phrase, I’d be a rich man! “Olha” means “look” and “só” means “only” or “just”, so a literal translation could be “look only”, but it makes more sense if you change the order to make it “just look”. What it really means is “just listen“! This phrase is used as a kind of forceful interjection, when the speaker feels that the other person in the conversation could save themselves a lot of time and trouble if they shut up and listened to the speaker’s words of wisdom. Interestingly I hear this phrase used by women more than men (sorry for the gender stereotyping, but it’s true).
Mais uma
The weather is hot, the beer is icy cold and flowing as freely as the conversation. The waiter collects the bottle you and your friend have just finished and asks if you’d like one more. Except he doesn’t say “one more”, he says “more one?”: “mais uma?”. As the customer, you can turn the exact same phrase (minus the question mark) into a request.
-Mais uma, amigo? -Por que não!
Uma festa grande or Uma grande festa?
To add an extra layer of complexity, there are times when you can abandon the general rule of putting noun before adjective and use the Germanic order instead.
“Uma festa grande” (the standard Portuguese order) could be used to objectively describe a party (festa) as being large. But “Uma grande festa” would be a way of saying that it was a great party!
Mais uma cerveja? É uma grande festa, né?
Source
I found this to be very handy: http://hackingportuguese.com/2012/07/a-linguistic-dissection/ .
Oh, since you studied Spanish before Portuguese I am guessing that you spent alot of time in gas stations asking bewildered employees to get a you beer as you sat in front of the borracharia.
Great link! See, that’s the kind of thing I would write if I knew what the hell I was talking about. Where I say “you change the order of the words”, Lauren (that post’s author) says “syntactic inversion” – very cool :)
I also particularly liked this sentence: “This is the sort of thing that is probably best learned by osmosis, by just listening to and reading a lot of Portuguese, rather than trying to break it down into rules and study it grammatically.” – I was really pleased to read that, because I’ve always been an osmosis kinda learner. I try to let me subconscious do all the hard work so my conscious mind can continue to wonder how long it is til lunch…
“I was really pleased to read that, because I’ve always been an osmosis kinda learner. I try to let me subconscious do all the hard work so my conscious mind can continue to wonder how long it is til lunch…”
Funny thing is that I do the same. And when lunch time arrives and I find myself at the Kilo, trying to figure out what to eat, my mind then shifts back to its previous setting, as I absorb everything that appears in front of me.
I tell people it is not gluttony; but osmosis. Good to finally encounter someone that understands.
Word is order important very!
The force is strong with this one… ;)
Hahaha I have a word order activity that I made for my students, and I have a picture of Yoda on it. Only one student ever got it. One!!
Ha ha ha! Pearls before swine, Danielle! ;)
I actually mess this up sometimes while writing in ENGLISH! Crazy man. I end up looking at the sentence and reminding myself that I am writing in English as an American, not a Brazilian ;)
Ha ha! This I haven’t started doing yet…oh wait… ;)
I’ve also started making spelling mistakes in English! I keep dropping out double letters, like 2 “M”s in commercial – comercial looks fine to me now! Argh!