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January 26

Portuguese question

I have a question about Portuguese. It's one of the weakest languages I can say I understand. I took an introductory Portuguese course at university once but have forgotten quite a bit of it. It's a bit similar to French though, which I also studied one introductory course at university. At school I studied Latin for six years, but because I have never had the chance to actually use it, I don't remember much of it. But it has helped me understand other Romance languages. Now, on to my question.

There is a samba school Império do Papagaio in Helsinki and another samba school União da Roseira in Tampere. Why is it Império do Papagaio but União da Roseira? Does it have something to do with grammatical gender? Is there a difference here between original Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese? JIP | Talk 20:09, 26 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The forms of the Portuguese definite article (the equivalent of English the or German der/die/das) are as follows:

o (masculine singular)
a (feminine singular)
os (masculine plural)
as (feminine plural)

The Portuguese definite article can appear before certain proper names, e.g. o Brasil (lit. "the Brazil"), a Maria (lit. "the Mary").

Certain prepositions, when immediately followed by a definite article, form a contraction with it. In the case of the preposition de ("of"), the contractions are:

de + o → do
de + a → da
de + os → dos
de + as → das

That's something that is also seen in other Romance languages, as well as in German: in + dem → im, für + das → fürs, and so on. I'm drawing parallels with German because I'm aware you know German much better than Portuguese.

Evidently, Papagaio is masculine and Roseira is feminine, so we have o Papagaio and do Papagaio, but a Roseira and da Roseira.

So, basically, yes, it does have to do with grammatical gender, and no, it's not an issue related to the differences between European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese. --Theurgist (talk) 22:41, 26 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]