Portuguese/Contents/L1/Lesson Four - Where Do You Come From?

Return to Portuguese – Return to Contents – Go to Lesson Five

This time Ricardo and João are talking about where they live, and what nationality they are.

De onde é você? - Where are you from?

By now you may have picked up that, like in a couple of other European languages, the word for "of" or "from" is de. The word onde means "where". To avoid ambiguity, in this case você is used most of the time. And finally, you should remember é - it means "he/she/it is" or "you are" (when using você) - as part of the verb ser.

João responds thus:

Sou de Lisboa - I am from Lisbon.

Can you remember what sou means? It means "I am" (when using ser as the verb). So we have "I am from...". Of course, you can put anything after the "de".

If you were looking closely at the dialogue, you may have spotted a way to tell someone where you come from in a different way. Instead of saying, "I am from France" - Sou de França - you can say "I am French".

In Portuguese, this is done as in English - by using the verb "ser" and an adjective, like "French" or "Australian". Why do we use ser? Because your nationality is a permanent feature of you. It is WHAT you are, rather than HOW you are at a particular moment.

However first we need to have a look at the different nationalities.

Some examples?

As pointed out above, something strange goes on when we talk about more than one homem (man). Instead of homems we get homeNs (men).

Return to Portuguese – Return to Contents – Go to Lesson Five

de:Portugiesisch: Lektionen: Woher kommst Du?