Portuguese/Contents/L1/Lesson Three - What Are You Going To Do?

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In this dialogue João and Ricardo are talking about what they are going to do. What day? Well, let's have a look at the days of the week before we go any further.

Note: If it's clear that you are talking about days of the week, you don't actually have to say 'feira'.

So Ricardo says

Ricardo: Olá. O que vai fazer no sábado?

Olá of course means 'hello'.

O que você vai fazer (no sábado) ?

This is a very useful phrase that basically means 'What are you going to do (on Saturday)?' You can of course replace the 'sábado' with whichever day you want to use. 'No' is a contraction of 'em' (in) and 'o' ('the', masculine). Weekend days are masculine, whereas week days are feminine, so you'll say 'no domingo' (on Sunday) but 'na segunda(-feira)' (on Monday).

The answer will be something along the lines of:

(Eu) vou (fazer, nadar, comer)

This means 'I am going'. 'Vou' is one part of the word 'ir' which means 'to go' in Portuguese. Just like in English, we say what we will do by saying 'going to', in Portuguese we can use the verb 'ir' (which, as a verb, changes for each person that it refers to, like 'estar' and 'ser') to talk about the future. First we need to look at how to conjugate (change for each person) the verb 'ir'. Remember the tree analogy? 'Ir' is called the infinitive - the trunk - of the verb. We can't just simply use it, we have to change it.

IR - Present Indicative Tense Eu vou - I go Tu vais - You (familiar) go Você vai - You (informal) go Ele/Ela vai  - He/She goes Nós vamos - We go Vocês vão - You (plural) go Eles/Elas vão - They (group of males or mixed) / They (group of females) go

You need to memorize the conjugations for this verb because it is IRREGULAR - it has no pattern to it.

You may also recognize a word from the dialogue. Ricardo asked João,

Como vai? - How are you doing (literally "How are you going?")

This is another way to ask how someone is. Do you remember Como está? from the first lesson? Remember that como means "how". So como vai? literally means "How are you going?". It can be replied to exactly like "Como está".

Now that we know how this verb conjugates for every person, we can use it to say what someone is going to do.

Of course you can use any of the conjugations we have learned, not just eu vou and N&oacute;s vamos.

Try out the following exercise

The infinitive forms of verbs - like gostar, ser and ir - are used quite a bit in Portuguese - but usually only when there is another verb before them. For instance, we know that we use the infinitive after the verb 'ir'. We also know how to say "I like something". But how do we say "I like to do something"? This is nearly as simple as saying "I am going to do something". Except here we use the verb gostar (remember, this means to like) instead of ir - and we slip the word de in as well.

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