Sentence Structure
Sentence Structure
Good news for English speakers: Portuguese word order stays close to English's default pattern. The main adjustment is where adjectives go, not how the sentence is built.
Grammar Comparison
Grammar Comparison
Subject-Verb-Object stays put — no verb-second rule
Eu como pizza hoje. / Hoje eu como pizza. (I eat pizza today. / Today I eat pizza.)
I eat pizza today. / Today I eat pizza.
Subject-verb-object order stays intact no matter what you put first — Portuguese never flips the subject and verb just because a time phrase or other element starts the sentence. Hoje eu como pizza keeps eu (I) directly before the verb, exactly like the English translation "Today I eat pizza".
Yes/no questions: just add a question mark (and rising intonation)
Tu comes pizza? (Do you eat pizza?) — identical word order to the statement "Tu comes pizza."
Do you eat pizza?
English needs a helper verb ("do/does") to ask a yes/no question. Portuguese doesn't: spoken, the words stay in exactly the same order as a statement, and only your intonation rises at the end to signal a question. In writing, only the question mark shows it's a question at all — arguably the simplest question-formation rule you'll meet at this level.
Negation: não goes directly before the verb
Eu não como pizza. (I don't eat pizza.)
I don't eat pizza.
English needs "do" to build a negative ("I don't eat", not "I eat not"). Portuguese just places não immediately before the verb, with nothing else needed: eu não como, literally "I not eat". No helper verb, no conjugation changes — one of the simplest negation patterns you'll find at this level.
Adjectives usually follow the noun
o carro vermelho (the red car) — literally "the car red"
the red car
English always puts descriptive adjectives before the noun. Portuguese usually puts them after: o carro vermelho, not vermelho carro. A handful of very common adjectives (like grande/big or bom/good) can go before the noun for emphasis or a slightly different nuance, but as a default rule for A1, expect the adjective to come second.
Vocabulary
Vocabulary
- English
- pizza
- English
- today
- English
- red
- English
- car
- English
- Do you eat pizza?
- English
- I don't eat pizza.