Word
Minha filha gosta de matemática, mas meu filho prefere história.
Meaning
My daughter likes math, but my son prefers history.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Lesson
Breakdown of Minha filha gosta de matemática, mas meu filho prefere história.
gostar de
to like
meu
my
minha
my
mas
but
Questions & Answers about Minha filha gosta de matemática, mas meu filho prefere história.
Why is it minha filha but meu filho?
Because meu / minha must agree with the noun that follows.
- filha is feminine, so you use minha
- filho is masculine, so you use meu
This is the same pattern you see with many Portuguese adjectives and possessives:
- meu carro
- minha casa
- meu amigo
- minha amiga
What is the difference between filha and filho?
They mean the same basic family relationship, but with different gender:
- filha = daughter
- filho = son
This is a very common masculine/feminine pair in Portuguese:
- o filho
- a filha
Notice that many masculine nouns end in -o and many feminine nouns end in -a, although this is a pattern, not a rule that works 100% of the time.
Why does Portuguese say gosta de instead of just gosta?
Because the verb gostar normally requires the preposition de.
So Portuguese says:
- gostar de matemática
- gostar de música
- gostar de café
A native English speaker often wants to say something like gosta matemática, but that is not correct. With gostar, you usually need de.