Por favor, espere na padaria até encontrarmos as chaves perdidas.

we

Breakdown of Por favor, espere na padaria até encontrarmos as chaves perdidas.

• a padaria: the bakery
• esperar: to wait
• por favor: please
• até: until
• encontrar: to find
• chave: key
• perdido: lost

Questions & Answers about Por favor, espere na padaria até encontrarmos as chaves perdidas.

Why does the sentence use espere instead of espera?

In Brazilian Portuguese, espere is the formal or polite imperative form when addressing someone as você. Using espera would typically be the imperative form for tu. In many parts of Brazil, você is the default pronoun, so espere is considered more appropriate or polite.

Why do we say na padaria instead of em padaria?

The preposition em often contracts with the definite article (o, a, os, as) to form no, na, nos, nas. Since padaria is a feminine noun (and requires the article a), you get na padaria. You would hear em padaria only if you intentionally omit the article, which is much less common in this context.

Why is até encontrarmos used here?

In Portuguese, after the conjunction até (until), we usually use the future subjunctive (which can look like the personal infinitive). It means you will wait until the action (finding the lost keys) happens in the future. So encontrarmos is the future subjunctive form of encontrar for nós.

What role does por favor play at the beginning of the sentence?

Por favor is simply a polite way to introduce a request. You can place por favor at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end, but starting the sentence with it often emphasizes politeness right away.

Why is it as chaves perdidas (feminine plural) rather than os chaves perdidos?

In Portuguese, chave (key) is a feminine noun. So in the plural, it becomes as chaves (feminine plural), and any adjective describing it (in this case, perdidas) must agree in gender and number (feminine plural).