A limonada gelada acaba rápido; quase não sobra para o café da manhã.

The cold lemonade runs out quickly; there is almost none left for breakfast.

Breakdown of A limonada gelada acaba rápido; quase não sobra para o café da manhã.

• não: not
• rápido: fast
• para: for
• quase: almost
• a limonada: the lemonade
• gelado: cold
• acabar: to run out
• sobrar: to remain
• o café da manhã: the breakfast

Questions & Answers about A limonada gelada acaba rápido; quase não sobra para o café da manhã.

Why is there a definite article in a limonada gelada? English often says “cold lemonade” without “the.”

Portuguese normally uses definite articles before nouns when you’re speaking generally or about something specific.

• limonada is feminine, so you use a (feminine singular).
• Saying a limonada gelada can mean “the cold lemonade” (the one we were drinking) or “cold lemonade in general.”
  You could drop the article (“Limonada gelada acaba rápido”), but including it is more natural in many contexts.

Why is the adjective gelada placed after limonada? In English we say “cold lemonade,” adjective first.

In Portuguese, adjectives normally follow the nouns they describe. So you say limonada gelada instead of gelada limonada. Placing an adjective before the noun often adds emphasis or a poetic tone, but the standard order is noun + adjective.

What does acaba rápido mean here? Shouldn’t it be past tense if we already finished the lemonade?

Here acabar means “to run out” or “to finish.”

• acaba rápido is present‐tense, meaning “runs out quickly” (habitually or generally).
• If you wanted past tense (“it ran out quickly [yesterday]”), you’d say acabou rápido.

Why is there a semicolon (;) between acaba rápido and quase não sobra? Can’t you use a comma or a period?

A semicolon links two related independent clauses more closely than a period, but more loosely than a comma. It shows that these ideas belong together:

• Clause 1: A limonada gelada acaba rápido
• Clause 2: quase não sobra para o café da manhã
  You could replace the semicolon with a period or even a comma plus conjunction, but a semicolon is stylistically neat here.

What does quase não sobra mean? Why not “não sobra quase nada”?

Both mean roughly “almost nothing is left.” The structure quase não + verb emphasizes that the verb hardly happens (“hardly anything remains”).

• quase não sobra = “hardly remains”
• não sobra quase nada = “doesn’t leave almost anything”
  They’re interchangeable, but quase não sobra is very common in spoken Brazilian Portuguese.

Why is para used in para o café da manhã instead of no?

• para o café da manhã = “for breakfast” (purpose/intended use)
• no café da manhã = “at breakfast” (time when something happens)
  Here you mean “there isn’t much left to have for breakfast,” so you use para to indicate purpose.

In café da manhã, why is it da and not de? What does café da manhã literally mean?

• da is the contraction of de + a.
• café da manhã literally means “coffee of the morning,” but idiomatically it means breakfast.
  If you said café de manhã without the article, it would usually mean “coffee in the morning” (the drink you have). The fixed phrase for “breakfast” is café da manhã.