Breakdown of Hoje o parque está vazio, mas ontem estava cheio de crianças.
Questions & Answers about Hoje o parque está vazio, mas ontem estava cheio de crianças.
In Portuguese, estar is used for temporary states and conditions, while ser is used for more permanent or defining characteristics.
- O parque está vazio = The park is empty right now (temporary situation).
- O parque é vazio would sound like “The park is (inherently) empty / hardly ever has people,” a more permanent trait, and would be unusual here.
So está vazio fits because you’re describing how the park is today, not what it is like in general.
Portuguese uses the imperfect (estava) to describe past situations that are seen as background, ongoing, or descriptive, especially with time expressions like ontem, naquele dia, etc.
- Ontem estava cheio de crianças = “Yesterday it was (generally) full of children” – a description of the situation during that time.
- Ontem foi cheio de crianças sounds odd; foi (preterite) with cheio doesn’t work well here. You’d use foi cheio more in figurative expressions like Foi um dia cheio (“It was a busy/full day”).
So estava is the natural choice for “was (in that state)” in this context.
Portuguese is a pro-drop language, which means subject pronouns (like ele, ela) are often omitted when the subject is clear from context.
In Hoje o parque está vazio, mas ontem estava cheio de crianças, the subject o parque is clearly the same for both verbs:
- (O parque) está vazio, mas (o parque) estava cheio…
You can say mas ontem ele estava cheio de crianças, and it’s correct, but in everyday speech it’s very natural to drop ele when it’s obvious who you’re talking about.
Yes. Both are correct:
- Hoje o parque está vazio.
- O parque está vazio hoje.
Putting hoje at the beginning makes it more prominent, like you’re emphasizing today as a contrast to other times (which fits well with mas ontem...). Saying O parque está vazio hoje is more neutral and also very common.
With cheio, Portuguese normally uses the preposition de to say “full of [something]”:
- cheio de crianças = full of children
- cheio de gente = full of people
- cheio de água = full of water
Cheio com crianças is not idiomatic in this sense and would sound wrong to native speakers. The fixed pattern is cheio de + noun.
Because “full of children” naturally suggests more than one child, Portuguese uses the plural crianças.
- cheio de criança (singular) is possible in some regions/contexts and can mean “full of kids,” but standard, neutral Portuguese strongly prefers the plural here: cheio de crianças.
- Using the plural also matches English “children,” which is inherently plural.
Cheio das crianças would usually refer to specific children that you and your listener already know, something like “full of the kids” (those particular ones).
Cheio de crianças is indefinite: it just means “full of children” in general, not a specific group already mentioned. That’s exactly what you usually want in this sentence.
So:
- cheio de crianças = full of children (in general).
- cheio das crianças = full of the children (some known or specified group).
The adjectives vazio and cheio agree with the subject, not with the object of de.
- Subject: o parque (masculine, singular).
- So: o parque está vazio (masc. sing.), o parque estava cheio (masc. sing.).
The phrase de crianças is just a complement explaining what it’s full of; adjectives don’t agree with that noun. If the subject changed, the adjective would change:
- A praça está vazia. (square – feminine singular)
- Os parques estão vazios. (parks – masc. plural)
- As praças estavam cheias. (squares – fem. plural)
Yes, that’s also correct:
- Hoje o parque está vazio, mas ontem estava cheio de crianças.
- Hoje o parque está vazio, mas estava cheio de crianças ontem.
Both are fine. Putting ontem earlier, close to mas, helps emphasize the time contrast between hoje and ontem, which is why the original word order feels especially natural here.
- Hoje = “today,” referring to the whole day (or at least today as a time period).
- Agora = “now,” referring to this moment.
In this sentence, hoje is better because it contrasts with ontem (yesterday) – both are days. Agora o parque está vazio, mas ontem estava cheio… is also grammatically correct, but the contrast “now vs. yesterday” is slightly less balanced than “today vs. yesterday.”
In Portuguese, mas (“but”) usually introduces a contrasting clause, and it is normally preceded by a comma:
- Hoje o parque está vazio, mas ontem estava cheio de crianças.
This comma marks a pause and shows the contrast between the two statements. Writing it without a comma (Hoje o parque está vazio mas ontem...) is possible in very informal contexts, but the comma is the standard, correct punctuation.
Approximate Brazilian Portuguese pronunciations (stress in bold):
- ontem → ÕN-teng
- õ like nasal “on” in French bon; final -em sounds like “eng.”
- parque → PAR-kee
- r is a guttural “h” or soft “r” depending on region; final -que like “kee.”
- vazio → va-ZEE-oo
- z like English “z”; final -io is like “ee-oo” blended.
- crianças → kree-AN-sas (nasal an)
- r lightly tapped or guttural depending on accent; ç sounds like English “s.”
These are approximations; real pronunciation varies a bit by region, but this is standard Brazilian usage.
Yes, that sentence is correct, and the meaning is essentially the same.
Adding ele:
- Hoje o parque está vazio, mas ontem ele estava cheio de crianças.
can sound slightly more “spelled out” or emphatic, but it doesn’t change the basic meaning. Most of the time, native speakers are comfortable dropping ele when the subject is obvious, as in the original sentence.