Breakdown of A professora deu um exemplo fácil e tirou todas as minhas dúvidas.
Questions & Answers about A professora deu um exemplo fácil e tirou todas as minhas dúvidas.
In Portuguese, nouns almost always need an article, even with professions when you’re talking about a specific person.
- A professora = the teacher (female teacher), a specific one.
- Without context, professora alone sounds incomplete here.
You normally omit the article with professions only in statements like:
- Sou professora. = I am a teacher.
- Ela é professora. = She is a teacher.
But when the profession is used as a regular noun, as in your sentence, you normally include the article: A professora…
Portuguese marks grammatical gender in many job titles.
- professor = male teacher
- professora = female teacher
Plural:
- professores = male teachers / mixed group
- professoras = only female teachers
So A professora clearly tells you the teacher is female.
Both deu and tirou are in the pretérito perfeito do indicativo, which corresponds to the simple past in English (“gave”, “removed/cleared”).
Infinitives:
- deu ← from dar = to give
- tirou ← from tirar = to take out, to remove
Rough conjugation (3rd person singular, “ele/ela/você”):
- dar → ele/ela/você deu = he/she/you (formal) gave
- tirar → ele/ela/você tirou = he/she/you took out / removed / cleared
So the sentence is clearly speaking about a finished action in the past.
Yes, you could, but the meaning changes slightly.
A professora deu um exemplo fácil…
→ simple completed past event: The teacher gave an easy example (once, as a complete action).A professora dava um exemplo fácil…
→ imperfect past (ongoing, repeated, background):
The teacher used to give an easy example… or The teacher was giving an easy example…
So deu is a specific, completed action; dava suggests habit or an ongoing past action.
The default position for adjectives in Portuguese is after the noun:
- um exemplo fácil = an easy example
- uma pergunta difícil = a difficult question
Adjectives can go before the noun, but that’s less common and often adds emphasis, style, or a slightly different nuance. For exemplo fácil, putting fácil before the noun (um fácil exemplo) would sound very unusual or poetic; in everyday speech you should keep it after: um exemplo fácil.
Um exemplo fácil most directly means an easy example—easy to understand.
Depending on context, it can also overlap with a simple example, in the sense of not complicated. If you want to stress “simple” more strongly, you could also hear:
- um exemplo simples = a simple example
But in many real-life contexts fácil and simples get close in meaning when talking about explanations and examples.
Literally, tirar dúvidas is “to take doubts out (away)”. Idiomatically, it means:
- to clarify doubts,
- to clear things up,
- to answer (someone’s) questions/confusion.
Common uses:
O professor tirou minhas dúvidas.
The teacher cleared up my doubts.Você tem alguma dúvida? Posso tirar.
Do you have any questions? I can clear them up.
So tirou todas as minhas dúvidas = she cleared up all my doubts / answered all my questions (about the topic).
Portuguese usually keeps the full structure:
- todas as minhas dúvidas
- todas = all
- as = the (feminine plural article)
- minhas = my (feminine plural)
- dúvidas = doubts/questions
This is the most natural and standard way to say all my doubts.
Other versions:
- todas dúvidas – incorrect / ungrammatical in standard Portuguese.
- todas minhas dúvidas – you might hear it informally, but it sounds incomplete or non‑standard; most teachers and grammar books prefer todas as minhas dúvidas.
In Brazilian Portuguese, the pattern is often:
- todas as minhas… / todos os meus…
- toda a minha… / todo o meu…
So: todas as minhas dúvidas is the safe, correct choice.
Yes, you can, and it’s grammatically correct:
- tirou todas as dúvidas = cleared up all the doubts
- tirou todas as minhas dúvidas = cleared up all my doubts
With minhas, you’re emphasising that these are your doubts. Without minhas, it could mean:
- everyone’s doubts in that context (the whole class), or
- the doubts that had been mentioned before, in general.
In many real situations, context still makes it obvious who the doubts belong to.
Yes:
pergunta = question (the thing you ask)
- Fiz uma pergunta. = I asked a question.
dúvida = doubt / something you’re unsure about / question in your mind
- Tenho uma dúvida. = I have a question / I’m not sure about something.
In class or study contexts, Brazilians very often say dúvida where English would just say “question”:
- Alguém tem alguma dúvida?
Literally: Does anyone have any doubt?
Natural translation: Does anyone have any questions?
So tirou todas as minhas dúvidas is very natural teacher–student language.
Yes, that is natural in Brazilian Portuguese:
- A professora me deu um exemplo fácil e tirou todas as minhas dúvidas.
= The teacher gave me an easy example and cleared up all my doubts.
In Brazilian Portuguese, unstressed object pronouns like me, te, nos, lhe usually go before the verb in everyday speech:
- Ela me deu um exemplo.
- Ela me tirou uma dúvida.
After the verb (e.g. deu‑me) is technically correct but sounds very formal or European; in Brazil it’s mostly written style or rare.
Approximate pronunciation (Brazilian Portuguese, using English-like hints):
- deu ≈ “day‑oo” but as a single syllable, like English “deh‑oo” gliding together: /dew/
- tirou ≈ “chee‑ROH” (rhyming with “she‑ROW”), stress on -rou: /tʃiˈɾow/
- dúvidas ≈ DOO‑vee‑dahs, stress on the DOO: /ˈdu.vʝi.das/ or /ˈdu.vi.das/
The acute accent in dúvidas:
- marks the stressed syllable (dú‑vi‑das) and
- indicates the vowel quality (an open u sound that must be pronounced clearly).
Without the accent (duvidas), the stress would fall on vi by default (du‑VI‑das), and the word would be a different form of the verb duvidar (e.g. you doubt / he doubts), not the noun “doubts”.