Breakdown of À noite, o céu sobre a montanha fica cheio de estrelas.
Questions & Answers about À noite, o céu sobre a montanha fica cheio de estrelas.
The grave accent in à (called crase) shows that two a’s have merged:
- preposition a (to/at)
- feminine article a (the)
= à
So à noite literally is a + a noite → à noite, meaning at night / in the evening (as a general time expression).
Without the accent:
- a noite (no crase) would normally be read as just the night (subject or object), not as a time expression.
Yes, but they’re not always interchangeable:
À noite
- Very common, neutral.
- Means at night / in the evening in a general or habitual sense.
- À noite, eu estudo. – At night, I study.
De noite
- Also common in Brazil; a bit more casual/colloquial.
- Usually the same meaning as à noite (time of day).
- De noite, a cidade fica silenciosa. – At night, the city gets quiet.
Na noite (em + a noite)
- More specific: in the night / on that night / in the nightlife.
- Often refers to a particular night or to the nightlife scene.
- Na noite de sábado, choveu muito. – On Saturday night, it rained a lot.
- Ele trabalha na noite. – He works in nightlife (bars, clubs, etc.).
In your sentence, À noite is the most natural because it describes a regular situation that happens at night in general.
À noite is an adverbial phrase of time placed at the beginning of the sentence. In Portuguese, when you move a time or place expression to the front for emphasis or clarity, it’s very common (and usually recommended) to set it off with a comma:
- À noite, o céu sobre a montanha fica cheio de estrelas.
- De manhã, eu tomo café.
- Em casa, ele estuda melhor.
If the time expression comes after the verb, you normally don’t use a comma:
- O céu sobre a montanha fica cheio de estrelas à noite.
Key points about céu:
- Meaning: sky (also heaven in some contexts).
- Gender: masculine – o céu.
- Plural: os céus (used, for example, in religious or poetic contexts).
- Accent: éu has the acute accent (é), so it’s pronounced like “seh-oo” (two syllables: cé-u).
In your sentence, o céu is singular and masculine, which matters for adjective agreement (cheio, not cheia).
In this sentence, sobre means over / above in a spatial sense:
- o céu sobre a montanha – the sky over the mountain / above the mountain.
You could say:
- o céu em cima da montanha
but this sounds like the sky is sitting on top of the mountain as if it were touching it, which is odd. Em cima de is usually physically on top of something.
So:
- sobre = over/above (more natural and poetic here).
- em cima de = on top of (more physical, less natural for “sky over a mountain”).
Also note: sobre can also mean about in other contexts (e.g. um livro sobre música – a book about music), but here it’s clearly the spatial meaning.
Portuguese uses definite articles (o, a, os, as) more often than English, especially with singular countable nouns.
- a montanha = the mountain
- Refers to a specific mountain both speaker and listener can imagine (or a generic, representative mountain in a descriptive sentence).
If you say:
- uma montanha – a mountain / one mountain, more indefinite.
- Sobre uma montanha suggests just any mountain, less specific and slightly less natural in this poetic, descriptive line.
Leaving out the article (sobre montanha) doesn’t work here; countable singular nouns in Portuguese almost always need an article or determiner.
So sobre a montanha feels natural and specific: the sky over the mountain.
Ficar here has the sense of to become / to get / to end up:
- fica cheio de estrelas ≈ gets full of stars / becomes full of stars (at night).
Using é would describe a permanent characteristic:
- O céu sobre a montanha é cheio de estrelas.
- Suggests the sky is always full of stars, which doesn’t make much sense in time (day vs night).
By using ficar, the sentence highlights a change of state that happens at night:
- During the day: not full of stars.
- At night: fica (becomes) full of stars.
So ficar commonly expresses:
- change: ficar escuro – to get dark
- resulting state: ficar cansado – to end up tired
Fica is from the verb ficar (to become / to stay / to be located).
In your sentence, it is:
- 3rd person singular, present indicative
- ele/ela fica – he/she/it becomes / stays
- o céu fica – the sky becomes / gets
Some forms of ficar in the present indicative:
- eu fico
- tu ficas (used in Portugal; in Brazil mostly in very informal speech)
- ele/ela/você fica
- nós ficamos
- eles/elas/vocês ficam
So o céu … fica cheio de estrelas = the sky gets full of stars.
Adjectives in Portuguese agree in gender and number with the noun they describe.
- Noun: o céu – masculine, singular
- Adjective: cheio must also be masculine, singular
Forms of cheio (full):
- masculine singular: cheio – o céu cheio
- feminine singular: cheia – a casa cheia
- masculine plural: cheios – os céus cheios
- feminine plural: cheias – as casas cheias
If the subject were plural and masculine, you’d say:
- Os céus sobre as montanhas ficam cheios de estrelas.
With cheio, Portuguese almost always uses the preposition de, not com:
- cheio de água – full of water
- cheio de gente – full of people
- cheio de problemas – full of problems
- cheio de estrelas – full of stars
Cheio com is not idiomatic here.
So treat cheio de as a fixed pattern:
cheio de + [thing the container is full of].
Word order in Portuguese is relatively flexible, but not all orders sound equally natural.
Your original:
- À noite, o céu sobre a montanha fica cheio de estrelas.
- Focuses on the sky over the mountain as a unit.
Variant:
- À noite, o céu fica cheio de estrelas sobre a montanha.
- Can sound like the sky gets full of stars on the mountain, making sobre a montanha attach more to cheio de estrelas than to céu, which is awkward.
More natural alternatives:
- À noite, o céu sobre a montanha fica cheio de estrelas. (original, very natural)
- À noite, o céu fica cheio de estrelas sobre a montanha – possible, but a bit less clear.
- À noite, o céu da montanha fica cheio de estrelas. – “the mountain’s sky”, also natural.
So the original word order is the clearest and most idiomatic.
In Portuguese, the simple present often expresses:
- habitual or general facts, not just “right now”.
So:
- À noite, o céu sobre a montanha fica cheio de estrelas.
= Every night (in general), when it’s night, this is what happens.
This is like English:
- At night, the sky over the mountain gets full of stars.
(Not just tonight, but typically, whenever it’s night.)
If you wanted a single, specific future night, you might say:
- À noite, o céu sobre a montanha ficará cheio de estrelas. – Tonight, the sky over the mountain will become full of stars.