A criança chegou com a boca suja de chocolate.

Because criança is a grammatically feminine noun in Portuguese, so it normally takes a.

That does not mean the child must be a girl. In Portuguese, grammatical gender and real-life gender do not always match. So:

• a criança = the child
• it can refer to a boy or a girl

If you want to make the child’s sex clear, Portuguese often does it somewhere else in the sentence, not by changing criança to masculine.

Yes. Criança is a common noun used for any child, regardless of sex.

For example:

• A criança chegou. = The child arrived.
• This could mean either the boy arrived or the girl arrived, depending on context.

If you need to be specific, you could say:

• o menino = the boy
• a menina = the girl

But a criança is neutral in meaning even though it is grammatically feminine.

Chegou is the third-person singular form of the verb chegar in the pretérito perfeito (simple past).

It matches a criança, which is singular:

• eu cheguei = I arrived
• você / ele / ela / a criança chegou = you / he / she / the child arrived

So A criança chegou means The child arrived or The child came.

This tense is used because the sentence describes a completed event: the child arrived, and that happened at a specific moment.

Portuguese often uses the definite article with body parts, especially in expressions like this.

So:

• com a boca suja = with the mouth dirty / with a dirty mouth

In natural English, we usually say with a dirty mouth or with their mouth dirty, but Portuguese commonly prefers the article with body parts.

This is very normal in Brazilian Portuguese:

• com a mão suja = with a dirty hand
• com o rosto vermelho = with a red face
• com os olhos fechados = with the eyes closed

Because suja agrees with boca, and boca is a feminine singular noun.

In Portuguese, adjectives usually agree in gender and number with the noun they describe:

• boca suja = dirty mouth
• rosto sujo = dirty face
• mãos sujas = dirty hands

Here the adjective is describing boca, not criança. That is why it is feminine singular:

• a boca → suja

Because the phrase is structured like this:

• com a boca suja de chocolate

The adjective suja is directly attached to boca, so it describes the mouth, not the child.

That means:

• boca = feminine singular
• therefore suja = feminine singular

If you wanted the adjective to describe the child instead, you would build the sentence differently, for example:

• A criança chegou suja de chocolate. = The child arrived covered/dirty with chocolate.

That version is also possible, but it shifts the focus from the mouth to the child as a whole.

In this sentence, sujo/suja de is a very common pattern meaning dirty with, stained with, or smeared with something.

So:

• suja de chocolate = dirty with chocolate
• sujo de lama = dirty with mud
• suja de tinta = stained with paint

You may sometimes hear com chocolate, but that would usually sound more like with chocolate on it rather than the fixed idea of being dirtied or stained by chocolate.

Here, suja de chocolate is the most natural choice.

Yes, and it is grammatical, but it means something slightly different.

• A criança chegou com a boca suja de chocolate.

  • Focuses specifically on the mouth
  • The child arrived with a mouth dirty with chocolate

• A criança chegou suja de chocolate.

  • Describes the child overall
  • The child arrived dirty/smeared with chocolate

So both are possible, but the original sentence is more specific.

Because Portuguese often avoids possessives when the owner is already obvious, especially with body parts.

Since the sentence is about the child, it is already clear whose mouth is being described. So a boca sounds natural.

Compare:

• A criança chegou com a boca suja. = The child arrived with a dirty mouth.
• A criança chegou com sua boca suja. = grammatical, but usually less natural here

Brazilian Portuguese often prefers the article in these cases rather than a possessive.

Here com means with, but not in the sense of carrying something. It describes the condition or appearance in which the child arrived.

So:

• chegou com a boca suja de chocolate = arrived with a chocolate-dirty mouth

This kind of com is very common for describing accompanying physical details or states:

• Ela chegou com os cabelos molhados. = She arrived with wet hair.
• Ele saiu com as mãos cheias de tinta. = He left with his hands full of paint.

Usually chegar is best translated as to arrive, but in some contexts English may naturally use came.

So this sentence could be understood as:

• The child arrived with a mouth dirty with chocolate.
• or more natural English: The child came with chocolate all around their mouth.

In Portuguese, though, the core meaning of chegar is to arrive.

The structure is:

• A criança = subject
• chegou = verb
• com a boca suja de chocolate = prepositional phrase describing the child’s condition on arrival

So the sentence follows a very normal Portuguese order:

Subject + verb + complement

You could move parts around for emphasis in some contexts, but the original order is the most neutral and natural one.

Criança is pronounced roughly like cree-AHN-sa in Brazilian Portuguese, with the stress on the second syllable:

• cri-AN-ça

A few pronunciation notes:

• cri sounds like cree
• an is nasalized, not a plain English an
• ça sounds like sa

So the final ç gives an s sound:

• criança → cree-AHN-sa

In Brazilian Portuguese, chegou is pronounced roughly like sheh-GOH.

A few details:

• ch in Portuguese usually sounds like sh
• the stress is on the last syllable: che-GOU
• the ending -ou often sounds like a strong oh in normal Brazilian speech

So:

• chegou ≈ sheh-GOH

By itself, it does not specify the amount exactly. It simply says the mouth was dirty from chocolate.

Depending on context, that could mean:

• a little chocolate around the lips
• a messy chocolate-smeared mouth
• visible chocolate stains

If you wanted to be more specific, Portuguese could add other words:

• um pouco suja de chocolate = a little dirty with chocolate
• toda suja de chocolate = all dirty with chocolate
• cheia de chocolate = full of chocolate / covered with chocolate

So the original sentence leaves the degree open.