A garçonete vai servir a sobremesa quando vocês terminarem o café.

the coffee

Breakdown of A garçonete vai servir a sobremesa quando vocês terminarem o café.

• ir: to go (future auxiliary)
• vocês: you (plural)
• quando: when

Questions & Answers about A garçonete vai servir a sobremesa quando vocês terminarem o café.

Why does the sentence use vai servir instead of a single future form?

Vai servir is the very common ir + infinitive future in Brazilian Portuguese. It works like is going to serve or simply will serve in English.

In everyday Brazilian Portuguese, this structure is often more natural than the simple future form servirá.

So:

• A garçonete vai servir... = very common in speech
• A garçonete servirá... = correct, but more formal or less conversational

Why is terminarem used after quando?

Because the sentence is talking about something that will happen in the future.

After quando, Portuguese often uses the future subjunctive when the action has not happened yet:

• quando vocês terminarem o café = when you finish the coffee / when you have finished the coffee

If you used quando vocês terminam, it would usually sound more like a habitual or general situation, depending on context.

So the idea is:

• future event → quando vocês terminarem
• habitual/repeated event → often quando vocês terminam

What exactly is terminarem?