Ontem meu cunhado trouxe a família para jantar, e minha cunhada fez a sobremesa.

They mean brother-in-law and sister-in-law.

• cunhado = brother-in-law
• cunhada = sister-in-law

Portuguese nouns usually have grammatical gender, so the ending often changes:

• -o often marks a masculine form
• -a often marks a feminine form

So here:

• meu cunhado = my brother-in-law
• minha cunhada = my sister-in-law

Both meu and minha mean my, but they must agree with the gender of the noun that comes after them.

• meu
  • masculine singular noun
• minha
  • feminine singular noun

So:

• meu cunhado because cunhado is masculine
• minha cunhada because cunhada is feminine

The speaker’s gender does not matter here. A man or a woman would both say meu cunhado and minha cunhada.

They are in the preterite, the main past tense used for completed actions.

That fits this sentence because the action happened yesterday and is seen as finished:

• Ontem = yesterday
• trouxe = brought
• fez = made / prepared

So the sentence describes two completed events in the past.

Because both verbs are irregular in the preterite.

Their infinitives are:

• trazer = to bring
• fazer = to do / to make

But in the preterite, some forms change a lot:

• eu trouxe / ele trouxe
• eu fiz / ele fez

In this sentence:

• meu cunhado trouxe = my brother-in-law brought
• minha cunhada fez = my sister-in-law made

A useful detail: trouxe can mean I brought or he/she brought, and fez can mean I made/did or he/she made/did. The subject tells you which one it is.

Here, jantar is a verb in the infinitive.

• para jantar = to have dinner / for dinner

Portuguese can also use jantar as a noun when it has an article:

• o jantar = dinner

So compare:

• para jantar = to have dinner
• o jantar = the dinner / dinner

In this sentence, because it comes after para and has no article, it is understood as a verb.

It expresses purpose: in order to have dinner.

So:

• trouxe a família para jantar = brought the family over to have dinner

In natural English, that might be translated as:

• brought the family for dinner
• brought the family over for dinner
• brought the family to dinner

All of those capture the same basic idea.

That a is the definite article meaning the.

So:

• a família = the family
• a sobremesa = the dessert

Portuguese often uses definite articles in places where English might use the, his/her, or sometimes no article at all depending on context.

In this sentence:

• a família probably means a specific family already understood from context, very likely the brother-in-law’s family
• a sobremesa means the dessert, meaning the dessert for that meal

If you wanted to make family more explicit, you could say:

• a família dele = his family

In Brazilian Portuguese, family words with possessives can appear with or without the definite article.

So all of these are possible:

• meu cunhado
• o meu cunhado
• minha cunhada
• a minha cunhada

In Brazil, using the article is very common in speech, but omitting it is also correct and often feels a bit more neutral or written.

So this sentence is perfectly natural as written.

It is grammatically singular, but it refers to a group.

Just like English family, Portuguese família is a collective noun:

• a família = the family

That usually means several people considered as one unit.

So trouxe a família means he brought the family members together, not just one person.

Yes. Portuguese word order is fairly flexible with time expressions like ontem.

The original sentence starts with it:

• Ontem meu cunhado trouxe a família para jantar...

But you could also say:

• Meu cunhado trouxe a família para jantar ontem...
• Meu cunhado ontem trouxe a família para jantar...

The first version, with ontem at the beginning, is very natural because it sets the time right away.

Yes. In Brazilian Portuguese, pra is a very common spoken contraction of para.

So:

• para jantar = more neutral / standard writing
• pra jantar = very common in conversation

Both are natural in Brazil. In careful writing, para is usually preferred.

Not in this sentence, if you want to keep the meaning clear.

If you said:

• Ontem meu cunhado trouxe a família para jantar, e fez a sobremesa

that would sound like my brother-in-law did both actions, because the second verb would normally still refer back to the first subject.

Since the subject changes from meu cunhado to minha cunhada, Portuguese normally states the new subject:

• ..., e minha cunhada fez a sobremesa.

That makes it clear that she made the dessert.

It means she made or prepared the dessert.

• fazer a sobremesa = to make/prepare the dessert

If you wanted to say she brought the dessert, you would normally use a form of trazer instead:

• minha cunhada trouxe a sobremesa = my sister-in-law brought the dessert

So fez focuses on preparation, not transport.