Há uma ferida pequena no meu dedo, então vou colocar um curativo.

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Breakdown of Há uma ferida pequena no meu dedo, então vou colocar um curativo.

• um: a
• uma: a
• meu: my

Questions & Answers about Há uma ferida pequena no meu dedo, então vou colocar um curativo.

Why does the sentence start with há?

Há comes from the verb haver and here it means there is.

So:

Há uma ferida pequena = There is a small wound

A few useful points:

• há is very common in written and neutral Portuguese
• in everyday Brazilian speech, many people would also say tem uma ferida pequena
• the h is silent, so há sounds like a

In this sentence, há does not mean has or have in the English sense.

Why is it uma ferida pequena instead of uma pequena ferida?

In Portuguese, adjectives often come after the noun.

So the most neutral order is:

• ferida pequena = small wound

You can also say pequena ferida, but that usually sounds:

• more literary
• more emphatic
• less conversational in this context

For a normal everyday sentence, uma ferida pequena sounds very natural.

What exactly does ferida mean here? Could I also say corte or machucado?