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Questions & Answers about Tu vais melhorar com o tempo.
What is the role of tu in this sentence?
Tu is the informal, second-person singular subject pronoun used in European Portuguese. It corresponds to the English “you” in casual contexts and is typically used with friends, family, or people you know well, as opposed to the more formal alternative.
Why is vais used here, and what does its form indicate about the sentence's future meaning?
Vais is the second-person singular present tense form of the irregular verb ir (to go). In this sentence, it functions as an auxiliary in the periphrastic future construction (i.e., ir + infinitive), indicating that the action of improving will happen in the future.
How does the periphrastic future construction (using ir + infinitive) work in Portuguese?
In Portuguese, especially in spoken and informal language, the future is often expressed by combining the present tense of ir with an infinitive verb. In tu vais melhorar com o tempo, vais (from ir) paired with the infinitive melhorar effectively means “you are going to get better,” emphasizing a near-future action.
What is the meaning of melhorar, and why is it used in its base (infinitive) form here?
Melhorar means “to improve” or “to get better.” In this construction, the infinitive form is used after ir to denote the action that will occur in the future. This is standard in the periphrastic future, where the main action remains in its base form.
What does the phrase com o tempo add to the overall meaning of the sentence?
Com o tempo translates to “with time” or “over time.” It implies that the process of getting better is gradual, emphasizing that improvement happens slowly and naturally as time passes.