Breakdown of Ontem, o alarme não tocou e perdemos os primeiros segundos da aula.
de
of
e
and
ontem
yesterday
não
not
tocar
to ring
primeiro
first
a aula
the class
perder
to miss
o alarme
the alarm
os segundos
the seconds
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Questions & Answers about Ontem, o alarme não tocou e perdemos os primeiros segundos da aula.
Why is ontem placed at the beginning of the sentence and followed by a comma?
Putting ontem (“yesterday”) at the start is a way to highlight the time frame. Portuguese allows adverbs of time to appear at the front for emphasis or style. The comma after ontem isn’t mandatory, but it signals a slight pause and makes the sentence easier to read. You could also write it without a comma:
Ontem o alarme não tocou e perdemos os primeiros segundos da aula.
Why does the sentence use o alarme instead of um alarme?
Using the definite article o (“the”) suggests you’re referring to a specific alarm that both speaker and listener know about—probably the school’s alarm. If you said um alarme, it would sound like you introduced a new, unspecified alarm into the conversation.
In English we say “the alarm didn’t go off.” Why does Portuguese use tocar and não tocou?
Portuguese uses tocar (literally “to play” or “to ring”) for alarms, bells and phone ringtones. So “the alarm rang” = o alarme tocou. To negate, you place não before the verb: o alarme não tocou (“the alarm didn’t ring”).
Could you use soar instead of tocar for the alarm?
Yes. Soar (“to sound”) also works: o alarme não soou. In practice, tocar is more colloquial and very common, but both verbs are correct.
Why is perdemos used here to mean “we missed”? Doesn’t perder mean “to lose”?
In Portuguese, perder can indeed mean “to lose,” but it’s also used when you “miss” an event or a portion of something (time, bus, class). So perdemos os primeiros segundos da aula literally means “we lost the first seconds of the class,” i.e. “we missed them.”
Why isn’t the subject pronoun nós included before perdemos?
Subject pronouns (eu, tu, nós, etc.) are optional in Portuguese because verb endings already tell you who the subject is. Here, perdemos is first person plural, so adding nós would be redundant: (Nós) perdemos os primeiros segundos da aula.
Why is it os primeiros segundos in the plural rather than singular?
Segundos are countable, and “first seconds” implies more than one second at the very start. If you said o primeiro segundo, it would mean exactly one single second. The plural emphasises that you missed several seconds.
Why does the sentence use da aula (“of the class”) and not na aula (“in the class”)?
Here you’re talking about missing the first seconds of the class itself—that’s a partitive or genitive idea, so you use de + a = da. If you said na aula, you’d be locating an action within the class (e.g. “we missed something while in class”) rather than losing the opening seconds.
Why are tocou and perdemos in the simple past (pretérito perfeito) instead of the imperfect?
The pretérito perfeito (simple past) is used for completed actions that happened once. The alarm not ringing was a single event, and missing the first seconds was a specific, finished consequence. The imperfect (e.g. tocava, perdíamos) would suggest habitual or ongoing past actions, which isn’t the case here.
What’s the difference between saying perdemos os primeiros segundos da aula and chegámos atrasados à aula?
- Perdemos os primeiros segundos da aula focuses on missing the very start of the class (you were there but late by a few seconds).
- Chegámos atrasados à aula means “we arrived late to the class,” implying you came after the official start time (possibly missing more than just a few seconds). Both convey lateness, but the first pinpoints exactly how much you missed.