Question 1

Why is the article o used before both resultado and grupo?

Accepted Answer

In Portuguese (Portugal) you normally place the definite article before a noun when you refer to something specific or general. Here o resultado means “the result” (a specific result you have in mind) and o grupo means “the group” (that specific group). English often drops the article in similar cases (“Result surprises group”), but Portuguese keeps it.

Question 2

What part of speech is surpreende and how is it formed?

Accepted Answer

surpreende is the 3rd-person singular, present-tense form of the verb surpreender (“to surprise”). You form it by taking the verb stem surpreend- and adding the present ending -e for “ele/ela/você.”

Question 3

Why isn’t there a preposition before o grupo? Don’t we need something like a grupo?

Accepted Answer

surpreender is a transitive verb that takes a direct object, so you don’t use a preposition. In English you say “surprise someone” (no “to” or “with”), and in Portuguese it’s the same: surpreender alguém. If you use the reflexive form (surpreender-se), you would add com for the cause, as in surpreende-se com.

Question 4

How would you say “The group is surprised by the result” instead?

Accepted Answer

You have two common options in European Portuguese:
1) Passive voice: O grupo é surpreendido pelo resultado.  
2) Pronominal form: O grupo surpreende-se com o resultado.

Question 5

Can I invert the word order to emphasize the result?

Accepted Answer

Yes. For emphasis you can use a cleft sentence:  
É o resultado que surpreende o grupo.  
This literally means “It is the result that surprises the group,” putting extra stress on o resultado.

Question 6

Could I replace o grupo with a clitic pronoun?

Accepted Answer

Yes. You would replace the direct object with o (masculine singular) and attach it to the verb by enclisis:  
O resultado surpreende-o.  
However, you lose the explicit reference to “the group,” so you’d only use that if context already makes “the group” clear.

Question 7

What about tense changes? How do I say “The result surprised the group” (past)?

Accepted Answer

Use the simple past (pretérito perfeito):  
O resultado surpreendeu o grupo.  
Here surpreendeu is the 3rd-person singular of surpreender in the preterite.

Question 8

Is there a difference between surpreender and espantar?

Accepted Answer

They are close synonyms meaning “to surprise” or “to astonish,” but espantar can carry a slightly stronger sense of “to frighten” or “to shock.” surpreender is more neutral/formal, while espantar is more colloquial and dramatic.

Question 9

Why isn’t there a “que” between resultado and surpreende?

Accepted Answer

You only use que as a conjunction or relative pronoun when you need to link clauses or add more information:  
– Relative clause: O resultado que vimos ontem  
– Complementizer: Disse que seria bom  
Here it’s a simple subject-verb-object sentence, so no que is needed.

O resultado surpreende o grupo.

Breakdown of O resultado surpreende o grupo.

Questions & Answers about O resultado surpreende o grupo.

More from this lesson

Master Portuguese — from O resultado surpreende o grupo to fluency