Learn Hardcore Portuguese (Portugal): Na farmácia, a farmacêutica recomenda tomar dois comprimidos por dia para aliviar a dor de cabeça. - At the pharmacy, the pharmacist recommends taking two pills a day to relieve the headache.

Portuguese contracts prepositions and definite articles. Em + a becomes Na. You never write Em a as two words. And because farmácia is a common place (not a proper noun), you need the article—the form Em farmácia without a sounds unnatural in European Portuguese.

Why is the pharmacist called a farmacêutica? What if the pharmacist is male?

Portuguese nouns and articles agree in gender. Farmacêutica is the feminine form, so it refers to a female pharmacist. If the pharmacist were male, you’d say O farmacêutico recomenda.... Always match o/a and the noun ending in -o/-a.

Why do we use recomenda tomar instead of recomenda que tome?

Portuguese offers two common structures for recommendations:

Verbo + infinitivo (recomenda tomar) – an impersonal, concise instruction, like “recommends taking.”
Verbo + que + subjuntivo (recomenda que tome) – a more explicit clause requiring the subjunctive.
Both are correct. The infinitive form is especially frequent in written instructions or prescriptions.

What exactly does tomar dois comprimidos por dia mean, and why use tomar here?

Literally, it means to take two pills per day. In Portuguese, tomar is the standard verb for ingesting medications or liquids (for example, tomar remédio, tomar água). It conveys “to consume” or “to swallow” in a medical context.

Why dois comprimidos and not duas comprimidas?

Comprimido (tablet/pill) is a masculine noun, so you use the masculine form dois for “two.” Adjectives and numerals must agree in gender (masculine/feminine) and number (singular/plural) with the noun they modify.

What’s the role of por dia, and could we say ao dia or cada dia instead?

Por dia expresses a rate or frequency—“per day.” It’s the most common prescription phrase. You might occasionally see ao dia in very formal or older texts, but por dia is the everyday choice. Cada dia means “each day,” emphasizing repetition rather than a specific rate.

Why is there an infinitive aliviar after para?

Para indicates purpose (“in order to”). In Portuguese, purpose clauses are formed with para + infinitive. So para aliviar a dor de cabeça means “to relieve the headache.” You never use the subjunctive after para for this purpose.

Why a dor de cabeça instead of just dor de cabeça or dor na cabeça?

Dor de cabeça is the fixed term for “headache.” We include the definite article a before dor because Portuguese often uses the article with general or abstract nouns in statements (compare gosto da música).

Aliviar dor de cabeça (without a) sounds incomplete.
Dor na cabeça means “pain in the head” in a more descriptive sense, not the medical term “a headache.”