Breakdown of Paguei o café com uma nota de dez euros.
eu
I
o café
the coffee
de
of
com
with
uma
a
pagar
to pay
a nota
the note
dez
ten
o euro
the euro
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Questions & Answers about Paguei o café com uma nota de dez euros.
Why is it Paguei o café and not Paguei um café?
In Portuguese, you normally use the definite article with verbs like pagar, comer or beber when referring to a specific item you’ve ordered. So Paguei o café literally “I paid the coffee,” meaning “I paid for the coffee I had.” Saying Paguei um café would feel like “I paid for a coffee” in the abstract—one of many—and is less idiomatic when you already know which coffee you’re talking about.
In English we say “pay for,” so why is there no por in Paguei o café?
Portuguese lets pagar take a direct object without a preposition. You could say pagar pelo café (“pay for the coffee”), but it’s less common. The most natural structure is pagar + definite article + thing, hence Paguei o café.
Why do we use com before uma nota de dez euros to express the payment method?
In European Portuguese, com is the standard preposition to indicate the instrument or means used to perform an action. So com uma nota de dez euros means “with a ten-euro note.” You wouldn’t use em here, because em usually marks location or time, not the instrument.
What does nota mean in this context, and is it the same as the English “note” or “bill”?
Yes. In Portugal a nota is a banknote or bill—the paper money you hand over. A nota de dez euros is exactly what an English speaker would call a ten-euro bill (or note).
Why is the feminine article uma used with nota de dez euros?
Every noun in Portuguese has a grammatical gender. Nota (banknote) is feminine, so it takes the feminine indefinite article uma when it’s singular and unspecified.
Why is it dez euros (with an “s”) and not dez euro?
Currency names behave like regular countable nouns: if you have more than one, you use the plural. Since there are ten units, it’s dez euros. If it were one unit, you’d say um euro.
Could I shorten com uma nota de dez euros to simply com dez euros?
Absolutely. Paguei o café com dez euros is perfectly correct and very common. You’re just saying you used ten euros, without specifying whether it was a note or coins.
How would I express “I paid for two coffees with two ten-euro notes”?
You just pluralize the nouns and adjust the articles:
Paguei os dois cafés com duas notas de dez euros.
Can I use a clitic pronoun and say Paguei-o com uma nota de dez euros instead of Paguei o café com uma nota de dez euros?
Grammatically it’s correct—o refers back to café. In practice, though, European Portuguese speakers usually keep the noun for clarity: Paguei o café com uma nota de dez euros sounds more natural.
Can I replace uma nota de dez euros with another payment method, like um cartão or dinheiro? How would that affect the sentence?
Yes. Just swap in your payment method:
- Paguei o café com um cartão. (“I paid for the coffee with a card.”)
- Paguei o café com dinheiro. (“I paid for the coffee with cash.”)