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Questions & Answers about A faca corta o pão.
Why is a used before faca?
In Portuguese every noun is either masculine or feminine. faca (knife) is feminine, so it takes the feminine definite article a (the). You would never say o faca because o is the masculine article.
Why is the verb corta in that form?
corta is the third-person singular present indicative of cortar (to cut). In other words, when “he,” “she” or “it” does the cutting, you use corta. Since a faca (the knife) is a third-person singular subject, you pair it with corta.
Why is o used before pão?
pão (bread) is a masculine noun, so it takes the masculine definite article o (the). This tells us we’re talking about some specific bread, not just bread in general.
Could we drop the articles as in English (“Knife cuts bread”)?
Generally no. Unlike English, Portuguese almost always requires an article before a noun. Saying faca corta pão without articles sounds unnatural. You could say uma faca corta pão (a knife cuts bread) to introduce it indefinitely, but you’d still need uma and pão would take an article in most contexts.
Why don’t we need a preposition like with to express instrument?
Because Portuguese freely assigns roles by word order. Here the knife is the subject doing the action, so no extra word is needed. If you really want to say “with the knife,” you can add com a faca: Ele corta o pão com a faca, but then the subject is ele (he) not the knife.
How would I express “the knife is cutting the bread” (ongoing action)?
In European Portuguese the progressive uses estar + a + infinitive, not a gerund. So you’d say A faca está a cortar o pão. In Brazilian Portuguese you often hear A faca está cortando o pão, but in Portugal the a-infinitive is preferred.
How do I turn “A faca corta o pão” into passive voice?
Passive voice highlights the object. You’d say O pão é cortado pela faca. Here é cortado is “is cut,” and pela is the contraction of por + a (by the).
Are all nouns ending in -ão masculine like pão?
Most -ão nouns are masculine, but there are exceptions (for example a estação – the season/station – is feminine). Unfortunately there’s no foolproof rule, so you’ll learn each noun’s gender as you go.