Word
A sopa pode salpicar o fogão.
Meaning
The soup can splatter on the stove.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Lesson
Breakdown of A sopa pode salpicar o fogão.
poder
to be able to
a sopa
the soup
o fogão
the stove
salpicar
to splash
Questions & Answers about A sopa pode salpicar o fogão.
Why is it A sopa and not O sopa?
In Portuguese, every noun has a grammatical gender, masculine or feminine.
- sopa is a feminine noun, so it takes the feminine definite article a → a sopa (the soup).
- o is the masculine article; it’s used with masculine nouns like o fogão (the stove).
There is no logical reason why sopa is feminine; you simply learn the gender together with the noun: a sopa, o café, a água, o leite, etc.
Why do we use the article at all? Why not just Sopa pode salpicar o fogão?
In Portuguese, it’s much more common to use articles with nouns than in English.
- English often omits the article with general or abstract nouns: Soup can splash the stove.
- European Portuguese normally keeps the article: A sopa pode salpicar o fogão.
Leaving the article out (Sopa pode salpicar o fogão) sounds unnatural in European Portuguese except in a few special contexts (headlines, labels, some recipes, etc.). In normal speech and writing, you say a sopa.
How do we know that fogão is masculine?