Breakdown of A professora explica a diferença entre um objetivo pequeno e o mais importante de todos.
Questions & Answers about A professora explica a diferença entre um objetivo pequeno e o mais importante de todos.
In European Portuguese, you almost always use an article before a specific person’s role:
- A professora = the teacher (a specific female teacher that speaker and listener can identify)
- Uma professora = a teacher (not a specific one; you’re introducing her)
- Professora (without an article) is usually:
- a way of addressing her directly: Professora, pode ajudar-me? (“Teacher, can you help me?”)
- or in headlines / labels: Professora explica… (like a news title)
So in a normal full sentence talking about a known person, “A professora explica…” is the natural form.
Yes. In Portuguese, many profession nouns have masculine and feminine forms:
- o professor = the (male) teacher
- a professora = the (female) teacher
Here “professora” tells you the teacher is female.
If you want to talk about a teacher in general (without focusing on gender), Portuguese often uses the masculine form by default in grammar:
- O professor explica a diferença… can mean “the teacher explains the difference…” in a generic way, though in real contexts people may adapt to the actual person’s gender.
“Explica” is the 3rd person singular, present indicative of the verb explicar (“to explain”).
Conjugation (European Portuguese):
- eu explico – I explain
- tu explicas – you explain (informal singular)
- ele/ela/você explica – he/she/you explain
- nós explicamos – we explain
- vocês explicam – you (plural) explain
- eles/elas explicam – they explain
Because it’s “explica”, the subject must be ele / ela / você / o senhor / a senhora or any singular noun. Here it matches “A professora” (she).
The structure “a diferença entre X e Y” is standard for “the difference between X and Y”:
- a diferença entre o gato e o cão – the difference between the cat and the dog
- a diferença entre um objetivo pequeno e o mais importante de todos – the difference between a small goal and the most important one of all
entre = “between / among”
- entre A e B – between A and B
- entre todos os alunos – among all the students
So “a diferença entre X e Y” literally mirrors the English phrase.
In Portuguese, the default position of adjectives is after the noun:
- um objetivo pequeno – a small objective
- um livro interessante – an interesting book
- uma casa grande – a big house
Adjectives can come before the noun, but that often adds some nuance (more subjective, emotional, or stylistic). For example:
- um pequeno objetivo can sound more like “a minor / modest objective”, with a slightly more evaluative or literary tone.
In everyday neutral speech, “um objetivo pequeno” is more straightforward and typical.
Today, the officially correct spelling in both European and Brazilian Portuguese is:
- objetivo (without c)
The older spelling “objectivo” was used in Portugal before the spelling reform (Acordo Ortográfico). Many older texts or some people informally may still write “objectivo”, but in modern standard European Portuguese you should use “objetivo”.
It depends on context, but with abstract nouns like “objetivo”, “pequeno” usually means something like “minor, modest, limited in scope”, not physically small.
- objetivo pequeno – a modest/small-scale goal
- objetivo grande – a big/ambitious goal
If you wanted to be very explicit about importance, you could also say:
- um objetivo menos importante – a less important goal
For superlatives like “the most important”, Portuguese normally uses:
- o / a / os / as + mais + adjective
So:
- o mais importante – the most important (masculine singular)
- a mais importante – the most important (feminine singular)
- os mais importantes – the most important (masculine plural)
- as mais importantes – the most important (feminine plural)
Here we’re talking about (o) objetivo, which is masculine singular, so we get:
- o mais importante de todos – the most important of all (goals)
The “o” is required to form that definite superlative meaning “the most…”.
- o mais importante – the most important
- o mais importante de todos – the most important of all (of them)
“de todos” (“of all”) makes it explicit that we’re comparing this objective with the whole group of objectives, not just some of them.
It works like in English:
- “the biggest” vs. “the biggest of all”
The expression “o mais importante” is referring back to a masculine noun already mentioned:
- um objetivo pequeno → masculine singular (objetivo)
- o mais importante de todos → stands for o objetivo mais importante de todos
Portuguese often omits the repeated noun if it’s clear:
- Gosto do carro vermelho e não do azul.
(Full: do carro azul – “I like the red car and not the blue one.”)
So here:
- o mais importante de todos = o objetivo mais importante de todos
Portuguese frequently drops repeated nouns when they’re obvious from context. Both are correct:
- … a diferença entre um objetivo pequeno e o mais importante de todos.
- … a diferença entre um objetivo pequeno e o objetivo mais importante de todos.
The second is slightly more explicit; the first is more natural and less repetitive.
Context decides, but in a sentence like this, it is very naturally understood as a contrast in importance / impact:
- um objetivo pequeno – a minor or modest goal
- o mais importante de todos – the most important goal of all
So “the teacher explains the difference between a smaller, less significant goal and the most important goal of all.” The contrast is between a small/minor objective and the top-priority one.