Breakdown of Para lidar melhor com a culpa, ele prometeu falar com o psicólogo todas as semanas.
Questions & Answers about Para lidar melhor com a culpa, ele prometeu falar com o psicólogo todas as semanas.
Para + infinitive is the normal way in Portuguese to express purpose:
- Para lidar melhor com a culpa = In order to deal better with the guilt / To better deal with the guilt.
Por usually indicates cause, means, route, etc., not purpose.
Starting the sentence with just Lidar melhor com a culpa, ele prometeu… would sound odd and incomplete; it needs a marker of purpose, so para is the natural choice.
Lidar in this sense means to deal (with), to cope (with), to handle.
In Portuguese, this verb normally appears as lidar com + noun:
- lidar com a culpa – to deal with the guilt
- lidar com o stress – to deal with stress
- lidar com pessoas difíceis – to deal with difficult people
You almost always need com after lidar when you mean to deal with something. Saying lidar a culpa is incorrect.
Portuguese uses definite articles much more than English.
- a culpa here is like “the guilt” – referring to a specific, known guilt he feels (about some event or situation).
- Saying just culpa is possible in some fixed expressions (e.g. sem culpa = without guilt), but when you’re talking about a concrete, identifiable feeling, a culpa is more natural.
So lidar com a culpa ≈ to deal with the (particular) guilt he has.
Yes, all three are grammatically possible, but they sound slightly different:
- para lidar melhor com a culpa – most natural, neutral order.
- para melhor lidar com a culpa – sounds a bit more formal/literary.
- para lidar com a culpa melhor – grammatically OK, but less common and can sound slightly clumsy in this sentence.
In European Portuguese, adverbs like melhor usually come before the verb (melhor lidar) or after the verb + object (lidar melhor com a culpa). The original version is the most idiomatic.
In Portuguese, many verbs of wanting, planning, deciding, promising, etc., are followed directly by an infinitive without a preposition:
- ele prometeu falar – he promised to speak / to talk
- ela decidiu sair – she decided to go out
- eles querem viajar – they want to travel
Adding de (prometeu de falar) is incorrect here. Prometer takes the infinitive directly in this structure.
Yes, you can say:
- Ele prometeu que falaria com o psicólogo.
Both sentences express a promise and are correct. The nuance:
- prometeu falar – more direct; focuses on the action promised (to talk).
- prometeu que falaria – slightly more indirect; focuses on the statement he made (“that he would talk”).
In everyday speech, prometeu falar is very natural and slightly more concise.
With professions, Portuguese often uses the definite article when talking about a specific person:
- o psicólogo – the psychologist (a particular one: his psychologist / the one they both know about)
- um psicólogo – a psychologist (any psychologist, not specified)
Falar com psicólogo (no article) sounds incomplete or ungrammatical in this context. You normally need o or um:
- falar com o psicólogo – talk with the psychologist (that he already has / they know)
- falar com um psicólogo – talk with a (some) psychologist
- todas as semanas = every week, once per week, on a weekly basis.
- toda a semana = the whole week, all week long.
In the sentence:
- falar com o psicólogo todas as semanas
→ talk to the psychologist every week (e.g. one session per week).
If you said:
- falar com o psicólogo toda a semana
it would sound like he is in contact with the psychologist throughout the entire week, which is a different idea.
You can say cada semana, and it would be understood as each week. But in practice:
- todas as semanas is much more common for “every week” in European Portuguese.
- cada semana can sound a bit more formal, or is used when you want to emphasise “each and every week” individually.
So, todas as semanas is the most natural everyday choice here.
Yes, the p in psicólogo is silent.
Approximate European Portuguese pronunciation (simplified):
- psicólogo → [si-KÓ-lo-go]
- p – silent
- stress on -có-: si-KÓ-lo-go
- final -o is relatively closed, like the o in “position”.
So it’s a 4‑syllable word: si-KÓ-lo-go, not psee-.
The first part of the sentence is an infinitive clause of purpose placed at the beginning:
- Para lidar melhor com a culpa, ele prometeu…
When a subordinate clause (time, cause, purpose, condition, etc.) comes before the main clause in Portuguese, it is normally separated by a comma, just like in English:
- To deal better with the guilt, he promised… → comma after the introductory clause.
Yes, grammatically you can omit the subject pronoun in Portuguese:
- Para lidar melhor com a culpa, prometeu falar com o psicólogo todas as semanas.
This is possible because Portuguese is a pro‑drop language (subject pronouns can be left out when the verb ending makes the subject clear).
However, in this particular sentence, starting with ele prometeu is clearer and more natural unless the subject is already obvious from the previous context. With prometeu alone, the listener has to infer who promised from earlier sentences.
Because semana (week) is a feminine noun in Portuguese:
- a semana – the week
- as semanas – the weeks
The adjectives and determiners must agree in gender and number:
- toda a semana – the whole week (fem. sing.)
- todas as semanas – every week / all the weeks (fem. pl.)
So todas as semanas is correct; todos os semanas would be wrong because todos/os are masculine, and semana is feminine.