Learn Hardcore Portuguese (Portugal): A cidade organiza um dia especial de reciclagem e limpa todos os contentores. - The city organises a special recycling day and cleans all the containers.

cidade is a common noun (“city”), not a proper name, so it normally takes an article: a cidade = the city.
Without the article, Cidade organiza… would sound like a headline or a fragment, not a normal sentence.
Compare:
- A cidade organiza um dia especial… = The city organises a special day…
- Lisboa organiza um dia especial… = Lisbon organises a special day… (proper name, no article in standard European Portuguese)

So in a normal sentence referring to “the city” (meaning the local authority), you say a cidade with the article.

Is cidade feminine? How can I tell, and what does that change in the sentence?

Yes, cidade is feminine.

Most nouns ending in -dade (or -ade) are feminine in Portuguese:
cidade, liberdade, vontade, universidade.
Because it’s feminine you use the feminine article a:
a cidade, uma cidade, toda a cidade.
The verb organiza doesn’t change, because verbs don’t show gender, only person/number.
Adjectives, when they agree with cidade, would be feminine too:
- a cidade bonita (the beautiful city)
- as cidades bonitas (the beautiful cities)

In this particular sentence, especial looks the same in masculine and feminine (like “special” in English), so you don’t see the gender there, but it is still agreeing with a feminine noun (cidade → especial).

Why is the verb organiza in the simple present? Does it mean this happens regularly or is it about a specific future event?

In Portuguese, the simple present (organiza) can cover several ideas, and context decides which:

Habitual/general fact
- A cidade organiza um dia especial de reciclagem todos os anos.
  The city organises a special recycling day every year.
Descriptive explanation of what happens in that event
- You might be describing the program:
  “On this special day, the city organises a recycling day and cleans all the containers.”
Scheduled future (like English “The train leaves at 8”)
- A cidade organiza um dia especial de reciclagem no próximo sábado.
  The city is organising / will organise a special recycling day next Saturday.

So organiza is fine for both habitual and scheduled future; the rest of the context would clarify which one is intended.

Could I say A cidade está a organizar um dia especial… instead of A cidade organiza…? What’s the difference?

You can, but the meaning shifts slightly.

A cidade organiza…
→ neutral present: habit, description, or scheduled event.
A cidade está a organizar… (EP)
→ progressive/continuous: the organising is happening right now or around now.
Example:
Neste momento, a cidade está a organizar um dia especial de reciclagem.
Right now, the city is in the process of organising…

So you’d typically use está a organizar if you want to emphasise the ongoing process at the present moment, not the generic fact that it organises such a day.

(And in European Portuguese the continuous is estar a + infinitive, not estar organizando, which is Brazilian usage.)

Why is it um dia especial de reciclagem and not um dia de reciclagem especial?

Both orders are grammatically possible, but they don’t feel the same.

um dia especial de reciclagem (normal, natural here)
- dia is the main noun, especial is an adjective describing the day, and de reciclagem tells you what kind of special day it is.
- The focus is: the day is special; it happens to be a recycling day.
um dia de reciclagem especial
- Now especial sounds more like it’s describing reciclagem (“special recycling”), not the day itself.
- This can suggest that the recycling is special or unusual in some way, not just that the day is.

In neutral Portuguese, adjectives usually come after the noun they describe (dia especial, cidade grande). So um dia especial de reciclagem is the natural word order here.

Why do we say de reciclagem instead of para reciclagem or da reciclagem?

Each preposition changes the nuance:

de reciclagem
- Makes a kind of “compound noun”: recycling day → dia de reciclagem (day of recycling).
- Very common pattern:
  - dia de descanso (day of rest)
  - noite de festa (party night)
  - aula de matemática (math class)
para reciclagem
- Means “for recycling” (purpose):
  - contentores para reciclagem = containers for recycling
  - sacos para reciclagem = bags for recycling
da reciclagem = de + a reciclagem (“of the recycling”)
- Refers to some specific recycling already known.
- o dia da reciclagem could mean “the (official) recycling day”.

In this sentence we just want the type of day (a recycling day), so de reciclagem without an article is the natural choice.

Why doesn’t reciclagem have an article? Why not um dia especial da reciclagem?

Without the article, de reciclagem describes the kind of day in a general way: a day of recycling.

This pattern—de + noun (no article)—is very common when we describe type/category:

um curso de matemática (a maths course)
uma aula de inglês (an English lesson)
um dia de chuva (a rainy day / a day of rain)

Adding an article would make it more specific:

o dia da reciclagem
- “the recycling day”, a specific, perhaps official, day called “Recycling Day”.

So um dia especial de reciclagem is a special day devoted to recycling in general, not “the” official day of some particular recycling event.

In organiza um dia especial de reciclagem e limpa…, do I need to repeat a cidade before limpa, or is it understood?

It’s understood and normally not repeated.

A cidade organiza um dia especial de reciclagem e limpa todos os contentores.
→ subject a cidade applies to both organiza and limpa.

You would only repeat a cidade if you really wanted to stress it, or for stylistic reasons:

A cidade organiza um dia especial de reciclagem e a cidade limpa todos os contentores.
This sounds heavy and redundant in neutral speech, and you’d rarely say it this way.

Why is it limpa and not limpam, even though contentores is plural?

Because the verb agrees with the subject, not the object.

Subject: a cidade → singular → verb in 3rd person singular: limpa.
Object: todos os contentores → plural, but that does not change the verb form.

Compare:

A cidade limpa os contentores. (The city cleans the containers.)
As cidades limpam os contentores. (The cities clean the containers.)
Now the subject is plural (as cidades), so the verb becomes limpam.

Does limpar take a preposition? Why is it limpa todos os contentores and not something like limpa de todos os contentores?

In this sense (“to clean something”), limpar is a direct transitive verb:

limpar + direct object
- limpa todos os contentores
- limpar a casa (to clean the house)
- limpar o chão (to clean the floor)

You only see a preposition with limpar in other structures, e.g.:

limpar algo de sujidade (clean something of dirt)
- limpar o chão de lama = clean the floor of mud / remove mud from the floor.

But for “clean the containers”, it’s simply limpar os contentores, no preposition.

Why do we say todos os contentores and not todos contentores?

With a specific group of things, todos normally comes with a definite article:

todos os contentores (all the containers)
todas as pessoas (all the people)
todos os dias (every day / all the days)

The pattern is: todos/todas + article + plural noun.

Saying todos contentores is not correct in standard Portuguese. You can drop the article when todos is more like “everybody” without a noun:

Todos sabem. (Everybody knows.)

But once you have a concrete plural noun like contentores, you keep the article: todos os contentores.

Can I also say limpa os contentores todos instead of limpa todos os contentores? Is there a difference?

Yes, both are possible, with a slight nuance:

limpa todos os contentores
- Neutral, most common order: “cleans all the containers.”
limpa os contentores todos
- Slightly more emphatic/colloquial: “cleans the containers, every single one of them.”

Placing todos after the noun (os contentores todos) tends to sound more emphatic or expressive, as if you’re stressing that none are left out.

What exactly does contentores mean here? Is it the same as “bins” in British English?

Contentores is the plural of contentor, a masculine noun.

In European Portuguese, contentores usually refers to:

The large rubbish or recycling containers you see on the street—what many English speakers might call “(rubbish) bins” or “dumpsters”, depending on size.

For smaller indoor ones, people are more likely to say:

caixote do lixo (trash bin)
balde do lixo (bucket/bin for rubbish)

So in this context, limpa todos os contentores means the city cleans all the big street containers/bins.

Is contentores the same word in Brazilian Portuguese? And what about reciclagem?

reciclagem is the same in both European and Brazilian Portuguese.
contentor/contentores:
- In Portugal, contentores (do lixo / de reciclagem) is very common for big street containers.
- In Brazil, you’ll more often see:
  - lixeiras (bins)
  - latões de lixo (big trash cans)
  - caçambas (large skip-type containers)

Brazilians will understand contentor, but it sounds more technical or less everyday in many regions. The sentence itself is structurally fine for both varieties; the main difference is just word choice for “containers/bins”.

How do you pronounce cidade, reciclagem, and contentores in European Portuguese?

Approximate pronunciations (in IPA and rough English hints):

cidade → /siˈðað(ɨ)/
- ci = “see”
- da = “da” with an open a
- final -de is very weak, like a soft “d(eh)” or almost just a hint of sound.
reciclagem → /ʁəsiˈklaʒɨ̃j/
- initial r is a guttural sound (like French r),
- re-ci- ~ “he-see” (with reduced vowels),
- stress on KLA,
- final -gem ~ “zheng” with a nasal ending.
contentores → /kõtẽˈtoɾɨʃ/
- con- with a nasal õ,
- stress on TO,
- final -res sounds like “resh” (the s at the end is like English “sh”).

Real European Portuguese tends to reduce vowels and “swallow” endings more than these approximations, but this gives you a workable idea.