Breakdown of Ninguém gosta de trabalhar com uma pessoa egoísta que nunca ajuda.
Questions & Answers about Ninguém gosta de trabalhar com uma pessoa egoísta que nunca ajuda.
Ninguém means “nobody / no one” and it normally acts as the subject of the sentence, so it comes before the verb:
- Ninguém gosta… = Nobody likes…
You could technically say Não gosta ninguém, but:
- it sounds very marked / poetic / old‑fashioned;
- in normal, everyday speech, you put ninguém before the verb and you don’t add another não:
✅ Ninguém gosta de…
🚫 Ninguém não gosta de… (ungrammatical in standard European Portuguese)
So just remember: ninguém + [verb in 3rd person singular].
In Portuguese, ninguém is grammatically singular, even though it refers to more than one possible person in meaning. So it always takes the 3rd person singular of the verb:
- Ninguém gosta (not gostam)
- Ninguém ajuda
- Ninguém sabe
Think of ninguém like he/she/it for verb agreement purposes.
In Portuguese, the verb gostar almost always needs the preposition de before:
- gostar de
- noun:
- Gosto de chocolate. – I like chocolate.
- noun:
- gostar de
- verb (infinitive):
- Gosto de trabalhar. – I like working / to work.
- verb (infinitive):
So:
- ✅ Ninguém gosta de trabalhar.
- 🚫 Ninguém gosta trabalhar.
You can treat gostar de as a fixed combination: think “to like of something” even though in English we don’t say like of.
Com and para show different relationships:
- trabalhar com alguém = to work with someone (colleague, partner)
- trabalhar para alguém = to work for someone (boss, employer, client)
In this sentence, we mean “Nobody likes working with a selfish person who never helps” (as a teammate), so com is correct:
- trabalhar com uma pessoa egoísta – work with a selfish person
If you said:
- Ninguém gosta de trabalhar para uma pessoa egoísta.
it would mean: Nobody likes working *for a selfish person*, focusing on them as your boss or superior.
In Portuguese, adjectives usually come after the noun:
- uma pessoa egoísta – a selfish person
- um carro novo – a new car
- uma casa grande – a big house
Putting an adjective before the noun is possible but:
- it’s much less common;
- it often adds a stylistic, poetic, or emotional nuance;
- some adjectives change meaning depending on position.
Uma egoísta pessoa would sound very marked/literary and is not how you’d say “a selfish person” in everyday Portuguese. So stick with pessoa egoísta.
Egoísta is one of those adjectives that has the same form for masculine and feminine:
- um homem egoísta – a selfish man
- uma mulher egoísta – a selfish woman
- uma pessoa egoísta – a selfish person
In the plural, it becomes egoístas for both genders:
- homens egoístas – selfish men
- mulheres egoístas – selfish women
- pessoas egoístas – selfish people
So the -a ending here doesn’t mean “feminine only”; it’s a common, gender‑neutral pattern: egoísta, otimista, pessimista, altruísta, etc.
Here, que is a relative pronoun meaning “who / that” and it links the noun pessoa to the relative clause nunca ajuda:
- uma pessoa egoísta que nunca ajuda
= a selfish person *who never helps*
In this kind of clause:
- que = who/that/which (very general relative pronoun)
- quem is used differently:
- usually after a preposition when referring to people:
- a pessoa com quem trabalho – the person with whom I work
- or in indirect questions like Não sei quem é – I don’t know who it is.
- usually after a preposition when referring to people:
So in your sentence, you need que, not quem.
Yes, that’s also correct:
- Ninguém gosta de trabalhar com uma pessoa que é egoísta e nunca ajuda.
The difference is subtle:
uma pessoa egoísta que nunca ajuda
‑ Adjective (egoísta) is directly attached to pessoa, and the relative clause que nunca ajuda adds another characteristic.uma pessoa que é egoísta e nunca ajuda
‑ All the description is inside the relative clause. It feels slightly more explicit and a bit heavier.
In normal speech, the original version with pessoa egoísta que… is very natural and slightly more concise.
Nunca (never) must come in the verb phrase of the action it’s negating. In your sentence:
- que nunca ajuda – who never helps
Possible positions with ajudar:
- que nunca ajuda (most natural)
- que ajuda nunca (grammatically possible but sounds odd/marked; rarely used in modern speech)
You cannot move nunca outside that clause, for example:
- 🚫 Ninguém gosta de trabalhar com uma pessoa nunca ajuda.
So keep nunca right next to the verb phrase it negates: nunca ajuda.
Yes, Portuguese allows negative concord (double negatives), and it’s very common. But it has to be done correctly.
Your sentence:
- Ninguém gosta de trabalhar com uma pessoa egoísta que nunca ajuda.
has two separate clauses:
- Ninguém gosta… – main clause
- …que nunca ajuda. – relative clause (describing the person)
This is perfectly fine: ninguém negates gostar; nunca negates ajuda.
You could also have something like:
- Ninguém nunca ajuda. – Nobody ever helps.
Here ninguém and nunca both contribute to the overall negation; that’s still grammatical in Portuguese.
What you must avoid is mixing ninguém with an extra não on the same verb:
- 🚫 Ninguém não gosta de trabalhar… (wrong in standard Portuguese)
- ✅ Ninguém gosta de trabalhar…
No, not in this sentence. In Portuguese, you usually need the article with singular countable nouns:
- uma pessoa egoísta – a selfish person
Without the article:
- trabalhar com pessoa egoísta
sounds incomplete or ungrammatical in standard European Portuguese.
You can remove the article in some fixed expressions or headlines, but with a normal sentence like this, keep uma.
Ninguém is pronounced roughly like neen‑GENG (European Portuguese), with:
- ni‑ like “nee” (shorter, tenser than in English)
- ‑guem: the gu is like “g” in “go”; ‑em is a nasal sound.
The tilde (~) on é in ninguém marks:
- Stress: the main stress is on -guém.
- Nasalization: the -em ending is nasal, giving that -gẽĩ sound.
So:
- ninguém ≈ /nĩˈgẽj̃/ (EP), with a clear stressed, nasal final syllable.