Breakdown of No albergue, a receção pede aos mochileiros que deixem a bagagem pesada no rés do chão.
Questions & Answers about No albergue, a receção pede aos mochileiros que deixem a bagagem pesada no rés do chão.
No is a contraction:
- em (in/at) + o (the, masculine singular) → no
So No albergue literally means “in the hostel / at the hostel.”
Portuguese almost always contracts prepositions with definite articles:
- em + a = na (in the / at the, feminine)
- em + os = nos
- em + as = nas
You almost never see em o albergue in normal speech or writing; no albergue is the standard form.
In European Portuguese:
- albergue usually refers to a simple, cheap place to sleep, often:
- a hostel (especially for backpackers/pilgrims),
- a shelter (e.g. albergue de sem-abrigo – homeless shelter).
In this sentence, because it talks about backpackers and baggage, albergue clearly means “hostel”.
You might also see:
- hostel (borrowed from English, quite common now)
- pousada (can be an inn or a specific chain of hotels)
But albergue is perfectly natural European Portuguese here.
A receção in this kind of sentence is a “metonymy”: it literally means the reception (area/desk), but in practice it refers to the reception staff working there — “the front desk.”
So:
- A receção pede... ≈ “The front desk asks…” / “Reception asks…”
About the spelling:
- In European Portuguese, after the spelling reform, it’s receção (without p).
- In Brazilian Portuguese, it’s recepção (with p and ~ç~).
Grammatically, the subject is a receção:
- a receção = singular noun (feminine, singular)
- So the verb agrees in the singular: pede (3rd person singular of pedir).
Even though in meaning we’re thinking of “the reception staff” (several people), grammatically it’s treated as a single unit (like “the team,” “the police” in English). So:
- A receção pede… = The reception asks…
If you explicitly made the staff the subject, you could say:
- Os funcionários da receção pedem…
(“The reception employees ask…”) – here the subject is plural, so pedem.
aos is another contraction:
- a (to) + os (the, masculine plural) → aos
mochileiros means backpackers (literally “people with backpacks”), masculine plural.
So:
- aos mochileiros = “to the backpackers”
Whole chunk: pede aos mochileiros = “(the reception) asks the backpackers” / “asks the backpackers to…”
In European Portuguese, a very common structure is:
- pedir a alguém que + [subjunctive]
→ to ask someone to do something
So:
- pede aos mochileiros que deixem…
- pedir = to ask
- aos mochileiros = the people you ask
- que deixem = that they leave (subjunctive)
deixem is the present subjunctive of deixar, 3rd person plural, agreeing with os mochileiros.
You can see pedir para + infinitive in some contexts (especially in Brazil), but in European Portuguese, when you clearly state the person who is asked (aos mochileiros), the pattern pedir a alguém que + subjunctive is the most natural and standard:
- O professor pediu aos alunos que chegassem mais cedo.
- Eles pedem a toda a gente que fale baixo.
It needs to be deixem (subjunctive), not deixam (present indicative).
Reason: pedir que… expresses a request, not a fact, and in Portuguese:
- After verbs of request, wish, order, suggestion, etc., you normally use the subjunctive in the subordinate clause.
Pattern:
- [verb of asking] + que + [subjunctive]
Examples:
- Peço que venhas cedo. – I ask that you come early.
- Eles querem que eu espere. – They want me to wait.
So:
- pede aos mochileiros que deixem a bagagem…
≈ “asks the backpackers to leave the luggage…”
In Portuguese:
- a bagagem is a collective, uncountable noun: “luggage” as a whole.
- You normally don’t pluralize it when you mean baggage in general.
So:
- a bagagem pesada = “the heavy luggage” / “heavy bags” (collectively)
If you really want to count individual items, you use something like:
- uma mala – a suitcase
- uma mochila – a backpack
- uma peça de bagagem – a piece of luggage
But for rules like in hostels or airports, a bagagem in the singular is the standard word.
The neutral, most common placement in Portuguese is:
- noun + adjective → a bagagem pesada (the heavy luggage)
Adjectives can go before the noun, but that often:
- sounds more literary or emphatic, or
slightly changes the nuance.
- a pesada bagagem is not wrong, but it sounds more stylised/poetic, drawing attention to pesada.
- In normal speech, for physical characteristics like size, weight, colour, etc., you typically say:
- a mala grande, o carro vermelho, a casa pequena, a bagagem pesada.
So a bagagem pesada is the most natural everyday order.
rés do chão (more commonly written rés‑do‑chão) is European Portuguese for:
- “ground floor” (the floor at street level).
Usage:
- no rés‑do‑chão = on the ground floor
- moro no rés‑do‑chão = I live on the ground floor.
In Brazilian Portuguese, people almost never say rés-do-chão. They would typically say:
- no térreo or no andar térreo.
So:
- European PT: no rés‑do‑chão
- Brazilian PT: no térreo
The more standard written form in European Portuguese is:
- rés‑do‑chão (with hyphens) as a single compound noun.
However, you will often see it written informally as rés do chão (without hyphens), especially outside very careful writing.
Meaning and pronunciation are the same; the difference is mainly orthographic style:
- Formal/standard: no rés‑do‑chão
- Informal/looser: no rés do chão
The fixed expression is rés‑do‑chão:
- rés = “level” / “surface” (a fossil word, no longer used on its own in everyday speech)
- do = de + o (“of the”)
- chão = ground, floor
So literally: “level of the ground.”
Because do is a contraction of de + o, you can’t replace it with plain de here; the standard phrase is rés‑do‑chão, not rés de chão.
That’s why the sentence has no rés do chão (“on the ground floor”).