Breakdown of Depois de se barbear, ele lavou a lâmina e guardou a espuma no armário.
Questions & Answers about Depois de se barbear, ele lavou a lâmina e guardou a espuma no armário.
Because Portuguese very often uses depois de + infinitive when the action in the time expression and the main action refer to the same person.
So:
- Depois de se barbear, ele lavou... = a very natural, compact structure
- Depois que se barbeou, ele lavou... = also possible, but less compact
It works a lot like English after shaving or after he shaved.
Here, yes. Barbear by itself means to shave someone or something.
Barbear-se means to shave oneself.
So:
- O barbeiro barbeou o cliente. = The barber shaved the client.
- Ele barbeou-se. = He shaved himself.
In your sentence, the man is doing the action to himself, so se is needed.
The dictionary form is barbear-se, but in a sentence the clitic pronoun can move.
In European Portuguese, after a preposition such as de, it is very common, and often preferred, to put the pronoun before the infinitive:
- de se barbear
So Depois de se barbear sounds very natural in Portugal.
You may also see de barbear-se, but de se barbear is the form many learners will hear more often in European Portuguese.
Both are possible, but they are not equally common in everyday use.
- Depois de se barbear = the normal, simple way
- Depois de se ter barbeado = more explicit about the action being completed first, but heavier
Since the order of events is already obvious — first he shaved, then he washed the blade — Portuguese usually prefers the simpler depois de + infinitive structure.
They are very close, but not identical in feel.
- barbear-se = to shave oneself
- fazer a barba = literally to do the beard, but commonly used to mean to shave
In European Portuguese, fazer a barba is very common in everyday speech.
Barbear-se is perfectly correct, but can sound a little more explicit or slightly more formal depending on context.
Yes, it could be omitted.
Portuguese often leaves out subject pronouns when the verb form already shows who the subject is:
- Depois de se barbear, lavou a lâmina e guardou a espuma no armário.
This is completely natural.
Adding ele can give a bit more clarity, emphasis, or contrast. For example, it may help if several people have been mentioned and you want to make clear that he was the one who did it.
They are both in the pretérito perfeito simples: the normal tense for completed past actions in European Portuguese.
- lavou = he washed
- guardou = he put away / stored / kept
This tense is used for actions seen as finished events in the past.
Portuguese uses definite articles more often than English does.
Here, the nouns refer to things that are understood from the situation:
- a lâmina = the blade involved in the shaving
- a espuma = the foam involved in the shaving
- o armário = the cupboard/cabinet being referred to in the scene
In Portuguese, leaving the article out here would sound unnatural.
Literally, lâmina means blade.
In this context, it most likely means the razor blade, or the blade part of the razor. Portuguese does not always need to spell out the full phrase if the context already makes it obvious.
So lavou a lâmina is a natural way to say that he washed the blade he had just used for shaving.
Yes, most likely.
Espuma literally means foam, but in this context it is naturally understood as espuma de barbear — shaving foam.
Portuguese often leaves out words that are easy to infer from context. Since the sentence is already about shaving, a espuma is enough.
No. This is a very useful false-friend warning.
In many everyday contexts, guardar means:
- to keep
- to store
- to put away
- to save
So guardou a espuma no armário means he put the foam away in the cupboard/cabinet.
It does not mean he stood there protecting it.
No is a contraction of:
- em
- o = no
So:
- no armário = in the cupboard/cabinet/wardrobe
This contraction is standard and required in normal Portuguese. You do not say em o armário in standard usage.
Also, armário can mean different things depending on context: cupboard, cabinet, closet, or wardrobe. Here, cupboard or cabinet is the most likely meaning.