O Pedro não gosta do cheiro do aipo.

In European Portuguese, it is very common to put the definite article before a person's name: o Pedro, a Ana, o João.

So O Pedro is a normal way to say Pedro in Portugal. It does not sound as strange as the Pedro would in English. It is just a standard Portuguese habit.

Yes, you can, and people will understand you perfectly. But in European Portuguese, O Pedro sounds more natural in everyday speech.

Very generally:

• O Pedro... = very common in Portugal
• Pedro... = also possible, often a bit more neutral, formal, or stylistically different depending on context

So for Portugal Portuguese, keeping O is a good habit to learn.

In Portuguese, the normal way to negate a sentence is to put não directly before the conjugated verb.

So:

• gosta = likes
• não gosta = does not like

This is the usual pattern:

• Eu gosto → Eu não gosto
• Ela come → Ela não come
• O Pedro gosta → O Pedro não gosta

Gostar is the infinitive, meaning to like. In a full sentence, you normally need a conjugated form.

Here the subject is O Pedro, which is he / third person singular, so the present tense form is gosta.

Present tense of gostar:

• eu gosto
• tu gostas
• ele/ela/você gosta

So O Pedro não gosta... means Pedro does not like...

Because gostar normally uses the preposition de.

So Portuguese says:

• gostar de algo = to like something

That means:

• gosta de o cheiro would be the literal structure

But de + o contracts to do, so:

• gosta do cheiro

This is one of the most important things to remember about gostar:

• gostar de música
• gostar de café
• gostar do cheiro

Because there are two separate de + o combinations.

1. gosta de o cheiro → gosta do cheiro
   Here, de comes from the verb gostar de.

2. cheiro de o aipo → cheiro do aipo
   Here, de links cheiro and aipo, meaning the smell of celery.

So the sentence contains:

• do cheiro = de + o cheiro
• do aipo = de + o aipo

Yes, do = de + o.

And in standard Portuguese, this contraction is normally required, not optional.

So you say:

• do = de + o
• da = de + a
• dos = de + os
• das = de + as

That means:

• do cheiro is correct
• de o cheiro is not standard

The same applies to do aipo.

Yes. Aipo is a masculine singular noun in Portuguese:

• o aipo

Because it is masculine singular, de + o aipo becomes:

• do aipo

If it were feminine singular, you would get da instead.

Portuguese often uses articles in places where English does not.

English says:

• the smell of celery

But Portuguese often prefers:

• o cheiro do aipo

Using the article with nouns like this is very normal. So even though English has no article before celery, Portuguese naturally uses o in o aipo, and after de that becomes do.

Not with exactly the same meaning.

In European Portuguese, cheiro a ... is often used for a smell like ... or a smell of ... in a descriptive sense.

But cheiro do aipo specifically points to the smell that the celery itself has.

So:

• o cheiro do aipo = the smell of the celery / celery's smell
• cheiro a aipo = a smell like celery

In some situations the ideas can be close, but they are not exactly the same structure.

A rough pronunciation guide is:

u PED-ru nãw GOSH-tuh du SHAI-ru dw AI-pu

A more IPA-style version is approximately:

[u ˈpeðɾu nɐ̃w ˈɡɔʃtɐ ðu ˈʃɐjɾu ðw ˈajpu]

A few useful pronunciation notes:

• O before Pedro often sounds more like u
• não has a nasal sound
• gosta in Portugal often has a sh-like sound in the st
• cheiro does not sound like English chair-o; in European Portuguese it is closer to SHAI-ru
• do aipo links smoothly in speech