Breakdown of Olhando silenciosamente para a boia, ele bebeu o chá.
ele
he
beber
to drink
para
to / for
o chá
the tea
olhar
to look
a boia
the float
silenciosamente
silently
Questions & Answers about Olhando silenciosamente para a boia, ele bebeu o chá.
I thought European Portuguese didn't use the gerund (-ndo) very much. Why is olhando used here instead of a olhar?
You are right that European Portuguese usually prefers a plus the infinitive for continuous actions, like ele estava a olhar for "he was looking". However, the gerund is still commonly used as an adverb. Here, olhando describes the circumstances of how he drank the tea. It works just like "while looking" or "as he looked" in English.
Why do we need the word para here? Doesn't olhar mean "to look"?
In English, you "look at" something, but in Portuguese, the verb olhar pairs with the preposition para to show the direction of your gaze. Therefore, olhando para a boia translates to looking at the float, or literally, looking towards the float.
How do we know the looking happened in the past if olhando doesn't have a past tense ending?
I have seen the word for float spelled as bóia with an accent. Is boia a typo?
It is not a typo! Before the spelling reform of 1990, it was indeed written as bóia. The reform removed the accent on the "oi" sound in words where the stress falls on the second-to-last syllable. You might still see it spelled the old way in older texts, but boia is the correct modern spelling.
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