Breakdown of É melhor tu não pagares a despesa agora.
ser
to be
tu
you
não
not / no
agora
now
pagar
to pay
melhor
better / best
a despesa
the expense
Questions & Answers about É melhor tu não pagares a despesa agora.
Why are we using pagares instead of the subjunctive?
The phrase É melhor is an impersonal expression. Usually, these expressions are followed by que and the subjunctive. However, Portuguese offers an alternative: dropping que and using the Personal Infinitive instead. Here, pagar is conjugated for tu, becoming pagares.
How would this sentence look if we used the subjunctive instead?
To use the subjunctive, you must include que. The sentence would be: É melhor que tu não pagues a despesa agora. Both versions are correct and mean the exact same thing, though the Personal Infinitive is often preferred in everyday spoken Portuguese because it feels slightly shorter and more direct.
In English, we say "for you not to pay". Why is there no word for "for" in the Portuguese sentence?
English needs the word "for" to introduce the subject of an infinitive. In Portuguese, the Personal Infinitive changes its ending to show who the subject is (the -es in pagares tells us it is tu). Because the verb already carries this information, you just use the subject pronoun directly without any preposition like para.
Could I say pagar instead of pagares if I keep tu in the sentence?
No, because you have specified the subject tu. When an infinitive has a specific subject following an impersonal expression like É melhor, you must conjugate it into the Personal Infinitive. If you used the plain infinitive pagar, you would have to drop tu, making it a general statement: É melhor não pagar a despesa agora (It is better not to pay the expense now, for anyone).
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