Breakdown of Ouvimos o solista cantar a melodia.
cantar
to sing
ouvir
to hear
o solista
the soloist
a melodia
the melody
Questions & Answers about Ouvimos o solista cantar a melodia.
Why is cantar in the infinitive here instead of being conjugated?
After verbs of perception like ouvir (to hear) and ver (to see), you use the infinitive for the action being perceived. When you hear someone do something, Portuguese simply uses the unconjugated verb, just like the English phrase hear the soloist sing. You do not need to conjugate cantar to match the soloist.
If I wanted to replace o solista with a pronoun to say We hear him sing, where would it go?
You would attach the direct object pronoun to the first verb, ouvir. Because ouvimos ends in an s, you drop the s and change the pronoun o to lo. The sentence becomes Ouvimo-lo cantar a melodia. This pronoun placement is the standard rule when using causative and perception verbs.
The translation says We hear, but doesn't ouvimos also mean We heard in the past tense?
Could I say Ouvimos que o solista canta instead?
You could, but it slightly changes the meaning to We hear that the soloist sings, which implies you heard a fact about it rather than hearing the music yourself. Using the direct object plus the infinitive cantar is the natural way to express that you are physically perceiving the action happen in real time.
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