Breakdown of O maestro gosta do coro e quer ouvi-lo cantar a melodia.
e
and
querer
to want
gostar de
to like
cantar
to sing
Questions & Answers about O maestro gosta do coro e quer ouvi-lo cantar a melodia.
Why do we use the infinitive cantar directly after ouvi-lo?
In Portuguese, perception verbs like ouvir (to hear) and ver (to see) are often followed directly by an infinitive to show someone doing an action. Just like in English (hear them sing), you do not need a connecting word. The structure is simply the perception verb, plus the object doing the action, plus the infinitive verb.
The translation says wants to hear "them" sing, so why does the Portuguese sentence use the singular pronoun -lo?
The pronoun -lo replaces o coro (the choir). Even though a choir has many people, the word coro is a singular masculine noun in Portuguese. Pronouns must match the grammatical gender and number of the noun they replace, so we use the singular masculine o (which turns into -lo here), rather than a plural pronoun.
Why does ouvir change to ouvi-lo instead of just staying as ouvir o?
When a direct object pronoun like o attaches to a verb ending in -r, -s, or -z (like the infinitive ouvir), Portuguese drops that final consonant and adds an -l- to the pronoun to make it easier to say. That is why ouvir + o becomes ouvi-lo.
As a quick refresher, why does the sentence say instead of just ?