Word
Eu estava a subir a encosta congelada, isto é, o perigo era enorme.
Meaning
I was climbing the frozen slope, that is, the danger was enormous.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Eu estava a subir a encosta congelada, isto é, o perigo era enorme.
eu
I
ser
to be
estar
to be (temporary / location)
a
to / at (direction)
Questions & Answers about Eu estava a subir a encosta congelada, isto é, o perigo era enorme.
How does isto é function in this sentence, and could I use ou seja instead?
Isto é translates to "that is" or "in other words" and is used to clarify or explain the consequence of the first part of the sentence. Yes, you could absolutely use ou seja here; they are entirely interchangeable textual connectors of clarification.
Why do we use estava a subir instead of the imperfect tense subia?
Both can translate to "was climbing", but in European Portuguese, using the past continuous structure (estar a plus the infinitive) is the most natural way to emphasize that an action was actively in progress at that exact moment in the past.
Why is the adjective congelada placed after the noun and why does it end in "a"?
In Portuguese, most descriptive adjectives follow the noun. Here, congelada is the past participle of congelar (to freeze) acting as an adjective, and it takes the feminine singular ending to match the gender and number of a encosta (the slope).