Word
Mal a corrida comece, os carros vão arrancar.
Meaning
As soon as the race starts, the cars will set off.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Lesson
Breakdown of Mal a corrida comece, os carros vão arrancar.
o carro
the car
começar
to begin
ir
to go
arrancar
to set off
Questions & Answers about Mal a corrida comece, os carros vão arrancar.
I thought mal meant "badly". Why does it mean "as soon as" here?
Mal is usually an adverb meaning "badly", but it can also act as a temporal conjunction meaning "as soon as" or "scarcely". You can tell the difference from the context: when mal connects two clauses and introduces a timeline of events, it means "as soon as".
Why is the verb começar conjugated in the subjunctive (comece) instead of the indicative (começa)?
Because the sentence refers to a future event that hasn't happened yet. When mal (as soon as) introduces a future, uncompleted action, it requires the subjunctive. If it were describing a completed past event, it would use the indicative (for example, Mal a corrida começou... meaning "As soon as the race started...").
If it's a future event, shouldn't we use the future subjunctive instead of the present subjunctive (comece)?
That is a great observation! Most temporal expressions like quando (when) or logo que (as soon as) use the future subjunctive for future events. However, mal is a special exception in European Portuguese: it pairs with the present subjunctive to talk about the future.
What exactly does arrancar mean in this context?
Arrancar literally means "to pull out" or "to uproot", but when talking about vehicles or races, it means "to set off", "to pull away", or "to accelerate from a standstill".