Breakdown of O chefe ameaçou cancelar o projeto.
o chefe
the boss (m)
o projeto
the project
o
him/it (m)
cancelar
to cancel
ameaçar
to threaten
Questions & Answers about O chefe ameaçou cancelar o projeto.
Why isn't there a preposition between ameaçou and cancelar?
In Portuguese, the verb ameaçar (to threaten) connects directly to the following infinitive when expressing what someone threatened to do. You don't need a linking preposition like a or de here, even though English uses the word "to".
I've seen the word for "project" spelled as projecto. Is projeto the correct spelling in Portugal?
Yes, projeto is now the only correct spelling in Portugal. Under the modern Orthographic Agreement, silent consonants were dropped. However, the pronunciation hasn't changed: the e in projeto is still pronounced with an open vowel sound (like in the English word "pet"), which is what that old silent c used to indicate.
How would I add an extreme condition like "even if we protested" to this sentence using nem que?
Why is ameaçou in the Pretérito Perfeito (simple past) rather than the Imperfeito (imperfect)?
We use the Pretérito Perfeito here because the threat is viewed as a single, completed event in the past. If you wanted to describe an ongoing background situation ("The boss was threatening...") or a repeated habit ("The boss used to threaten..."), you would use the Imperfeito instead: O chefe ameaçava cancelar o projeto.
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