Breakdown of Por mais que ingiras vitaminas, faltam-te outros nutrientes.
te
you (informal object)
outro
other
faltar
to be missing / to skip
por mais que
no matter how much
a vitamina
the vitamin
ingerir
to ingest
o nutriente
the nutrient
Questions & Answers about Por mais que ingiras vitaminas, faltam-te outros nutrientes.
Why is the verb ingerir in the subjunctive (ingiras) here?
The phrase por mais que (however much / no matter how much) expresses a concession or extreme condition. In Portuguese, this phrase always triggers the subjunctive.
Since this lesson is about seja... seja (whether... or), could we use that here instead of por mais que?
Not without changing the sentence entirely. Seja... seja gives two alternatives (like "whether from pills or from food"), whereas por mais que expresses an extreme degree ("however much"). What they do have in common is that both are structures that trigger the subjunctive!
Where does the "i" in ingiras come from? The infinitive is ingerir.
Ingerir is a verb that changes its stem vowel from e to i in the first-person singular present indicative (eu ingiro). Because the present subjunctive is always built from that "eu" form, the i carries over to make ingiras.
Why is it faltam-te (plural) when the English translation says "you lack"?
Why does the pronoun te attach to the end of faltam instead of going before it?
In European Portuguese, object pronouns default to attaching after the verb in affirmative main clauses. The first half of the sentence has a "magnet" phrase (por mais que) that would pull a pronoun to the front, but faltam-te starts a brand new, independent clause with no magnet words, so the pronoun stays at the end.
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