Breakdown of O padeiro vai melhorando a técnica.
a
to / at (direction)
ir
to go
melhorar
to improve
a técnica
the technique
o padeiro
the baker
Questions & Answers about O padeiro vai melhorando a técnica.
Why use vai melhorando instead of está a melhorar?
I thought European Portuguese avoided words ending in -ando (the gerund) and used a + infinitive instead. Is this an exception?
Yes, this is a major exception! While European Portuguese strongly prefers estar a + infinitive for standard continuous actions, it switches to the gerund when using the auxiliary verbs ir or vir to express a gradual, unfolding process. So vai melhorando is perfectly natural in Portugal.
Why does the sentence say a técnica (the technique) instead of a sua técnica (his technique)?
In Portuguese, possessive pronouns are often dropped when the context makes it obvious who the owner is. Since the baker is the subject actively doing the improving, using just the definite article a sounds much more natural than explicitly stating it is his own technique.
Can melhorar mean both to make something better and to get better?
Yes, it works both ways! Here, it takes a direct object (a técnica), so it means he is making the technique better. If the sentence were just O padeiro vai melhorando, it would mean the baker himself is gradually getting better.
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