Breakdown of Tu precisas de perseverança até desenterrares o fóssil milenar.
tu
you
precisar de
to need
até
until
desenterrar
to unearth
o fóssil
the fossil
milenar
ancient
a perseverança
the perseverance
Questions & Answers about Tu precisas de perseverança até desenterrares o fóssil milenar.
Why is desenterrares in the personal infinitive instead of the subjunctive? I thought 'until' triggered the subjunctive.
It depends on the word used for 'until'. Here, we use the preposition até, which is followed by an infinitive. We add the -es ending for tu to make it the personal infinitive. If we had used the conjunction phrase até que, then we would have been forced to use the subjunctive (até que desenterres).
Could we just use the regular, uninflected infinitive (até desenterrar) here since the subject is already established as tu in the first half of the sentence?
Yes, technically you can. When the subject of both clauses is exactly the same, using the uninflected impersonal infinitive is grammatically correct. However, European Portuguese speakers frequently choose to use the personal infinitive anyway (desenterrares) because it sounds highly natural and explicitly reinforces who is doing the action.
Can you break down the anatomy of the verb desenterrares?
Why use milenar instead of a more common word like antigo for 'ancient'?
While antigo simply means old or ancient, milenar is much more specific and evocative. It translates closely to 'millennial' (derived from mil, meaning a thousand). It emphasizes an epic, geological timescale, which is the perfect descriptive word for a fossil.
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