Word
Há muito tempo que andávamos sob a terra.
Meaning
We had been walking under the earth for a long time.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Há muito tempo que andávamos sob a terra.
muito
much / very
o tempo
the time
que
that (conjunction)
andar
to walk
Questions & Answers about Há muito tempo que andávamos sob a terra.
Why use sob here instead of debaixo de for a physical location?
Both mean under or beneath. While debaixo de is more common in everyday spoken Portuguese for physical locations, sob is slightly more formal and often used in literary contexts. Saying sob a terra gives a dramatic or narrative feeling of being deep underground, whereas debaixo da terra might sound more ordinary.
Why does the Portuguese sentence use the Imperfect tense (andávamos) for the English Past Perfect Continuous (had been walking)?
English uses the Past Perfect Continuous to show an action that was ongoing up until another point in the past. Portuguese handles this much more simply: it pairs the Imperfeito (andávamos) with a time expression like Há muito tempo que. You do not need a complex word-for-word translation like tínhamos estado a andar.
Is the word que required in Há muito tempo que?
It is required when the time expression comes at the beginning of the sentence to connect it to the main verb. If you flip the sentence order to put the time expression at the end, you must drop the que. The sentence would then be Andávamos sob a terra há muito tempo. Starting with the time expression adds emphasis to the long duration.
Could andávamos mean something other than literal walking here?