Breakdown of Saímos da autoestrada antes da portagem.
sair
to go out
antes de
before
a autoestrada
the motorway
a portagem
the toll
Questions & Answers about Saímos da autoestrada antes da portagem.
Saímos is the "we" form for both the present and past tense. How can we tell which one it is here?
You have to rely entirely on context. Without any other clues, this sentence is most naturally understood as a past event ("We left..."), perhaps recounting a recent journey. If you added a time marker like agora (now) or sempre (always), it would be understood as the present tense.
Why is it da autoestrada instead of just de autoestrada?
The verb sair (to leave/exit) requires the preposition de. Because you are referring to a specific motorway, you must include the definite article a (the). When you combine de and a, you get the contraction da.
I've seen auto-estrada written with a hyphen in older texts. Why is it written as one word here?
Under the most recent Portuguese spelling agreement (Acordo Ortográfico), the hyphen is dropped when a prefix ending in a vowel (like auto-) joins a word starting with a different vowel (like estrada). Therefore, autoestrada is now the standard correct spelling.
Why is there a da after antes? Doesn't antes just mean "before"?
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