Questions & Answers about Tu és de Lisboa?
Why doesn't the word order change to make this a question, like it does in English?
In Portuguese, you don't need to swap the subject and the verb to ask a yes/no question. The standard statement Tu és de Lisboa (You are from Lisbon) turns into a question simply by adding a question mark and raising the pitch of your voice at the end: Tu és de Lisboa?. Do I always have to include the word tu?
Not at all! Because the verb form és is only ever used with tu (the informal "you"), the listener already knows exactly who you are asking. You will very often hear Portuguese speakers drop the pronoun entirely and just ask, És de Lisboa?. Why do we use és (from the verb ser) here instead of the other "to be" verb, estar?
The verb ser is used for permanent characteristics, which includes your origin or nationality. Since being from a specific city doesn't change, we use és rather than estás (which is used for temporary states, like if you are just visiting Lisbon for the weekend). If I wanted to ask "Where are you from?" instead of a yes/no question, how would I do that?
You would use the question phrase de onde (from where). You could ask De onde és tu? or simply De onde és?. Notice that the word de (from) comes right before the question word onde (where), unlike in English where "from" usually dangles at the end of the sentence. Learn Tu és de Lisboa and more in Portuguese
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