Breakdown of A minha família não mora aqui.
não
not / no
aqui
here
morar
to live
meu
my (m/f/pl: meu, minha, meus, minhas)
Questions & Answers about A minha família não mora aqui.
Why is there an A before minha?
In European Portuguese, it is usually mandatory to put a definite article (like o or a, meaning "the") before a possessive word. Since família is a feminine noun, you use the feminine article a. Literally, the sentence is structured as "The my family".
Why use minha instead of meu?
Possessives in Portuguese must agree with the gender of the noun they describe, not the gender of the speaker. Because família is a feminine word, you use the feminine form minha ("my"), regardless of your own gender.
Since a family has multiple people, why does the verb use the singular mora instead of the plural moram?
Even though a family consists of many people, the word família itself is grammatically singular because it refers to one single group. Because of this, it uses the singular "he/she/it" form of the verb morar (to live), which is mora.