Questions & Answers about Tenho o passaporte dela.
Why does dela come after the word passaporte?
In Portuguese, to say "his", "her", or "their", you literally say "of him" or "of her". So, "her passport" is phrased as o passaporte dela (literally: the passport of her). This is why dela comes after the noun instead of before it. Passaporte is a masculine word, so why do we use the feminine dela?
Because dela means "of her" and refers to the owner (a female), not the object she owns. Even if she owned a masculine object like o passaporte or a feminine one like a mala (the suitcase), it stays dela because the owner is still female. Why is there an o before passaporte?
Since dela translates to "of her", you can't just say "I have passport of her". You have to say "I have the passport of her". The o is the word for "the" matching the masculine noun passaporte. Is dela a combination of two words?
Yes! It is a contraction of the word de (of) and ela (she). Whenever these two are next to each other in a sentence, they always combine into dela. Why isn't the word Eu (I) at the beginning of the sentence?
The verb Tenho (I have) already tells us who is doing the action. In Portuguese, it is perfectly normal and very common to drop words like Eu (I) when the verb ending makes it clear who the subject is. Learn Tenho o passaporte dela and more in Portuguese
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