Word
O meu irmão é muito preguiçoso e trabalha pouco.
Meaning
My brother is very lazy and works little.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of O meu irmão é muito preguiçoso e trabalha pouco.
ser
to be
e
and
o irmão
the brother
muito
much / very
Questions & Answers about O meu irmão é muito preguiçoso e trabalha pouco.
Why are muito and pouco in their default forms here, without matching a gender or number?
In this sentence, they are acting as adverbs of degree. muito modifies the adjective preguiçoso (meaning very lazy), and pouco modifies the verb trabalha (meaning works little). Adverbs are invariable, meaning they never change to feminine or plural forms. They only change endings when they describe a noun, like saying "muitas coisas" (many things).
Why does the sentence start with O meu irmão instead of just Meu irmão?
In European Portuguese, it is the standard rule to put a definite article (o, a, os, as) before a possessive word like meu (my). So, the sentence literally translates to "The my brother". You will see this pattern almost everywhere in Portugal.
Why use é instead of está for being lazy?
How do you pronounce the ç in preguiçoso?