Breakdown of Estou a limpar o pincel sujo.
estar
to be (temporary / location)
sujo
dirty
limpar
to clean
o pincel
the paintbrush
Questions & Answers about Estou a limpar o pincel sujo.
How does this sentence say "I am cleaning" without using an "-ing" word?
Where is the word for "I" in this sentence?
Why does sujo (dirty) come after pincel (paintbrush)?
In Portuguese, describing words (adjectives) almost always come after the thing they describe. So instead of "dirty paintbrush", the order is "paintbrush dirty" (pincel sujo).
How do we know to use sujo instead of suja?
Adjectives must match the gender of the noun they describe. We can see the word for "the" is o, which tells us pincel is a masculine noun. Because of this, we must use the masculine form of the adjective, sujo, rather than the feminine form suja.