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Ela abriu o email, mas não respondeu.

Ela abriu o email, mas não respondeu.
She opened the email, but did not reply.
From Lesson 65:Past tense of regular -er and -ir verbs·Portuguese (Portugal)

Breakdown of Ela abriu o email, mas não respondeu.

não
not / no
ela
she
mas
but
abrir
to open
responder
to reply
o email
the email

Questions & Answers about Ela abriu o email, mas não respondeu.

How do we get abriu from the verb abrir?
Abrir (to open) is a regular -ir verb. To talk about a completed action she did in the past, you drop the -ir ending and add -iu. This makes abriu (she opened).
Does respondeu follow a similar rule since it is an -er verb?
Yes! The verb is responder (to reply). For regular -er verbs talking about 'ele', 'ela', or 'você' in the simple past tense, you drop the -er and add -eu. That gives us respondeu (she replied).
Why isn't the word ela repeated after mas?
In Portuguese, you can leave out the subject pronoun if it is already clear who you are talking about. Since the first half of the sentence says that she opened the email, it is obvious that she is also the one who did not reply.
Is the word email masculine or feminine in Portuguese?
It is masculine, which is why we use the masculine word for 'the' before it, giving us o email. When modern English words are borrowed into Portuguese, they almost always become masculine nouns.

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