Breakdown of O menino é o filho do professor.
ser
to be
o professor
the teacher (m)
do
of the / from the (do, da, dos, das)
o filho
the son
o menino
the little boy
Questions & Answers about O menino é o filho do professor.
Since this lesson is about words like dele, could we use dele in this sentence?
You would use dele if you wanted to say 'The little boy is his son' instead of naming the teacher. That would be O menino é o filho dele. Because we are specifically saying 'the teacher's son', we name the owner using do professor (of the teacher).
Where does the word do in do professor come from?
Do is a mandatory contraction. It combines the preposition de (of) and the masculine word for 'the', which is o. Whenever de is followed by o, they merge to form do. So do professor literally means 'of the teacher'.
Why is the sentence ordered as 'the son of the teacher' instead of using an apostrophe-s?
Why do we say o filho instead of just filho?
Because the Portuguese structure literally translates to 'the son of the teacher', you need the definite article for 'the' before 'son'. Even though English leaves it out in the phrase 'the teacher's son', Portuguese requires the article o.
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