Learn Portuguese (Portugal): À noite eu como em casa.

À noite eu como em casa.

At night I eat at home.

Breakdown of À noite eu como em casa.

Questions & Answers about À noite eu como em casa.

Why do we use À instead of just A for "At night"?

À with the grave accent is a contraction. It combines the preposition a (at/to) and the feminine word for "the", which is also a. In Portuguese, we literally say "at the night" (à noite).

Wait, doesn't como mean "how"? Why does it mean "eat" here?

Como is a common double-meaning word. It does mean "how" or "like" in questions and comparisons, but it is also the "I" form of the verb comer (to eat). Because it comes right after the pronoun eu (I), we know it is the verb in this sentence.

Why is it em casa (at home) but à noite (at night)? They both use "at" in English.

English uses "at" for both, but Portuguese uses different prepositions depending on the phrase. For evening/night, we use the a contraction (à noite). For being "at home", we use the preposition em (in/at) followed directly by the word casa, with no "the" in between.

Do I always need to include eu in a sentence like this?

No, you can simply say À noite como em casa. In Portuguese, the verb ending (-o for como) already tells us who is doing the action, so dropping the eu is perfectly natural and very common.