Word
O aniversário dele é em maio.
Meaning
His birthday is in May.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Lesson
Breakdown of O aniversário dele é em maio.
ser
to be
em
in / on / at
dele
his (forms: dela, deles, delas)
maio
May
Questions & Answers about O aniversário dele é em maio.
Why does the sentence use dele instead of a word meaning 'his' before the noun?
In Portuguese, to say 'his' or 'hers', it is very common to use dele (of him) or dela (of her) after the noun. So O aniversário dele literally translates to 'The birthday of him'. This is often preferred over the possessive word seu because seu can mean 'your', 'his', 'hers', or 'theirs', which can get confusing!
Why is there an O at the very beginning of the sentence?
Because the phrase is structured as 'The birthday of him', we need the definite article O (The) at the start. When using dele or dela to show possession, you must include the article that matches the noun—in this case, the masculine singular word aniversário.
Why do we use é here instead of está?
Why is maio written with a lowercase 'm'?
In Portuguese, the months of the year (like maio, abril, dezembro) and the days of the week are always written with lowercase letters. This is a small but important difference from English capitalization rules!