Learn Portuguese (Portugal): O hospital não está longe.

O hospital não está longe.

The hospital is not far.

Breakdown of O hospital não está longe.

não

not / no

estar

to be (temporary / location)

Questions & Answers about O hospital não está longe.

Why use está instead of é for a permanent building like a hospital?

In Portuguese, we use the verb estar (which está comes from) to talk about the physical location of people, things, and places. Even though a hospital is permanently stuck to the ground, you must use estar to say where it is.

Where does the negative word não go in a Portuguese sentence?

To make a sentence negative, you simply put não immediately before the verb. Here, it goes right before está. You don't need extra helping words like you do in English.

How do you pronounce hospital in Portuguese?

The letter 'h' at the beginning of Portuguese words is always silent, so you start right with the 'o' sound. Additionally, the 's' sounds like 'sh' because it comes before a consonant, and the final 'l' sounds a bit like an English 'w' or 'u'.