Questions & Answers about O cão é castanho.
How do I pronounce the symbol over the "a" in cão?
That symbol is called a tilde (or til in Portuguese), and it tells you that the vowel sound is nasal. To say cão, make a sound very similar to the English word "cow", but push the air up through your nose as you say it.
Why do we use é instead of está here?
Does the adjective castanho change if we are talking about a female dog?
Yes! In Portuguese, describing words (adjectives) must match the gender of the noun. Because o cão is a masculine noun, we use the masculine form castanho. If we were talking about a female dog (a cadela), the adjective would change its ending to match, making the sentence A cadela é castanha.
I've seen the word marrom used for brown before. Why use castanho here?
In Portugal, castanho is the standard and most common word for the color brown, especially for natural things like animals, hair, eyes, and wood. Marrom is the standard word for brown in Brazilian Portuguese, so you will often see it in apps or materials made in Brazil, but it is very rarely used in Portugal.
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