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O ladrão estava a fugir da prisão enquanto estava a chover.

O ladrão estava a fugir da prisão enquanto estava a chover.
The thief was fleeing from the prison while it was raining.
From Lesson 87:The past continuous (estava a)·Portuguese (Portugal)

Questions & Answers about O ladrão estava a fugir da prisão enquanto estava a chover.

How do we form the "was fleeing" and "was raining" parts in this sentence?
We use the imperfect past tense of estar (in this case, estava) followed by the preposition a and the full, unchanged infinitive verb (fugir or chover). This is the standard way to show an ongoing action in the past in European Portuguese.
Why is it da prisão instead of just de prisão?
The verb fugir (to flee or escape) is followed by the preposition de (from). Because prisão is a specific feminine noun here (meaning "the prison"), we combine de with the feminine word for "the" (a) to make da.
Why doesn't estava a chover have a word for "it" like in English?
In European Portuguese, weather verbs like chover (to rain) do not use a dummy subject pronoun like "it". You simply conjugate the verb directly in the third-person singular.
Both ladrão and prisão end in -ão, but one is masculine (o) and the other is feminine (a). Is there a rule to know which is which?
Yes! Words ending in -são or -ção (like prisão) are almost always feminine. Other words ending in -ão (like ladrão) are usually masculine.

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