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A minha prima tem quinze anos.

A minha prima tem quinze anos.
My cousin is fifteen years old.
From Lesson 116:A família alargada (o tio, o sogro)·Portuguese (Portugal)

Questions & Answers about A minha prima tem quinze anos.

Why does the sentence use tem (has) instead of a word for 'is'?
In Portuguese, you express age by saying how many years someone 'has', not what they 'are'. That is why we use tem, from the verb ter (to have), instead of a form of the verb 'to be'.
Why is there an A at the very beginning? Doesn't that translate to 'The my cousin'?
Yes, it literally translates to 'The my cousin'. In European Portuguese, you almost always put a definite article (o or a) before a possessive word like minha (my).
Could I leave out the A and just say Minha prima?
In European Portuguese, you can sometimes drop the article before singular family members, but keeping it (A minha prima) is the most natural and standard way to speak. Dropping the article entirely is much more common in Brazilian Portuguese.
How does the sentence show that this cousin is female?
The noun for cousin changes based on gender. prima ends in an 'a' and means a female cousin. If it were a male cousin, the word would be primo, and the beginning of the sentence would change to match the masculine gender: O meu primo.

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