Breakdown of O gato dorme na erva.
o gato
the cat
na
in the / on the / at the (f.sg)
dormir
to sleep
a erva
the grass, the herb
Questions & Answers about O gato dorme na erva.
Why does the sentence use na for 'on'? Doesn't it mean 'in'?
In Portuguese, the preposition em translates to 'in', 'on', or 'at' depending on the context. Here, em combines with the feminine word for 'the' (a) to make na. Because we talk about being 'on' a surface in English, na erva translates to 'on the grass', but physically it just means being located at or in the grass.
Is erva the standard word for grass in Portugal? I have seen the word grama before.
Yes, in European Portuguese, erva is the everyday word for the grass on a lawn or in a meadow. Grama is primarily used for grass in Brazilian Portuguese. In Portugal, grama usually refers to the unit of weight (a gram).
What is the infinitive of dorme and is it a regular verb?
The infinitive is dormir (to sleep). It is mostly regular in the present tense, but it has an irregular 'I' form. While 'the cat' takes the regular third-person ending to become dorme, if you wanted to say 'I sleep', the vowel changes and it becomes durmo.
How do you pronounce the 'e' at the end of dorme?
In European Portuguese, an unaccented 'e' at the end of a word is usually a 'mute e'. It is barely pronounced, so the end of dorme sounds very short and clipped, almost like 'dorm'.
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