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O café sem açúcar é amargo.

O café sem açúcar é amargo.
Coffee without sugar is bitter.
From Lesson 163:Os sabores e a pastelaria·Portuguese (Portugal)

Breakdown of O café sem açúcar é amargo.

ser
to be
o café
the café
o açúcar
the sugar
sem
without
amargo
bitter

Questions & Answers about O café sem açúcar é amargo.

Why does the sentence start with O café (The coffee) instead of just Café when talking about coffee in general?
In Portuguese, you almost always use a definite article (like o or a) before a noun when making a general statement about it. While English just says "Coffee is bitter", Portuguese requires O café é amargo (literally "The coffee is bitter").
Why do we use é (from the verb ser) instead of está (from the verb estar)?
We use ser here because being bitter without sugar is an inherent, permanent characteristic of coffee. If you were talking about one specific cup of coffee that happened to taste bitter right now, you would use estar and say O café está amargo.
Does the ending of amargo change depending on the food we are talking about?
Yes! Adjectives must match the gender and number of the noun they describe. Because café is a masculine singular noun, we use the masculine singular adjective amargo. If we were talking about a feminine noun, like a cerveja (the beer), it would be amarga.
Why does the word açúcar have an accent mark?
In Portuguese, words that end in the letter R naturally have their spoken stress on the final syllable. Because açúcar is stressed on the middle syllable (a-ÇÚ-car), it needs a written accent mark to override the normal pronunciation rule.

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