Hi! As I’ve been reading ad studying I’ve seen several examples that the word "to"in English is different in Portuguese (and Spanish I think as well).
Examples
Você quer aprender [ a ] falar português. - You want to learn to speak Portuguese?
Você tem [ que ] ouvir. - You have to listen.
I’ve also seen where it is “de” and “no”. This is so confusing for me, because I don’t know when to appropriately use them! I hope someone can clear this up for me. Thanks! Obrigado!
Hello PZ!
It would be better not to try translate word-by-word from your target language. Try to think of the meaning of whole sentence or a group of sentences. In these cases I believe it is because different verbs need different prepositions, connectives, etc The “basic” translation of "to"in Portuguese is “para”.
Espero ter te ajudado um pouquinho!
I was just doing some Dutch in my German slot and came across a few prepositions, like “op” which the dictionary told me mean "in’, ‘at’, ‘by’ ‘up’ and a few other things. Prepositions in any language take a long time to get right, and they do not prevent us from understanding or getting our meaning across.
Thanks both! Marbatis I never thought of it that way, you’re right. And Steve yes, I keep needing to remember that it doesn’t need to be right exactly every time, I will learn as I continue to speak it.