We have already told you about popular holidays in Portugal, and today we want to teach you how to talk about them yourself. In particular, we will offer you some vocabulary about Birthday Party, give you some ideas on how to develop this topic, and also consider some grammar points. Often the difficulty in maintaining a conversation on a certain topic lies not only in the lack of necessary knowledge, but also in the lack of thoughts on the matter that we want to express. Let’s fix that!
Birthday
The most important holiday in everyone’s life is their Birthday. In Portuguese, people do not talk about this holiday as we would commonly hear – “dia de nascimento“. Such a phrase can only be found in documents. In everyday speech, Portuguese speakers say “fazer anos“, which literally translates to “to make years”, or they say “ter aniversário” (to have an anniversary). Therefore, we need to remember how these irregular verbs are conjugated.
| Verbo “fazer” | |
| eu | faço |
| tu | fazes |
| ele, ela, você | faz |
| nós | fazemos |
| eles, elas, vocês | fazem |
| Verbo “ter” | |
| eu | tenho |
| tu | tens |
| ele, ela, você | tem |
| nós | temos |
| eles, elas, vocês | têm |
A: Tens aniversário hoje? Parabéns! Quantos anos fazes? (Do you have a birthday today? Congratulations! How old are you?)
B: Obrigado! Faço trinta e oito. (Thank you! I’m turning thirty-eight.)
As you may have already understood, holidays are regular events, so we can talk about them in the present tense. This significantly simplifies the task.
Holiday table
Usually, any holiday in Portugal is accompanied by a festive lunch or dinner. Some Portuguese prefer to spend certain holidays at the table at home, while others prefer to go to a restaurant. We have already discussed how to place an order in a restaurant. Today, let’s discuss the festive home table. What does this bring us? New vocabulary!
Firstly, in Portuguese, setting the table is “pôr a mesa“. The verb “pôr” (to put) is irregular. Let’s look at the conjugation forms:
| Verbo “pôr” | |
| eu | ponho |
| tu | pões |
| ele, ela, você | põe |
| nós | pomos |
| eles, elas, vocês | poem |
A: Quem vai pôr a mesa? (Who is going to set the table?)
B: Eu ponho! Podes descansar. (I will! You can rest.)
Next, we need to figure out what dishes need to be put on the table.
- o copo (glass), a garaffa (bottle), o jarro (jug), o guardanapo (napkin),
- a faca (knife), a colher (spoon), o garfo (fork), o prato (plate)
Speaking of a festive cake, we can use the word “bolo“: bolo de aniversário (birthday cake), bolo de
Natal (Christmas cake).
Friends and Gifts
Most of us love celebrating holidays with friends, love giving and receiving gifts. Quantity is important in this matter! And here we need some grammar. For example, with the help of the words alguém (someone) and ninguém (no one) we can say who came to the holiday.
A: Alguém veio à festa do João? (Did someone come to João’s party?)
B: Não, ninguém. (No, no one.)
These words have only one form – the singular form. If we want to use a quantitative characteristic, but without specificity, we will need similar in spelling, but different in meaning words: algum (some) and nenhum (none).
A: A Maria não fez nenhuma festa? (Did Maria have any parties?)
B: Ela tinha algumas ideias, mas não realizou nenhuma. Que pena! (She had several ideas, but did not implement any of them. What a pity!)
| Singular | Plural |
| algum | alguns |
| alguma | algumas |
| nenhum | nenhuns |
| nenhuma | nenhumas |
Two more words that can cause confusion are tudo (all) and todo (whole). These words differ by just one letter, however, they have different meanings and behave differently. For example, the word “tudo” has only one form, while the word “todo” changes depending on gender and number. Let’s look at it in context.
A: A festa já acabou? (Has the party already ended?)
B: Sim, já comeram todos os pratos e beberam todas as bebidas. (Yes, they have already eaten all the dishes and drunk all the drinks.)
Furthermore, the word todo can not only reflect size and quantity, but also frequency. In other words, it can mean “every”.
- Todos os anos vamos ao mesmo restaurante ao aniversário da nossa avó. (Every year we go to the same restaurant for our grandmother’s birthday.)
- Em todas as festas bebo muito e depois não me lembro de nada. (Every party I drink a lot and then I don’t remember anything.)
Additional vocabulary
In this topic we will need the following correct verbs with the ending “-ar“: desejar (to wish), celebrar (to celebrate), reservar (to book), convidar (to invite), juntar (to join).
- O Diogo celebra o seu aniversário no sábado. (Diogo celebrates his birthday on Saturday.)
- Eles reservaram todas as mesas porque convidaram muitos familiares. (They reserved all the tables because they invited many relatives.)
- As festas juntam a família. (Holidays bring the family together.)
Here are some suitable phrases using the irregular verb “dar” (to give):
dar os parabéns (congratulate), dar prendas (to give gifts), dar um abraço/beijo (to give a hug/kiss)
Let’s finish by looking at the conjugation forms of this verb:
| Verbo “dar” | |
| eu | dou |
| tu | dás |
| ele, ela, você | dá |
| nós | damos |
| eles, elas, vocês | dão |
Hoje vamos ao aniversário da nossa mãe e damos-lhe os parabéns e as prendas. (Today we are going to our mother’s birthday and we congratulate her and give her gifts.)
Conclusion
Of course, you can talk endlessly about vocabulary on this topic. Moreover, any grammar can be brought into this discussion. However, our articles are not a complete learning material, they are just a small hint of what you can learn from us in our classes. Especially since a Birthday is a pleasant holiday, it is nice to talk about it in any language in the world!