Speak Brazilian Portuguese - Onde você mora?

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In today's episode, I'm going to teach you how to answer a very common question:

Where do you live?

We are going to study the conjugation of the verb to live (morar) and the use of the preposition in.

To say where you live, you need to conjugate the verb to live (morar) and use the preposition in according to the gender of the country, city or neighborhood where you live.

For example:

Onde você mora?

Eu moro nos Estados Unidos.

ou

Eu moro em Nova Iorque.

Remember that in Portuguese, countries have gender (male and female), while cities have no gender. They are gender-neutral.

Let's talk a bit about the preposition em. The preposition em can be translated as in, on or at in English.

Like the preposition de, which we studied a few weeks ago, em is a gender-neutral preposition, that is, it has no gender. But before masculine or feminine nouns, we merge the preposition em with the articles a or o, and we then create the prepositions na and no.

Before countries, we use the prepositions na or no, according to the gender of the country. And before cities, we always use the preposition em, since cities are usually gender-neutral.

There are some exceptions to this rule, but I’m not going to talk about exceptions in this lesson. We are going to focus on the conjugation of the verb to live and on the most common uses of the preposition in.

As a rule, countries that end with the letter a are feminine, and the others are masculine.

Let's see some examples:

Eu moro em Nova Iorque.

Você mora no Brasil.

Ela mora na China.

Ele mora nas Filipinas.

A gente mora na Argentina.

Nós moramos nos Estados Unidos.

Vocês moram em São Paulo.

Elas moram na Russia.

Eles moram no Japão.

Note that the United States is a masculine plural country, so we use the preposition nos, in the United States. And the Philippines is a feminine plural country, so we use the preposition nas, in the Philippines.

If you do not know the gender of the country, don't worry about it. Just use the preposition em, the gender-neutral preposition, and everyone will understand what you are saying.

Now let's do an exercise to practice the verb to live and the preposition in and its variations.

I will give you a sentence for you to complete with the verb to live (morar) and the preposition em and its variations. Then I'll tell you the correct answer. Ready?

Eu ---- São Paulo.

Resposta: Eu moro em São Paulo.

Você ---- México.

Resposta: Você mora no México.

Ela ---- Washington.

Resposta: Ela mora em Washington.

Ele ---- Filipinas.

Resposta: Ele mora nas Filipinas.

A gente ---- Brasil.

Resposta: A gente mora no Brasil

Nós ---- Estados Unidos.

Resposta: Nós moramos nos Estados Unidos.

Vocês ---- Nigéria.

Resposta: Vocês moram na Nigéria.

Elas ---- Londres.

Resposta: Elas moram em Londres.

Eles ---- Paquistão.

Resposta: Eles moram no Paquistão.

Very well!

Listen to this episode at least two more times to assimilate content and practice your pronunciation.

Thank you for listening to my podcast and see you next time!

Tchau, tchau!