I’m embarrassed to have to ask this question, as I used to speak the language. This concerns the word for “thank you”, which is gender specific: either obrigado or obrigada.
What I can’t remember is: does the ending of the word depend on who is speaking or on who is being spoken to? For some reason, my brain is telling me that if you’re a man you use the ‘o’ ending regardless of who you’re addressing, but then my brain tells me “no, that can’t be correct.” Then I tell it to shut up and a brawl ensues.
So if I’m telling a woman ‘thank you’, do I say obrigado senhora, or obrigada senhora? Thanks.
If you’re using the construction equivalent to “thank you, ma’am”, meaning, you’re addressing the person you’re saying thanks, it would still be “obrigado senhora”.
I can see how it can be confusing for someone whose native language doesn’t have that construct.
Thanks for the quick response. My physical therapist is going to Portugal in September and was telling me today that she’s listening to language tapes. I corrected her when she said “obrigado, senhor”, but then I started wondering if I mis-remembered (it’s been nearly 20 years since I spoke the lingo with any regularity). Then I told her that what she is listening to is Brazilian, not continental. I remember how panicked I was when, after six months of Brazilian Portuguese language training, I couldn’t understand what my Lisbon employees were saying to me. Fun times.
It’s one of the few odd constructs of the Portuguese language, along with dois/duas, although that one is an adjective and dependent upon the gender of the word being described, while the other is a form of the root verb obrigar. I can’t think of another romance language where the ending of the word for “thank you” changes in that fashion.
Some greetings in Spanish change in a similar way. If you are trying to be charming upon meeting someone you can say Encantado/a (“Enchanted”), which also varies with the gender of the speaker (since it’s an adjective).
The logic would seem to be this: Saying “Obliged” or “Enchanted” would be an abbreviated form of “I am obliged” or “I am enchanted”, where the obliged or enchanted is an adjective modifying the subject. Thus it agrees with the subject in gender.
The only Portuguese phrase I can pronounce correctly is Nao falo Portuguese. I’m told I have that one dead on, at least by some Brazilians. The translators are good enough now that my ability to read Portuguese is decreasing.
In Spanish you can say muy agradecido/a, although it’s overly formal and you’re unlikely to see it other than when addressing the government. In fact, I used that form this same week (I was writing to the equivalent of the IRS; those people make lawyerspeak seem understandable by contrast). In Catalan, agrait/ïda (again, formal, although less than in Spanish and thus more likely to be found in conversation); “to thank” is agrair and “to like” is agradar, so sometimes you hear ai, molt agraïda! M’a agradat molt, aixó! (I’ve probably fumbled the spelling) which kind of sounds like they’re saying the same thing twice but no, it’s “oh, I’m very thankful! I love what you said!”.
Although many English speakers think of it as a dialect of Spanish because of its location within Spain, it’s an independent language. Wiki says it’s closer to the French language group, particularly Occitanof southern France.
Catalan used to be considered as a variety of Occitan. However, I would nitpick by saying there isn’t a “French language group”. French is an Oil dialect. Oil languages are in turn part of the Gallo-Romance group that also includes Occitan, Catalan, Franco-Provençal (not spoken in Provence despite its name) and languages spoken in Northern Italy I forgot the names of.
However, it does make Catalan more closely related to French than to Spanish (first cousins, sort of) in theory. I’m not sure it holds true in practice. I mean : it’s possible that structurally, Catalan is closer to French, but I’m not convinced that an ignorant French speaker would have an easier time figuring it out than an ignorant Castillan speaker and even suspect it would be the other way around due to vocabulary. That’s only my guess, though.
I was using “French language group” as a shorthand to indicate that it was in the same general Gallo-Romance group as French, rather than grouping with Spanish. I didn’t mean to suggest it was closer to French than some other languages.
I remember how panicked I was when, after six months of Brazilian Portuguese language training, I couldn’t understand what my Lisbon employees were saying to me. Fun times.