Portuguese Grammar - Prepositions

Prepositions

Portuguese prepositions are somewhat similar to those of neighboring Romance languages; but there are some conspicuous differences.

There is no simple correspondence between English and Portuguese prepositions; the following table is a rough approximation:

a = used before indirect object, it can also mean "to", "at", "in", "on", etc, or used before direct object (accusative preposition) for topicalization.

The English possessive case has no systematic counterpart in Portuguese (or, for that matter, in any other Romance language except Romanian and Latin). Portuguese generally uses de ("of") to indicate possession or, indeed, any relation (which must be deciphered from the context).

Several prepositions contract with the definite article.

preposition	article
	o	a	os	as
de	do	da	dos	das
em	no	na	nos	nas
por	pelo	pela	pelos	pelas
a	ao	à	aos	às
para	prò1, pro1	prà1, pra1	pròs1, pros1	pràs1, pras1

The contractions in the first four rows (with de, em, por, a) are mandatory in all registers. The grave accent in à / às has phonetic value in Portugal and African countries, but not in Brazil (see Portuguese phonology). In Brazil, the grave accent serves only to indicate the crasis in written text. The contractions in the last row are common in speech, but not used in formal writing. They may, however, appear when transcribing colloquial speech, for example in comic books. In the latter case, the grave accent is often omitted in Brazil, and it is also often mistakenly replaced with an acute accent elsewhere.

The prepositions de and em may also contract with the indefinite article, and with some pronouns that begin with a vowel:

de + um/uma/uns/umas = dum/duma/duns/dumas ("of a", "from a")

em + um/uma/uns/umas = num/numa/nuns/numas ("in a", "on a", "at a")

The contractions above are very common in the spoken language, formal or informal, and are also acceptable in formal writing in Portugal. In Brazil, they are avoided in writing, especially those of the preposition de with the indefinite article.

Across clause boundaries, contractions may occur in colloquial speech, but they are not done in writing, for clarity sake:

Fui, apesar da loja estar fechada. (informal only)

Fui, apesar de a loja estar fechada. (formal or informal)

"I went, even though the shop was closed."

The English concept of phrasal verb (like "set up", "get by", "pick out", etc.) does not exist in Portuguese: as a rule, prepositions are attached to the noun more strongly than to the verb.

For a list of contracted prepositions in Portuguese, see Wikipedia in Portuguese: Contração gramatical.