It's really not that hard to pick whether to use por vs. para to say, for. You'll soon learn that Portuguese has different words to express what we would use one word to accomplish. It's part of what makes the language very precise. English is considered vague by comparison!
por vs. para ~ Can't we all just get along?
The por vs. para question always seems to put everyone into a fighting mood. That's because we're so used to saying for without having to think about it. Imagine if we had two different ways to say, for?!
The road to happiness is always : simplify. By learning the most, most used instances of these words we can get to fluency faster.
por
por: Quantity
por: Reason/Motivation
por: Movement through something
*When you have por + o or, por + a » these can contract! Like this:
por: it can contract too!
When por is used together with "the" (o, a) it gets CONTRACTED like this:
por + o = pelo
por + a = pela
BIZARRE.
It's not an obvious contraction. I think it's just because it sounds good: PAY-LO & PAY-LA.
para
Use para to say, go somewhere. And if you're really LIGADO com a língua and wonder if you can also contract para + o,a. keyword: por vs. para
para: Direction & Destination.
PODE SIM.
But it's (for now) just coloquial, which means that you should only use it in informal, spoken situations. Language evolves, and one day these contractions may be adopted into the official lexicon:
para + o = pro
para + a = pra
Our course will show you exactly how to use Portuguese correctly and effectively. Using por and para will never again be a mystery!
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