3

Why

Estou triste de sentir, e reflito-o à janela ao som da água que pinga e da chuva que cai

is it reflito-o and not reflito-lo?

What's a rule that's about verb + -o and verb + -lo called? I haven't even been able to find oen.

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  • The pronoun, in this case o, can be either before or after the verb. When it is after, it joins with the verb, as "mato-o" and "amo-o". If the verb ends in -r, -s or -z, then lo is joined instead: "para matá-lo", "tu faze-lo" and "nós fazemo-lo". When the verb ends in a nasal vowel, then no is joined: "eles são-no" and "para fazerem-no". In Brazil, lo for verbs ending in -s and specially -z sounds weirds; I think the situation in Portugal is complicated.
    – Schilive
    Jul 9 at 4:03
  • Also, the origin of the "rule" is that in the olden days, before even 1200's, people only used lo (la, los, las), so "amo-lo", "matar-lo", "gostam-lo". Some consonants betweens two vowels ceased to be pronounced, turning "amo-lo" into "amo-o". In the case of "matar-lo", as r and l are very similar, then l only was said; turning "matar-lo" into "matá-lo". With "gostam-lo", the l got nasaled, and as the greatest difference between l and n is that the second is nasal, l turned into n, turning gostam-lo into gostam-no.
    – Schilive
    Jul 9 at 4:09
  • 2
    @Schilive Please turn your comments into an answer!
    – stafusa
    Jul 9 at 10:15
  • @Schilive ...with "gostam-lo" --> why then not "gostam-no"? Or did you mean that it used to be L but then it'd become N and so is nowadays?
    – DankenN
    Jul 9 at 14:09
  • @DankenN, yeah. It used to be that people said gostam-lo, but then it became gostam-no. This happened because the l got nasalized.
    – Schilive
    Jul 9 at 16:14

1 Answer 1

1

The rule is simple: the pronoun is -lo(s)/-la(s) if the verbal form ends with a consonant such as r, s, z. If the verb ends with a nasal sound, it will be -no(s)/-na(s). Elsewhere it will be -o(s)/-a(s).

It is that simple, it happens for historical reasons during the development of the language!

1
  • There is one exception tough: "ele quer" -> "ele quere-o"
    – Artefacto
    Jul 11 at 8:32

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