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To Borrow and To Lend: Say It in Portuguese

To Borrow and To Lend: Say It in Portuguese

posted on December 1, 2016

To Borrow and To Lend: Say It in Portuguese - Portuguese lesson

I was listening to a couple of CDs that a friend lent me and it occurred to me how rare it is these days to borrow CDs. Not so long ago, borrowing and lending music was a common practice. Now everything is on the cloud or in our phones and computers, and that interaction of lending and borrowing music is mostly gone.

Luckily we can still lend and borrow books, even the digital ones. So, hey, you can lend my book to your friends and help them with their Portuguese 🙂

Today you will learn how to say To Borrow and To Lend in Portuguese.

To Lend = Emprestar

Emprestar is a regular verb.

I feel that in English it’s more common to ask if you can borrow something. But in Portuguese it’s very common to ask if the other person will lend you something.

  • To lend something to someone = emprestar algo a alguém

Below are examples with the verb Emprestar in action:

1)

Pai, me empresta o carro?

= Dad, will you lend me the car?

2)

Emprestei alguns livros ao Cláudio. Espero que ele devolva os meus livros!

= I lent a few books to Cláudio. I hope he will return my books!

3)

Alice: Que frio! Você pode me emprestar um casaco?
Clara: Claro! Vou te emprestar um cachecol também.

Translation:

Alice: It’s so cold! Can you lend me a coat?
Clara: Sure! I will lend you a scarf too.

To Borrow = Pegar emprestado, Tomar emprestado

Both Pegar and Tomar are regular verbs. I will use “pegar” in the examples below just out of habit. You can use “tomar” with the same meaning.

  • To borrow something from someone = Pegar algo emprestado de alguém

Depending on how I phrase my sentence, I will have other structures. The most common are:

  • Me emprestar = to lend me
  • Te emprestar = to lend you

How about emprestado? Emprestado is the past participle of the verb emprestar. It needs to agree in gender and number with the borrowed object. I will show you this in the examples below.

1)

Vou pegar o carro do meu pai emprestado amanhã.

= I will borrow my dad’s car tomorrow.

2)

Peguei alguns livros emprestados da Ana.

= I borrowed some books from Ana.

3)

Posso pegar a sua bicicleta emprestada?

= Can I borrow your bike?

How about Pedir emprestado?

Pedir emprestado means to ask to borrow something.  Here’s an example:

O João me pediu dinheiro emprestado e nunca pagou.

= João asked to borrow money and never paid it back.

book-my-trial-by-mooiart

This article was originally posted in June 2012 and has been updated to include additional examples and the video lesson.

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About Luciana Lage

Luciana Lage founded Street Smart Brazil drawing on her passion for Brazilian Portuguese language and culture. Luciana has also taught Portuguese at University of California, Berkeley, and currently teaches at the University of San Francisco.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Daniel

    May 30, 2021 at 5:28 am

    You said Pegar and Tomar then you gave examples for Pegar and Pedir

    Reply
  2. Santos

    February 26, 2018 at 9:38 am

    Hi! I’m very gratfull for your blog, it’s very usefull for me. I’ve been improving my English since I joined in your blog.

    Reply
    • Luciana Lage

      February 26, 2018 at 1:09 pm

      That’s great!

      Reply
  3. Abdiel

    January 25, 2017 at 2:32 pm

    Oi
    Eu trabalho pra uma linha aérea latina y falamos inglés e espanhol.
    Tenho 19 anos trabalhando fazendo voos pra 6 cidades de Brazil e fico agora feliz com neste blog de você .
    Não falo perfeito mais eu tento aprehender e quero aprender neste maravilhoso língua .. adoro português é muito obrigado pela ajuda de sua blog

    Reply
    • Luciana Lage

      January 30, 2017 at 3:11 pm

      Oi, Abdiel! Fico feliz que você esteja aprendendo com o meu blog 🙂

      Reply

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