O que você está fazendo?

By James Hall / / (2) Beginning Portuguese
O que você está fazendo?

Let's explore the different ways we can talk about what's going on, what someone is doing, what you do, I do, others do.

FAZER

Which of course becomes FAZENDO (the gerund) when you want to say DOING.

O que você está fazendo? ➜ What are you doing?

Now let's ask someone WHAT THEY DO, for a living, for money ETC.

O que você faz? >> What do you do?

See the difference? It's just like in english. You got the pronunciation down for this verb? Here's a Brazilian conjugating FAZER. It's amazing!

But lets return to the sentence O que você está fazendo? for a moment. You may actually hear this said in another way. Brazilians will abbreviate the está >> tá AND they will swallow the você. Here are the results:

O que você está fazendo? >> O que tá fazendo?

Now let's make the sentence: WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO?

Easy.

1) O que você quer fazer?

2) O que você está querendo fazer?

3) O que você queria fazer?

#1 is the most common. But the other options are used too. Language is just so AMAZING isn't it? Think about the different weird ways we say the same thing: What do you want to do? // What do you feeling like doing? // What are you wanting to do? // What would you like to do?

Amazing.

To learn faster and smarter always look for similarities between portuguese and english. The gerund is really powerful.

From the video learning course, INTENSIVO.
Você faz o quê? >> What do you do?

* Notice the order of the words in this is different from the first example?

O que você gosta de fazer? >> What do you like to do?
O que você quer fazer? >> what do you want to do?

Now tell me: O que você gosta de fazer no seu tempo livre?