Portuguese Yes-or-No Questions and Question Tags

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In Portuguese specifically, yes-or-no questions look the same as declarative sentences, that is, the word order is kept unchanged. A few examples:

Declarative
Tu estás no Porto.
You are in Porto.

Interrogative
Tu estás no Porto?
Are you in Porto?

As you see, contrary to other languages such as English, the verb follows the subject in both declarative and interrogative sentences.

Because interrogative and declarative sentences look the same, it is important to intonate interrogative sentences properly so that they come across as intended.

For instance, when asking, Tu estás no Porto? you want to finish off in a rising tone so that it clearly sounds like a question. Read on.

Lesson #2 Question Words in Reversed Order - Portuguesepedia

Lesson #9 The redundant é que - Portuguesepedia

Lesson #22 Question words - Portuguesepedia

Lesson #34 Yes-no questions - Portuguesepedia

No need for an auxiliary

As is the case for open-ended questions, yes-or-no questions do perfectly well without any auxiliary verb (which is not the case in English):

O carro tem gasolina suficiente?
Does the car have enough gas?

Ele já chegou de Inglaterra?
Did he arrive from England already?

Further reading! Read the following article to learn more about Portuguese verb usage compared to English: Portuguese Verb Usage and Tenses: A Practical Guide Anchored to English.

How to answer a yes-or-no question

Usually, we don’t answer these questions with a bare “yes” or “no”. Instead, we repeat the verb used in the question:

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