Describing a faulty phone in Portuguese

Level A2

Describing a faulty phone in Portuguese

Your phone has broken, and you take it back to the shop. Connect three useful pieces: what is wrong now, what happened, and the solution you need. You will keep the same object throughout and finish by checking the replacement.

One phone, one problem

Celular means mobile phone; o celular is the phone, and meu celular is my phone. Funcionar means work properly, for a device; a person doing a job uses trabalhar, a different verb. Quebrar here means break, with the object itself as subject; trocar means exchange an item at the shop for another one.

Preciso means I need, from precisar, and ontem means yesterday. Listen to the cards, then say the three infinitives funcionar, quebrar and trocar. You will use only the forms explained below, rather than a complete set of conjugations.

What is wrong now?

O celular funciona means the phone works: funciona is present, with the phone as subject. Recover the familiar negative: put não before the verb, keeping funciona unchanged, in O celular não funciona. English needs does not here; Portuguese does not add a separate helper verb.

Meu changes the description to my phone. The three sentences describe its current condition; they do not yet say when anything happened.

o / meu celular não funciona

What happened?

Quebrou is the completed past form of quebrar with the phone as subject: O celular quebrou means the phone broke. It reports a change, whereas não funciona describes the present problem; saying it does not work does not by itself identify the cause. Ontem places the breakdown yesterday: Quebrou ontem. The phone can be left unspoken once both people know what you mean. Keep the same word order for O celular quebrou? and use question intonation, without an English-style did.

Say what you need

Preciso trocar o celular means I need to exchange the phone. As in other familiar need expressions, preciso is present and already identifies the speaker; you can leave eu (I) unspoken. Before this infinitive, precisar takes no de: say preciso trocar.

Trocar is the unchanged infinitive after preciso. Here it means returning the faulty phone to the shop and receiving another, rather than changing clothes. In the shop assistant’s Eu troco o celular, troco is present with eu; in this situation it offers the exchange immediately, like I’ll exchange the phone.

Preciso trocar o celular

From the problem to the exchange

Speaker A is the customer; B is the shop assistant. Listen once for the whole message: the current problem, yesterday’s breakdown, and the requested exchange. After B offers the exchange, the last two lines check the replacement phone.

O celular funciona? means Does the phone work? The words keep the statement’s order and the voice turns them into a question. Funciona is a complete answer when the phone is already understood, like It works in English; Portuguese can leave that subject unspoken.

Your turn: explain, then check

Instead of having the conversation, write a short message to the shop about your own faulty phone: say it does not work, add that it broke yesterday, and state the solution you need. Build the message aloud before reading the examples; do not just repeat the last line you heard. Then play the assistant and offer the exchange with eu and troco. Finally ask whether the replacement works and answer that it does. Compare with the models and check whether your listener can identify the problem, the time and the requested action.

Now, past event, needed solution

Não funciona describes the problem now; quebrou reports the completed breakdown; preciso trocar states the solution needed now. Keep trocar in its infinitive form after preciso. Say the three parts as one message, with pauses if you need them.

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