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How much of the plural actually gets marked. A grammar question in form and a social question in practice.
The control text · argumentative
Proibir o celular nas escolas parece uma medida drástica, mas os resultados sugerem que ela funciona. Nas redes que adotaram a restrição, os professores relatam menos interrupções e uma queda nos casos de intimidação online. É verdade que o aparelho também é ferramenta de estudo, e seria ingênuo ignorar isso. Ainda assim, o custo da distração recai sobre quem já tem menos apoio em casa. Enquanto não houver evidência de que o uso livre melhora a aprendizagem, o ônus da prova cabe a quem defende a permissão.
Where the two part
Brazilian · the base
Redundant plural marking is widely reduced in speech and heavily stigmatised in writing. Existential ter replaces haver in speech at every level.
European · the contrast
Full agreement in speech and writing, and há rather than tem for existence.
10 options
Os professores relatam menos interrupções. — every element marked
The tellDeterminer, noun, verb and adjective all carry the plural.
Anchor B is written this way. Required in every written context and in both exams.
None in writing. In Brazilian casual speech it can sound careful, which is a real cost only in conversation.
Os professor relata menos interrupção.
The tellOne plural marker at the front, none after it.
Real, systematic and extremely common. Recognising it is necessary to follow ordinary speech.
Marked wrong everywhere in writing, and socially marked in Brazil.
Tem muita gente que não concorda com a proibição.
The tellter where the written norm wants haver.
Dominant in Brazilian speech across all registers, and haver in conversation sounds formal.
In writing, and in DAPLE especially, it is the wrong verb.
BR Há muitos casos documentados.
EU Há muitos casos documentados.
The tellHá stays singular no matter how plural its complement is.
Correct in both countries, and its invariability is a rule with no exceptions, which is rare.
The temptation to write houveram is strong and the error is conspicuous.
Foi debitada uma cobrança · Foram debitadas duas cobranças
The tellThe participle agrees with the subject in gender and number.
Anchor A opens with one. Identical to Spanish, so it transfers free.
With a long subject the agreement is easy to lose track of, and that is where the errors sit.
Vendem-se casas. — prescriptive · Vende-se casas. — widespread
The tellWhether the verb agrees with the thing being sold.
A genuine live dispute in the standard rather than a settled rule, and worth knowing as such.
Either form can be marked wrong depending on the marker, which makes it a poor place to be assertive.
A gente cancelou o serviço em maio.
The tellPlural meaning, singular verb, and everything downstream agrees singular too.
The ordinary spoken first-person plural in Brazil.
It leaks: possessives and adjectives follow it singular, so one choice reshapes the whole sentence.
A gente cancelamos — wrong in both standards
The tellA singular subject with a plural verb.
On the sheet because it is the characteristic mid-learning error, produced by knowing that a gente means we.
It is an error in every register, spoken included.
A maioria dos professores relata — or relatam, both defensible
The tellA singular collective with a plural complement.
Both agreements are accepted in the standard, so this is a style choice you can make deliberately.
Deliberate or not, someone will think it is wrong, and consistency within a text matters more than the choice.
Tenho pedido — invariable · Tinha sido debitada — agrees
The tellAfter ter the participle never agrees; after ser and estar it always does.
A clean rule with no exceptions, and it resolves a large class of doubts at once.
Spanish behaves the same way, so the rule is free — but the compound tenses it appears in are not.