Describe a home in Portuguese: rooms, há and tem

Short answer: move from whole to detail

Start with the type of space and relevant rooms. Add a spatial relationship and useful feature. You need not list every item of furniture. “A casa tem dois quartos e uma sala. A cozinha fica ao lado da sala” already builds an image. A long unordered description can be harder to understand than five carefully chosen sentences that let the reader organise the space step by step.

In these examples, quarto is a bedroom and sala a living space or another room function supplied by context. Casa de banho names a bathroom. Do not automatically convert a foreign listing’s room count into the number of quartos: read the units actually supplied. This guide interprets neither advertising classifications nor legal housing categories, which would require information beyond an elementary language exercise.

Rooms and features with tem

“A casa tem uma cozinha e duas casas de banho” uses ter for composition or features. A casa is singular, so tem; “As casas têm” has a written accent on the plural form. Compare “O quarto tem uma janela” and “Os quartos têm janelas”. Plural subjects do not by themselves establish the exact number of windows; a sufficient description is still required to count them.

Grande, pequeno, claro and escuro describe characteristics in context. “A sala é pequena” supplies no square-metre measurement. “A sala tem vinte metros quadrados” would give one, but our plan does not. Do not turn a qualitative assessment into an exact area. When the task asks for a missing size, identifying that it is not supplied may be the accurate answer rather than choosing a plausible value.

Introduce with há; locate with está

“Há uma mesa na cozinha” introduces a table’s existence. Once identified, “A mesa está junto à janela” locates it. In this impersonal use, há remains unchanged for plural: “Há duas cadeiras”, not hão duas cadeiras. Different Portuguese varieties may use tem in existence statements; this written practice follows the European Portuguese models shown rather than declaring every alternative construction universally incorrect.

Compare “A cozinha tem uma mesa” and “Há uma mesa na cozinha”: both can describe the same information from different starting points. “A mesa está na cozinha” treats the table as identified in the conversation. Practise all three with one object and select according to the question. One useful arrangement should not become the only supposedly possible way to describe every room or piece of furniture.

• Compare identity and location with ser and estar

Locate things on a simple floor plan

À direita, à esquerda, ao lado de, entre and em frente a need a reference. The invented plan takes the viewpoint of someone entering through the main door. That makes “À esquerda fica a cozinha” interpretable without confusing it with the opposite viewpoint. Identify the reference before placing a room on paper from an instruction or judging that someone else’s drawing contradicts your own.

Rés do chão and primeiro andar are different floor indications in this nomenclature. The text establishes no lift, accessibility or building condition. Do not add those features by association. This is a language diagram, not a technical document. The exercise checks whether you connect rooms, objects and positions actually described, rather than whether the fictional home would satisfy a real housing requirement.

Worked exercises: count only what is stated

The model gives two bedrooms, one living room, one kitchen and one bathroom. The table is in the kitchen beside the window. No total area or price is supplied. The form answers are: 1 tem; 2 há; 3 está; 4 têm. Plural cadeiras does not change impersonal há; plural casas requires têm. Explain the subject or impersonal construction rather than treating every plural noun as controlling the next verb.

Someone summarises “A casa tem duas casas de banho”. That is wrong: two refers to bedrooms. Correct it while keeping the other details. Move only the table and update its sentence without changing the bedroom count. A useful revision separates the feature actually altered from unrelated information instead of rewriting the entire description and accidentally changing facts that were already clear.

Production: a description and the reader’s questions

Draw a small invented plan and describe it from general layout to details. Use ter, há and estar at least once, a quantity and a spatial relationship. A partner draws from the text without seeing your plan. Compare whether any difference came from vocabulary, viewpoint or missing information. Add a focused question to resolve that point rather than silently assuming an unmentioned room or corridor.

Continue with ser/estar, prepositions and comparisons, plus the A2 path for other skills. CEFR and Camões provide the educational framework; plans, models and answers are editorial. They are not listings, technical assessments, property recommendations or official CIPLE tasks. The useful outcome is an understandable representation of the described space with clear limits on information the text never supplied.

• Compare spaces without inventing features

Sources and scope of this guide

Official sources support the stated legal, language and certification facts. Plans, examples and checklists are independent editorial suggestions, not instructions from an authority.

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