Dar constructions: dá para, dar certo, dar um jeito

Dá para and não dá run through ordinary Brazilian conversation the way can and can't run through English, and you have already met them in example sentences all over this app without being told what they were. Learn the family and two things happen. You stop hearing dar as “to give” and getting lost — a sentence like Deu vontade de sair stops being a puzzle. And you gain the polite Brazilian way of declining, agreeing to try, and reassuring someone that things will work out.

1. Dá para — the impersonal "can"

Put dar in the third person singular, add para and an infinitive, and you get a construction in which dar is impersonal. It says that conditions allow an action. The infinitive can have its own subject, as você does in the third example.

• Dá para ver o mar daqui. (You can see the sea from here. / The sea is visible from here.)

• Dá para fazer isso hoje? (Can this be done today?)

• Dá para você me ajudar um minuto? (Could you help me for a minute?)

In this impersonal construction, dar remains in the third person singular as its tense changes:

Common Pitfalls

• Conjugating the impersonal dar personally. Here dar stays in the third person singular; the infinitive can have its own subject: not Eu dou para ir, but Dá para eu ir (I can go / it's possible for me to go), or simply Eu posso ir. (I can go.)

• Confusing possibility and personal ability. Dá para ver means conditions allow it — the fog lifted, the seat is good. To emphasize your own capacity or success, use conseguir: Eu consigo ver daqui. (I can see from here.)

• Using dar certo for a device’s normal operation. To say that a phone is not running, use O celular não funciona. (The phone doesn't work.) For this meaning, prefer it to O celular não deu certo. Meanwhile O plano não deu certo (The plan didn't work out) is exactly right.

• Confusing the cause with the person experiencing a state. To say you felt like eating, use Me deu vontade de comer., not Eu dou vontade de comer, which presents you as the cause of the desire.

• Translating the idioms word by word. Dar de cara com (to bump into) has nothing to do with faces, and dar em nada (to come to nothing) is not about giving. Take each expression whole, the way you took dar um jeito (to find a way).

• Losing the accent on dá. Dá is the verb; da is de + a. The accent is the whole difference: Dá para a Ana? (Can it be done for Ana?) versus o carro da Ana (Ana's car).

• Typing dá pra in a formal work e-mail. The spoken shape is perfect in a message to a friend and out of place in formal professional writing — there, write the full dá para (it's possible to), or better still é possível (it is possible).