Telling my landlord the hot water is broken: Explaining the problem

💬 há means both "there is" and "there are", and the h is silent: (ah).

💬 Portuguese happily doubles the negative: não plus nenhuma "none at all" makes the sentence stronger, not positive. nenhuma ends in -a to match água.

💬 The verb sai "comes out" often goes before the thing that comes out. Compare sai fumo "smoke comes out".

💬 de + as merges into das. Likewise de + os becomes dos, as in dos canos "from the pipes".

🇵🇹 Many Portuguese flats heat water with a gas esquentador that lights up when you open the hot tap. It's usually the first thing a landlord asks about.

💬 acender means to light, as in a flame or a light. That fits a gas heater that ignites when you run hot water.

💬 Portuguese "makes" a noise with fazer, just like English. In faz, the z at the end sounds like "sh": (fash).

💬 desligar is the opposite of ligar "to switch on". des- at the front reverses a verb, like English "un-".

💬 deve ser means "it must be", for a good guess. You can reuse it freely: deve ser o gás "it must be the gas".

💬 vou plus a basic verb means "I'm going to", just like English: vou ligar "I'm going to phone".

💬 Portuguese says técnico "technician" where English might say "repairman" or "engineer". It covers anyone who fixes appliances.

💬 amanhã means "tomorrow" and manhã means "morning", so watch the extra a. Both end in a nasal ã, said through the nose.

💬 lhe is the polite "you" (to you), and in Portugal it attaches after the verb with a hyphen: ligo-lhe. With a friend it would be ligo-te.

🇵🇹 A common, neutral goodbye even when you won't see the person later that day. It works fine to end a call with your landlord.