Following all the buzz around the royal wedding, let’s analyze more differences between American and British English. American English Portuguese Allowance Pocket money Mesada Bar Pub Bar Collect call Reverse-charge Chamada a cobrar Cookie Biscuit Biscoito Dresser Chest of drawers Cômoda Flashlight Torch Lanterna Freeway Motorway Rodovia Mail Post Correspondência Math Maths Matemática Pacifier Dummy […]

Today we’ll take a look at some important verbs that are followed by infinitive (to + verb). Agree: He agreed to help me with the research. Arrange: Let’s arrange to meet them at the gate before the match. Decide: Jane decided to wear a pink dress. Deserve: The mean girl deserves to be punished. Expect: […]

It’s very common to confuse these two verbs, but if you think that raise always needs an object, and rise has no object, it might become much easier to understand. In Portuguese, we could say that raise is levantar algo/alguém, and rise would be levantar-se. Also remember that raise is a regular verb (raise – […]

Let’s continue studying slang, today with the letter “C”. Cheesy: inferior, malfeito; brega, cafona What a cheesy shirt! This song is so cheesy. Chick: mulher, moça; mina, gata I met a nice chick at the party. To chill, to chill out: relaxar, descansar; ficar frio I’m not going out today, I’m just going to chill. […]

We’ve seen how the simple past is formed, now let’s take a look at its use. Definite time reference: Did you watch that film yesterday? He went at the end of November. Their grandfather died four weeks ago. Without explicit time markers: in these cases, a definite past time may be implied by the situation, […]

Let’s take a look at vocabulary related to the media today. Radio and TV The news is on TV at 6 o’clock. (As notícias in Portuguese, but it’s singular in English) Do you watch soap operas? Yes, I watch Insensato Coração every day. I watched a documentary last night about drugs and young people. I […]

This has been an unfortunate week regarding the weather, especially in Rio Grande do Sul, with all the rain, and in Japan, with the earthquake and tsunami. While we hope things will soon get better, here are some tips for talking about the weather. Noun Adjective Sun Sunny Rain Rainy Wind Windy Cloud Cloudy Snow […]

It’s been a while since I last posted about verbs tenses, so let’s talk about Simple past today. We’ll see how it is formed, and in future posts I’ll talk about the uses. Regular verbs are formed by adding -ed to the base form: talked, walked, touched. For irregular verbs we use the past form […]