Hello, you all. How’s it going?

Este episódio do podcast Inglês Online é todo a respeito de amigos – it’s all about friends. A palavra friend é muito conhecida de quem estuda inglês – até de iniciantes – mas há algumas construçõezinhas envolvendo amigos e amizade que não são assim tão intuitivas para nós, falantes de português. Hoje, neste podcast, você pode ouvir vários exemplos destas expressões que falam sobre amigos em inglês.

Transcrição

Hello, everyone. How’s it going? Today we have a new episode of the inglesonline podcast. To download or just listen to other episodes and download transcripts, go to inglesonline.com.br and click Podcast Inglesonline.

Today I’m talking about friends. Yep, friends, probably one of the first words English students everywhere learn about. But can you use the word “friend” beyond the well-known and simple constructions “He or she is my friend” or “We are friends”? Let’s have a look at different ways we can use the word friend or other related words. I going to describe the relationship between you and one of your friends, who I’m going to call John. Here it goes:

First of all, friendship is what we call the relationship between friends. So, how do you and another person become friends? Let’s say we are talking about a guy friend of yours. A friend who is a man, or a guy. Let’s say his name is John. How did you and John become friends? Maybe he was a friend of a friend. What does that mean? That means that, for example, your good friend Mary had a friend called John. John was a friend of Mary’s before he became your friend. Mary introduced John to you, and now, you and John are friends too. So Mary is now a mutual friend, right? She’s a friend of yours, and she’s a friend of John’s as well. She’s a mutual friend. You and John were introduced by a mutual friend. Who is the mutual friend? Mary.

OK! So… I have just used several little expressions that revolve around the topic of friendship. They’re relatively easy to understand, but we are going to review each one of them and I’m going to give you a few more examples.

So I said that you and John became friends after Mary introduced you to each other. We can also say that you became friends with John. That doesn’t sound very intuitive to our Brazilian ears. Again: you became friends with John after Mary introduced the two of you. “You became friends with John” means ‘você ficou amigo ou amiga do John’. Think now of three of your friends: what year did you become friends with them? Me… I became friends with Claudia in 2001, I became friends with Lili in 2004, and I became friends with Ana in 2009. What about you?

OK, I also said that John is a friend of yours. How does that sound? He is a friend of yours. That means “ele é um amigo seu”. I just talked about the year I met three friends of mine, right? Claudia is a friend of mine, and I became friends with her in 2001. Lili is another friend of mine, and Ana is also a friend of mine. I became friends with Ana in 2009. So when I say that John is a friend of yours and Lili is a  friend of mine… Here’s the grammar reference for you: we’re using the possessive pronouns. These are the possessive pronouns: mine, yours, his, hers, its, ours, yours and theirs.

So again: Lili is a friend of mine, and Claudia is also a friend of mine. John is a friend of yours, according to my story, right? Who are your friends? Is João a friend of yours? Is Luciana a friend of yours? Now, my friend Claudia. She has a friend called Livia. Livia is Claudia’s friend. Livia is a friend of hers.  Alexandre is also Claudia’s friend. Alexandre is a friend of hers. This isn’t complicated to understand, I know,