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Nesse episódio do podcast Inglês Online vamos falar sobre algumas expressões muito comuns no inglês, todas com a palavra ‘would’.

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 gonna focus on a few very common ways to use the word ‘would’. Would, as in… If I had a million dollars, I would travel around the world. There are some short phrases with ‘would’ that… They’re almost set phrases that people say very, very often in everyday conversation. They’re not hard to understand and I’m pretty sure that most of you listening would get the meaning if someone said one of these phrases, but the goal here is to expose you to them a little bit more and, who knows? Tomorrow one of them might come out of your mouth just like that.

So in order to introduce the first phrase with would, I’ll ask you to imagine that you’re at work right now, and just casually chatting with a colleague. There’s been a rumor going around the office today that everyone is going to be asked to leave at 3PM because of some kind of safety inspection or something… You’re hopeful. You feel super tired and you would love to be able to take a nap before dinner. So you ask your colleague – let’s say her name is Helen – so, you ask Helen, ‘Do you think we’re going home early today?’. And what does Helen say? She says ‘I wouldn’t count on it’. She seems so sure about it; you’re devastated. You ask her “Why?” and she says “I just talked to the boss and he said it’s business as usual until 5 o’clock”.

Helen’s answer to your question was “I wouldn’t count on it”. That means she doesn’t believe that that’s gonna happen. She doesn’t believe that people at the office are going home early today. Why does she think that? Because she talked to the boss, and the boss basically said that today is just another regular day at the office. So Helen is saying “I wouldn’t count on it. I don’t believe we’ll be going home early today. I talked to the boss, and he indicated that that’s not gonna happen, so… going home early today? I wouldn’t count on it.”

So whenever someone asks you if you think something is going to happen, and you’re relatively sure that that’s not going to happen, you can say “I wouldn’t count on it”. Is Brazil going to be the next World Cup champion? I wouldn’t count on it. Honestly? I wouldn’t. Are soapoperas going to be banned from our TV programming? I wouldn’t count on it. Are cats gonna start barking? I wouldn’t count on it.

But you haven’t given up yet. Helen thinks today’s business as usual, but she could be wrong so you move on to another colleague. You see Steve coming through the glass door so you think you might as well ask him what he thinks. “Steve, rumor has it that we’re all leaving the office early today. Do you think that’s true?” And what does Steve reply? He says “Oh, I wouldn’t know. I’ve just come in. I just arrived in the office, I haven’t talked to anyone yet, so… Sorry, I wouldn’t know”. There’s no way Steve would know whether...