Hi, everyone. What’s up?

Hoje o podcast Inglês Online atende o pedido da Marianna Carneiro, feito pelo twitter inglesonline, e explica a diferença entre os verbos remember e remind, que podem ser, os dois, traduzidos do inglês como “lembrar”.

Transcrição

Hello, everybody! How have you been? 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 going to focus on two words. Two verbs, actually: remember and remind. Remember is a pretty popular verb and you’ve probably heard this word or one of its conjugations at least a few times. So let’s get started with ‘remember’.

Remember basically means… lembrar. When you and a friend are chatting about a place you both visited years ago, you say to each other “Remember this? Remember that?” For example, Remember when we were in Rio and you got mugged?” And the other person may say “Yes, I remember that” or “No, I don’t remember being mugged”. And then your friend might say “This is what I remember: I remember going to an expensive restaurant with you, and then when the bill came you said you’d left your wallet at the hotel”.

Another very common way to use remember is when someone has a list of tasks they’re supposed to complete throughout the day, for example. Let’s say John has to run a few errands in the afternoon, and maybe at the end of the day someone asks John “So, did you remember to pick up the dry cleaning? Did you remember to pick up the groceries? Did you remember to post that letter? Did you remember to stop by the library and return that book? Did you remember to buy stamps?”

So here are a few questions for you: think of your last vacation. Do you remember where you went? Do you remember what you did? Do you remember resting on your last vacation? Do you remember having fun? Me.. I’m thinking about my last vacation and I remember exactly what I ate, and where I went, and I remember having a lot of fun. I do not remember resting a lot on my last vacation… I definitely didn’t have a lot of time to rest but I remember enjoying myself a lot.

Here’s another question for you: what are some of the tasks that you had to complete, say, last week? Or some of the errands you had to run last week? Did you remember to do everything you were supposed to do? As for me, I actually made a list last week with four or five items on it. I remembered to buy dog food, I remembered to get a haircut and I remembered to pick up some food at the supermarket. But I forgot to buy office supplies. What about you? What was on your list that you actually remembered to do?

Alright! Let’s move on to the word ‘remind’. “Remind” is often translated as “lembrar”, but it’s a different kind of “lembrar”. “Remind” means something like ‘make someone remember something’. So when someone says to you…

“Let me remind you that…”

This means that this person wants you to remember something. He or she is making you remember something. This person is giving you a reminder. They are putting something on your mind again. They are reminding you, or giving you a reminder. In Portuguese we could say “um lembrete”, a reminder. Here are a couple of examples:

* Let me remind you that our shop closes at 6. They are reminding you that their shop closes at 6. They want you to remember that; they don’t want you to forget it. So they’re giving you a reminder.