Hi, all.  How have you been?

Nesse episódio do podcast Inglês Online falamos sobre a palavra such.

Transcrição

Hello, everyone. 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 give you several examples of how to use this word: such. S-u-c-h. Such. Such may be used to communicate a few different things, and today we are going to focus on one of them: how to use ‘such’ to emphasize. For example, when you say Mary is such a nice girl, what are you saying? You’re saying that you think Mary is very nice. It’s as though you were saying Mary is so nice. Instead, you say Mary is such a nice girl. Here’s another one: Bahia has such nice weather all year round. What does that mean? That means you think that the weather in Bahia is so nice, all year round.

It’s simple, right? As with everything in English – especially stuff that isn’t intuitive to us Portuguese speakers –  we have to hear it a lot in order to become familiar and absorb it. So here is a series of examples where I use the word “so”, which is the word everyone is more familiar with, in order to emphasize something. After I’m done reading this list, I’ll give you the same examples using ‘such’:

* This coffee is so bad.

* This car was so cheap!

* This study room looks so messy.

* The variety of products carried by this supermarket is so amazing.

* I didn’t know their house was so old.

Now let’s hear these sentences when they have the word such in them. ‘This coffee is so bad’ – we can say This is such bad coffee, or This is such a bad coffee if you want to be specific to the cup of coffee in your hand, for example.

‘This car was so cheap!’ can be said like this: It was such a cheap car! ‘This study room looks so messy’ can become This study room is such a mess. The next one we have is ‘The variety of products carried by this supermarket is so amazing’. You could say This supermarket carries such an amazing variety of products. And finally, ‘I didn’t know their house was so old’ can be expressed as I didn’t know they owned such an old house.

Did you notice that we say so bad, so cheap, so messy, so amazing and  so old? This is so good, that is so bad. This bar is so trendy, that house is so spacious, that girl is so clever, this magazine is so interesting. This little word ‘so’ comes before adjectives. Now notice how such was used in all the previous examples: such bad coffee, such a cheap car, such a messy room, such an amazing variety, such an old house. ‘Such’ comes before a short phrase, right? A short phrase containing at least an adjective and a noun. Bad coffee, a cheap car.  Such bad coffee, such a cheap car.

Here’s an expression that you’ll hear a lot as you get more and more familiar with English: This isn’t such a bad idea. What does that mean? When someone says This isn’t such a bad idea, they are saying that this idea isn’t so bad… it’s actually a good idea. This idea isn’t so bad. This isn’t such a bad idea. It may not seem like a very good idea at first; but as you take a closer look you realize that this idea isn’t so bad. This isn’t such a bad idea. It’s… an OK idea, maybe even a good idea!

Here are a few of my personal opinions: English is such a great language to learn and speak. The Internet is such a fantastic tool for business. It’s such a nice feeling to wake up to a sunny day. Dogs are such loyal friends. Memorizing words is such a boring thing to do. Again,