How have you been?

Esse episódio do podcast Inglês Online é um pouquinho diferente, pois eu vou falar de três errinhos que eu tenho escutado ou lido com certa frequência quando vejo brasileiro falando 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.

So, today’s podcast is about stuff that is usually considered very basic. You know, you’ve seen this on Lesson 3 of your Basic English book and… check! Done, and you’ll never talk about it again.

You know how it works, though: it can take some time until we internalize stuff we’re being exposed to, and the more we’re exposed to that stuff, the faster we’ll acquire it. That means, the faster we will internalize it. Students may have seen or heard about the basic stuff while attending English school, and that doesn’t mean they’re actually using that stuff correctly when they speak or write.

So this is my goal today: talk about three little mistakes I’ve seen, or rather, heard, people make, kinda often, lately. They are all what I would consider details, so English learners tend not to pay as much attention to them as they do the big stuff. You know, verbs, nouns and other big words.

So here’s the first thing I hear often: I’m engineer, and she’s teacher. We speak that way in Portuguese: eu sou engenheiro e ela é professora, but not in English. In English we say I’m an engineer and she’s a teacher. I’m an engineer and she’s a teacher. More examples? I’m a teacher and an engineer, she’s an architect, he’s a doctor, she’s a dentist, he’s a race car driver, she’s a publicist, he’s a police officer, she’s a dog walker, he’s a businessman, she’s a scientist, he’s a librarian, etc.

So what are you? Do you work or study? Are you a student? Do you take care of your home while other people are out? If so, you’re a homemaker, or a stay-at-home mom, or a stay-at-home dad – in case you have kids. I have a friend who lives in the US and she’s an HR executive, while her husband is a stay-at-home dad.

OK, moving along to mistake #2… I read this the other day: I’m fan of… something. Again, we say it just like that in Portuguese, right? Sou fã disso, sou fã daquilo. Not exactly so in English. In English, we say I’m a fan. I’m a fan of soccer, I’m a fan of comedies, I’m always a fan of restaurants with good service, I’m a big fan of Indian movies… He’s a fan of homemade ice cream, she’s a fan of sitcoms, he’s a big fan of soapoperas… Imagine that you show up to the opening of a new Greek restaurant in your town. Your neighbor sees you and he’s all surprised! He says “Wow, I didn’t expect to see you here! I didn’t know you were into Greek food.” And you say “Oh, yeah. I’m a fan. I’m a big fan.”

So what are you a fan of? Are you a fan of soapoperas? Are you a fan of water sports? What are you a fan of? Let us know in the comments.

And, last but not least, here’s the third mistake I’ve seen recently. You know how in Portuguese we say Eu não gosto de laranja. Eu gosto de maçã. Não aguento mais político. Detesto peça de teatro mas adoro filme. Well, in English we do not say I don’t like orange (unless we’re talking about the color orange). We would say I don’t like orangeS. And we don’t say I like movie. We say “I like movieS”. For all the stuff we can count, we use the plural. We can count oranges, apples, pens, movies, as in three oranges, four apples, five pens,