Hello, all. No episódio de hoje, falo sobre um erro frequentemente cometido por alunos de inglês envolvendo as formas singular e plural.
Transcrição
Hello, all. Here’s a new episode of the Inglesonline podcast. Please subscribe to this podcast using the Podcasts app for iPhone or iPad, or listen to the episodes using the Inglesonline Android app. To download or just listen to other episodes and download transcripts, go to inglesonline.com.br and click Podcast Inglesonline.
So today let’s take a look at some pretty common mistakes involving plural words. And I’m not going to talk about plural rules per se, or irregular plural forms… nothing like that. I’m gonna use very simple examples of plural words such as dogs, cats and so on. Here’s what I mean: in Portuguese we say things like “Eu gosto de cachorro.” Or “Eu gosto de gato.” “Cachorro” and “gato” are singular forms, right? So when it’s time to say that in English, and we haven’t had enough exposure to the language yet, our impulse is to say “I like dog” or “I don’t like dog”, or “I like cat” and so on and so forth.
Actually, the way we say that correctly in English is ‘I like dogs.’ I like cats. I don’t like bees. So if you still hesitate when you’re about to say “I like dog…s”, here are lots of examples: I like dogs; she likes cars; we like books; I like cats; he likes guitars; you like women; they like races; she likes strawberries. I don’t like motorcycles, she doesn’t like bikes, they don’t like exams, we don’t like skirts, he doesn’t like movies. Notice that all of the examples have countable nouns: one exam, two bikes, three women, etc. When we talk about non-countable nouns, there’s no plural form. I like information; he likes bread; they like music.
So check this out: when we say in Portuguese “Gato é um bicho muito esperto” or “Cachorro dá trabalho”, can you guess how we’d say these things in English? Yep, using the plural forms. Cats are very smart animals. Dogs are a lot of work, and not Cat is a very smart animal and Dog is a lot of work. I’m gonna give you a few more examples, and when you’re done listening to this podcast think about how you would say these in Portuguese, then listen to this episode again. Building awareness of how things are said in English is a great thing and it will help you to catch your own mistakes:
Necklaces are in fashion now.
Brazilians are friendly.
Movies are my favorite past time.
Clothes are getting more expensive.
Do you like birds?
Children enjoy playing outside.
Women like to wear makeup.
Short skirts are best for the summer.
If you had to say one of the examples above during a live conversation, would you get it right? If the answer is YES, great – listening to English can never be too much so – good for you for listening to this podcast. If you’re not so sure you would get it right, listen to this episode again and think about the examples both in Portuguese and English.
What are your examples? Let me know in the comments and talk to you next time!
Ana criou um blog de dicas de inglês em 2006, e depois de muito pesquisar o que faz alguém ganhar fluência numa segunda língua, criou seu primeiro curso de inglês em 2009.
Hi Ana, thanks for one more amazing podcast. I love your podcasts so much!
Now just a question – what does it mean when you say… rules “per se”.
thanks for now!!!
Hi Ana,when I started learning english i didin’t read any tip about that,I think I just learned this structure naturally because it’s really common and I’ve always heard people saying this things in podcasts,like, “I don’t like cats,I like dogs,I hate trains I prefer planes….”
