15 Common Mistakes Brazilians Make in English

9) "The food was so tasteful"

Adding a -ful to the end of some nouns modifies them to adjectives. For example, success becomes successful, care becomes careful and colour becomes colourful. But taste and tasteful don't work like this. Taste often refers to flavour but the adjective tasteful means showing good judgment and behaving appropriately. We use it to describe formal events or decoration, e.g. "The funeral was very tasteful" or "The furniture in the hotel was very tasteful". To describe food you'll need to use the following adjective: "The food was very tasty"

2) "I made a barbecue"

As a noun Barbecue means two things; a barbecue grill or an outdoor meal/party where you cook food on a barbecue grill. As a verb it means the act of cooking food on the barbecue grill. So what you need to say instead is the following: "I had a barbecue"

7) "Depend of"

Depend never goes with the preposition of. Ever! It goes with on. "Depend on"

5) "I will go on a travel next week"

English we use trip as a noun and travel as a verb, unfortunately these are not interchangeable. So you can say: "I will go on a trip next week / I will travel next week"

11) "I speak English every time"

Every time should be used when describing some kind of an event, for example "every time I have English class I need to speak English." All the time is a little different though, for example, "I think about eating all the time!" Here there is no set period that the speaker thinks about eating, it is a constant thing. "I speak English every time I have an English class"

6) "I explained her"

If you explain someone you're likely to be describing their personality, appearance or maybe a bit of both. However, if you are explaining something to someone (using the preposition 'to') then this is different. And in most cases, it is what my students hope to do. The correct way to sat this is: "I explained something to her"

4) "I will go on holiday in more one week"

In English we use the number, the word more and then we use the subject. So it is my birthday in four more months, I finish work in eight more hours and there are three more days until the weekend.

12) "Claudia Leitte is not so good as Ivete Sangalo"

In this case it is necessary to sandwich the adjective with the as-as structure, e.g. the Carnival in Florianopolis is not as crazy as the Carnival in Rio, Maradona was not as talented as Pelé and the Backstreet Boys are not as young as One Direction. "Claudia Leitte is not as good as Ivete Sangalo"

"I went to US"

No you didn't, you went to the US. Countries don't usually need a the in front of them, but when that country begins with the word United they certainly do. So you go to the US, the UK and the UAE. Note: There are other countries also using the article, such as the Philippines, the Ivory Coast and the Netherlands, so be sure to learn these too. So let's go back to the mistake, "I went to the US"

8) "My teacher touched me this last class"

Touch is sometimes mistaken as the past tense of the verb to teach. Don't make this mistake! "Andrew taught me this last class"

14) "This subject is very polemic"

We do use the word polemic (both a noun and an adjective to describe something polemical) in English, but it is much more natural to hear the adjective controversial being used instead. "This subject is very controversial"

1)"I went to a restaurant with some friends; we were in four"

We were in four is a direct translation of the Portuguese. In English we would say "there were four of us." Additionally if you're talking about another group of people you could say: "There were four of them."

15) "Does this phrase exist in English?"

When we use the verb to exist we are generally referring to things that are real or living. So dinosaurs existed, there are over 900,000 insects known to exist on the planet and it is hard to imagine that any life exists on Mars. But when talking about a specific sentence structure in English, you're not going to use the verb to exist. Instead you should ask the following: "Do you say this in English?"

13) "Despite of the rain I still walked to work"

You can say despite the rain or in spite of the rain, but not despite of. This is the sort of English that was spoken in Shakespeare's time and is not something you would expect to hear a native English speaker saying nowadays. What we say instead are the following: "Despite the rain I still walked to work" or "In spite of the rain I still walked to work"

"I discussed about this in the meeting"

You never discuss about anything in English, the two words just don't sit well together. So you need to use discuss in the following way; I discussed the project with him, I discussed the report with her and I discussed taking my vacation with my boss. About isn't needed. "I discussed this in the meeting"