Are you from Brazil or Portugal? Are you learning English? Then you need to watch this video! You’re lucky if you are a Portuguese speaker learning English, because there are a lot of words that are similar between these two languages. But you have to watch out for false friends! False friends are words in one language that sound the same or almost the same as words in another language — but mean something different! In this video, I’ll give you the most common false friends between Portuguese and English, so you can avoid making these mistakes. Improve your English in less than 15 minutes with this fast and easy lesson. TAKE THE QUIZ: https://www.engvid.com/english-tips-for-portuguese-speakers/ TRANSCRIPT Obrigado, all my Portuguese-speaking friends out there. Big besos out to you guys in Brazil. Hi. Thanks for watching. I’m going to teach you something that maybe you’ve heard before. But it’s a little bit difficult in English. You are lucky, like other languages, for example, Spanish and French, we have a lot of words in English that are very similar in Portuguese and English, so if you change the accent a little, use your hands a lot, people will probably be able to understand you, but sometimes this is not the case, that’s why we have created these things called “false friends”. Now, false friends are words that you think you can use because they sound almost the same in English, but the meaning is completely different, so it can lead to some mistakes. But if you make a mistake, who cares? Really? Come on. You’re learning a language, don’t worry. But I’m here to teach you how to correct some mistakes that you might make. And thanks to Hinata and William for helping me out with this one. Let’s go to it. So, false friends, they’re not your friends, they are your enemies. Okay, so the first one-we’re going to start, yeah?-is: “cafeteria”. In your country, in Brazil, maybe in Portugal, I don’t know, a cafeteria is a coffee shop, so it’s a place where you can go and get a delicious coffee, maybe get some delicious Brazilian treats, like queijo de p�o, p�o de queijo, mm-hmm, maybe some honey moons, delicious, but in English, “cafeteria”, the exact same spelling, check it out: “cafeteria”, “cafeteria”, uh-oh in English, a cafeteria, it is not a coffee shop, it is actually a lunch room. So, if you have a job… Oh, do you have a job? Cool. In Canada sometimes there is a lunch room, but all of the time in a school in Canada children or students go and eat together… They can eat lunch, they can eat dinner in one room, and we call this a cafeteria. So, a cafeteria is a lunch room or a common room for eating. Many businesses will have a cafeteria. It’s definitely not a coffee shop. It’s pretty terrible. Coffee shops are more fun than a lunch room I think. The next one, in your country you can enjoy a delicious “caf�”, which means coffee for you, and Brazilian coffee – woo, that stuff gets you going in the morning. Cool. But in English, a “caf�” is not a drink, like a coffee, a caf� is a small restaurant where you can buy coffee or sweets, it’s like a Portuguese bakery. So, a “caf�” is a restaurant in English, and “caf�” is not coffee in English. You also have to be careful of your pronunciation of this word. It is not: “cough”, that’s a cough. We have to say: “coffee”. We don’t have to say: “coffeeee”-hi, Vinnie-but you have to say: “coffee”. If you just say: “cough”, then that’s not a good thing. You don’t want to go to a caf� and ask for a cough, because then you’d be sick. Next one, you guys use as toothpaste. Right? So “pasta”, “pasta”, “pasta”, you guys know as a paste, like a gel, kind of a semi-liquid material. But we always use it as a food, a very delicious Italian food called pasta. You guys probably know that already because you eat a lot of pasta maybe. But in English this is paste, pasta is the food. You don’t want to eat that stuff. The next word: “dente”. Yeah? You’re brushing your dentes, there. Yeah? Okay. So, “dente” in Portuguese means tooth or teeth, I guess just one. In English it doesn’t mean teeth, it means a dent. To help you out with this word: “a dent” is an indentation. That’s the same in Portuguese. So, an indentation means dent. This is… If you’re driving your car and somebody hits your car, just a minor accident, then you will have a dent in your car. A dent means an indentation or it’s pushed in in one area. It’s not completely broken, it’s just pushed in or there’s an indentation. So it has nothing to do with your teeth. It does sound like this word and the spelling is very, very similar, so be careful of that false friend. This is a fun one, I kind of like this. I like the pronunciation of this word. I have to look in my book. You guys say: “balcom”. Mm-hmm. When you guys walk into a bar you go up to the “balcao” and you order a delicious beer. But not in English. A “balcao” in Portuguese means a counter in a bar, this is fun.