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Today, we’re going to learn useful phrases for the doctor’s office. It’s best to be prepared, since not many Brazilian doctors speak fluent English.

We use olá as a slightly more formal way of saying hello, as opposed to oi. Although the word for doctor is médico, we refer directly to the doctor as doutor or doutora.

The phrase passar mal means to feel sick, but it can also mean to get sick, as in fainting, feeling nauseous or vomiting. Estou passando muito mal in this context means “I’m feeling very sick.”

Febre is fever, and since it is a noun, we use estar com to describe this symptom: estou com febre. This literally translates as ”I am with fever” but is understood as meaning “I have a fever.” We use estar com when describing a symptom or a health problem when the problem is a noun.

As juntas estão doendo muito means, “my joints really hurt.” When we talk about pain, we use estar, to be, with doer, the verb for “to hurt.” Instead of using the present simple form like we do in English (my joints hurt), we put this phrase into the present progressive form, so that the phrase literally translates to “my joints are hurting a lot.” We also don’t use the literal word “my” when we say “my joints.” We say “the joints” (as juntas) which is understood as being the speaker’s joints.

Headache is dor de cabeça. Again, since this is a noun, we use estar com to describe this symptom. Estou com dor de cabeça literally means, “I am with a headache,” but translates as, “I have a headache.”

Enjoado means nauseous. Since this symptom is an adjective, we don’t need to use com (with) and simply say estou muito enjoado: I’m very nauseous.

O que será? literally means, “What could it be?” In this case, the speaker is asking for the doctor’s diagnosis, but we can also use this phrase when we mean to say “I wonder what it could be?” or when we are making a guess or a prediction.

Enjoy and stay tuned for the next Podcast!  And don’t forget…

Check out the BYKI vocab list here!