Did you know that you can use a large swath of your English vocabulary in Portuguese?<\/p>\n
It is no secret that Portuguese is a Romance Language<\/b> and that it shares many cognates<\/b> with languages such as French, Italian, Spanish and English. Since this blog focuses on helping English speakers learn Portuguese, let’s dive into an examination of some different categories of English\/Portuguese cognates. [I will save the caveats for the end of the article]<\/p>\n
1. Nouns of Quality – Words ending in ‘TY’<\/p>\n
Take an English noun ending in ‘TY’ replace the ‘TY’ with ‘DADE<\/b>‘ to form (in many cases) the correct Portuguese word. It is worth noting that these resulting Portuguese nouns are generally female.<\/p>\n Following a similar method as in 1. simply replace the ‘TION’ with ‘\u00c7\u00c3O’ to form the Portuguese correspondent.<\/p>\n Again as in 1. these Portuguese nouns are typically female in gender.<\/p>\n 3. Common Adverbs – Words Ending in ‘LY’<\/p>\n Using the English root, one can formt he Portuguese equivalent by replacing ‘LY’ with ‘MENTE.’<\/p>\n 4. Words Ending in ‘ENCE’<\/p>\n In these cases, it is possible to switch ‘ENCE’ with ‘\u00caNCIA.’<\/p>\n 5. The Grand Finale – Words that do not change<\/p>\n Many words that end in ‘AL’ in English are exactly the same in Portuguese. Since you already know these words, take all that time you saved by not having to memorize them, and practice the sound of the terminal ‘AL’ in Portuguese. Remember, do not pronounce the final ‘L,’ favoring a sound more like the ‘AU’ dipthong in English.<\/p>\n Caveats: Okay… so nothing in life is that easy. As you might imagine, there are many many exceptions to these rules, and it is imperative that one memorize the exceptions in order to use these categories properly. For example: geralmente<\/b> is cognate with generally<\/b>, and is used much as English speakers use the word typically<\/b>. Another example: capacidade<\/b> is the correct word to use to say ability<\/b>; as far as I know (and my dictionary agrees) there is no such word as abilidade<\/b> in Portuguese.<\/p>\n\n
\n2. Words ending in ‘TION’<\/p>\n\n
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