Hello, all. O episódio de hoje é sobre diferentes maneiras de se dizer que algo é bom (good) em inglês.


Transcrição
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So anyone who's been in contact with English for a while is aware of the common words used to say that something or someone is, basically, good. What are some very popular words for describing something as nice, positive, good? "Interesting" is a popular one. Great and excellent are common. Beautiful is another popular one. What are the ones, though, that we don't hear much when people who are still learning English speak? Well, there are so many ways to describe something in a positive way. A few years back we published a post on Inglês Online that covered exactly that: collocations with words that are frequently used to describe something or someone positively.

I stumbled upon that old tip today and thought it would be a good idea to have our podcast around that topic.  If you check out the post, you'll see that there are certain words that frequently go together with some other words, such as fun and party. What a fun party! That was a fun party. Can we say "What a nice party"? Sure. It's just that you will hear the combination "fun party" way more often, and you will sound a bit more natural saying "What a fun party!" than if you said "What a nice party!" That's basically the definition of a collocation: a combination of words that you will hear very often as spoken by native speakers.

So, as always, I'd like to bring to the fore a few combinations that I don't hear very often from Brazilian speakers. Remember: these are natural combinations of words - preferred combinations, if you will - that pop up a lot in native English conversation. Let's start with advice: useful advice; helpful advice. Has anyone ever given you a useful piece of advice? I've been given useful advice several times in my life. A while ago when I was planning a trip someone advised me to get a travel bag with wheels. That was a useful piece of advice. What's your example?

Here are a couple of words for weather: pleasant weather, perfect weather. What do you think of the weather right now, wherever you may be? Here where I am (São Paulo) it's kinda hot. It's bit too hot to describe it as pleasant. I guess I consider sunny, cool weather to be pleasant weather. Actually I think sunny and cool is perfect weather. What is your idea of perfect weather? Or just pleasant weather?

When we talk about an actor or actress - we say a talented actor or actress, of course. A talented actor. And when we watch a movie or a theater play and really enjoy that actor's performance - here are a couple of words: an outstanding performance; a brilliant performance. An outstanding performance by Al Pacino, a brilliant performance by Meryl Streep. I still remember the first Leo Di Caprio film I watched; it was called Gilbert Grape or something like it. What a brilliant performance! So tell me - out of the last few movies you've watched, which one had a brilliant performance and who was the talented actor in question?

And to wrap things up for today, let's talk about a room. It could be your bedroom, or the living room (by the way, in the UK they say "lounge" very frequently instead of "living room"). So we can say "This is such a cozy room," or a comfortable room. When you say something is cozy, you mean that it makes you feel comfortable, warm, relaxed. A cozy room; a comfortable room.

I'm waiting for your examples! Talk to you next time.