Hello and welcome, Dan!
So you're a British teacher who lives in Rio, right?
That's it. Yeah, I live in Rio.
And can you speak Portuguese?
How long have you been learning Portuguese?
A long time, 15 years.
I have a very specific question for you, because it's based on...
Maybe you could tell the audience.
I am not actually sure what "mico" is in portuguese.
It's an embarrassing situation.
I've had many 'micos" in...
...my journey learning Portuguese.
They happen a lot.
I know.
Whether you're speaking English or whether you're speaking Portuguese.
Okay.
With English, there are many phrases which
don't make sense
if you translate them literally.
As I'm sure you know.
Yeah, I do!
And that's what we're gonna be talking about today, so...
This embarrassing situation I had
was...
I mean, it involved the use of "I'm down".
So I invited a friend of mine to do something,
"Would you like to go for a walk?"
And then he said, "I'm so down".
But I couldn't hear his intonation because he wrote that for me.
It was a text message.
And then I asked, "why are you down?"
Like, I thought he was feeling down or depressed.
So could you talk a little bit about this expression?
Sure, so...
When you say, "I'm down", it could mean two things.
It could mean, I'm depressed, I'm not feeling great.
Or it could mean,
Yeah, I'm good for that. Let's do it!
I agree. Let's go.
You know?
So, if you say, I'm feeling down
That would imply that you are
sad, depressed.
But if you say you are down,
then, usually, it could mean that you're ready to do something.
You're ready to accept the challenge.
So you can be down to go to the cinema.
You can be down to go out for drinks.
But if you are down,
feeling down,
then it's a completely different thing.
Are there other ways to accept something,
to accept invitations, in English?
So, "I'm down"... What are the other options?
You can say, "I'm up for that".
You can say, "Yep, that sounds like a good idea".
There are many different ways you can
you can accept.
A lot of the time
it will depend on who you're speaking to.
So, a lot of these phrases are very informal.
So maybe you'd say them to your friends or your family,
but you wouldn't say them to your boss.
So you do have to
Pick and choose which expression you use.
But there are, there are hundreds,
there are hundreds.
In Portuguese we have,
Same, yeah, "I'm in!"
You could say, you could say...
"Count me in" is probably the closest to "tô dentro",
in Portuguese.
That translates as well.
So thank you so much for helping us today, Dan.