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Hi eeast! The words are similar, so it is going to cause lots of confusion. The Portuguese word "bife" means steak--it is a cut of meat, while the English word "beef" refers to meat that come from cows, and it doesn't specify a cut of meat.
Steak -- bife
Beef -- carne bovina
I hope this helps. =)
Yes :)
- Carne de boi
- Carne de vaca
- Carne bovina
- Carne vermelha (includes other animals)
Hm, unfortunately in sentence, when there was in Portuguese "bife" only and I wrote wrongly "steak", Duolingo told me that correct would be "beef steak". But it was different sentence and I did not know that that one is wrong.
Can you plsss tell me some more sites to be perfect in portuguese language
A good site I found to help me practice portuguese pronunciation is ielanguages.com/portuguese.html Hope this helps you!
Actually it sounds awesome! I like cooking meat with apples or with prunes :)
I almost did the same thing! Then I listened again and realized the 2nd a wasn't nasal and caught it - so close. I get apple sausages all the time, they're great.
Actually, "steak" and "beefsteak" should both be correct, but I think "beef" is still wrong. Here's why:
According to Wordreference, "beef" is called "carne de boi" in Portuguese. Even though the English word "steak," when unqualified, is typically assumed to refer to "beefsteak," the word "steak" also refers generally to "a cut of meat or fish cut perpendicular to the muscle fibers, or of fish cut perpendicular to the spine" or to "meat cooked in sauce" (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steak).
From what I found on Wordreference.com, it appears that "[o] bife" means about the same thing as "steak" in English. For example, the "bife com massa" sounds like it might be similar to Salisbury steak, or meat cooked in creamy sauce which is commonly served with pasta. In Portuguese, it is occasionally possible to refer to the steak of an animal that is not a cow by qualifying the word "bife," but usually not. For example, "ham steak" is usually "presunto" or sometimes "bife de presunto," whereas "fish steak" is "filé".
I am not a native Portuguese speaker, so if someone with a better grasp of Portuguese - especially a native speaker - has anything to add, improve, or correct, I would be glad to hear about it.
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That's about right. Bife refers to steak, whereas "beef" doesn't necessarily refer to steak. It refers to carne de vaca or carne de boi (carne bovina, actually). Which is the type of meat, and the meat origin, but not the specific cut of meat. Bife is a cut of the cow's meat. A steak. It sounds so similar that it is understandable that people get confused.
Thank you so much for all your responses vivisaurus! You are very helpful! Do you recommend any sites or do you mind sharing how you got so far in the portuguese language? -beixo
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I'm Brazilian, SilemOchoa! I usually recommend media instead of websites to complement Duo. Writing down lyrics and learning to sing in Portuguese is a great way to go... and the important trick is to only look up the official lyrics to the song once you can sing it all the way through without looking at your notes. It helped me a lot when learning English, along with a couple of other things. Good luck! =]
"Oracao" by A Banda Mais Bonita da Cidade was the first Brazilian song i learned. Great because it repeats over and over again, lol. (sorry, don't have accents on this keyboard).
My first portuguese knowledge came from Garota de Ipanema. Great song too!
"massa" isnt a bad translation for "pasta"? i thought it was "macarrão"... ? and "massa" just "dough"...?
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Hi louwizz1600. Massa is a correct translation for pasta, although it also means dough. For example, in recipe books and menus, you will see noodles (which includes spaghetti, macaroni, penne), lasagnas, gnocchi, etc. listed under "massas". "Macarrão" is more commonly used, but technically it means "noodles". That doesn't mean it shouldn't be accepted. Did you try to make that suggestion to Duolingo?
The meaning of words vary in time and space. It's a question of culture, history, context, etc. Just think about it. 'O café da manhã' is always the form used by brazilians to mean 'breakfast', irrespective of whether they consume coffee or not in Brazil or elsewhere.
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I've learned that they do that in England too! When they have "tea" in the evening, it usually means dinner, not just a cup of tea with cookies. Suddenly the sentence "will you be home for tea?" makes sense because they drink regular tea all the time. Correct me if I'm wrong, Brits! =]
That's correct, although it's more common to call dinner 'tea' in some parts of the country than it is in others.
I don't know why it's called that, but here is my best guess. Traditionally some social groups had a 'tea time' in the afternoon, around 4 p.m. which was the point between lunch and dinner when they would stop for a drink of tea and biscuits. The evening meal was dinner, or supper, supper generally applying to a later meal. As people worked longer hours eating as late as 8pm was normal, but as society changed and shorter working days, ending at 5pm became normal people started to eat their meal earlier, closer to 'tea time'. Hence my theory as to how 'dinner' became 'tea'.
I'm from the midlands, as a child we had breakfast, dinner and tea. In that order. Supper was occasional and just before bedtime. I can't recall when I became aware that lunch existed, and when I started referring to evening meal as dinner.
I clearly remember erupting into our home with "Mum, what's for tea" after school!
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Hello Saidaspen! gian.incha is correct. Emphasis on bold syllable:
Massa = MÁ-ssa (like the "pah" sound in "pasta")
Maçã = mah-SUNG ("ã" sounds a bit like "uh...", and try to keep the G down)
gian.incha, try ctrl+,+c or alt+c for ç. =)
Technically ... yes. "com" is not "and" -- it's "with". "Eu gosto de bife e massa" would be your translation. Whether or not people English speakers prefer "and" or "with" is an entirely different topic.
As a native English speaker, I would prefer the use of and. E.g. What are we having tonight? Meat and potatoes. To me, the with implies that you only like steak if and only if it's with pasta, but the use of and is saying that it's accompanying it.
Different languages operate differently with regard to small words, such as prepositions and conjunctions. Whereas in English it would be weird to say "meat with potatoes," in Portuguese it would be weird to say «bife e batatas». That's just the way it works in Portuguese. As a Luso American, I can speak to and understand both. In Portuguese, we use "with" because the potatoes is the side dish, as in it is not the main part of the meal, the meat. So, in Portuguese, we think of it as meat with a side of potatoes, and not meat and a side of potatoes. Hope this helps.
eharwagon, other contexts than the one you specify could use 'with' instead of 'and' in English, think for example of someone asking you "what would you like with your pasta?" or "what would you like with your steak?" answer: "I like steak with pasta"... Nonetheless, thank you ZuMako8_Momo for your insightful explanation, it is very interesting to understand the Portuguese way of thinking and viewing things, it's part of the culture. This is a course to learn Portuguese, not English, so it makes sense to adapt an English translation as close as possible to the Portuguese meaning rather than trying to adapt the English phrasing into Portuguese...
After 48 comments, why has noone questioned the fact that this is in the science lesson? I thought this would be in food...
Somewhere else in DL massa pops as mass, not pasta. I think it's in food. It's to reinforce the understanding of the two completely different meanings. (possibly two different origins of one orthograph ?)
I have writen " eu gosto bife com massa" i dont must write "de" after "gosto". But it marked me a wrong answer
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You do need the "de" after the verb "gostar". Think of how in English we often need the "to" after the verb to listen. I hope it helps! =]
I understand the technical differences some of you have put forth. However given the flexibility of the English language, I think this is extremely picky. How often have you gone to an event and ordered the beef or the fish? Not the steak or the fish.
No, steak is beef, but beef is not steak. Steak is a cut of beef, but there are other cuts of beef - ribs, roasting joints etc
I was marked wrong because i did not use "eat"... where is the "como" that should have been translated to "eat"? Do not understand
i did enter exactly that and it told me i was wrong because i left out "to eat" as in I like to eat steak with pasta, but i did not because there was no "como"... see?
I translated this as 'I like steak with mass' thinking well, it is a science topic and it could be correct that someone likes a steak with mass....so strange that 'massa' means both mass and pasta in Portuguese. :D Anybody could make this mistake.
It also means "dough" in the literal sense of baking and in the figurative sense of money
