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- "Ele não é um amigo qualquer."
30 Comments
"He's not an old friend" Shouldn't be counted as a correct answer, the portuguese phrase for that would be: "Ele não é um velho amigo" or "Ele não é um amigo velho".
By the way english is ambiguous on that phrase whereas portuguese is not, he's either "um velho amigo" - "a friend of old" (time), or "um amigo velho" - "an old friend" (age).
"Um amigo qualquer" does not refer to age, it's just saying he is not just any friend, he's special.
Hope I've helped someone, native speaker by the way.
15
The expression means that this friend is not a normal friend, there is something that makes him more special than the others. In English the most common phrase to say is the one given by duolingo (or possibly: ´he´s not just any old friend´ - (it has nothing to do with age). It´s an expression, so that´s why all the exact words are not translated into Portuguese, similarly if you directly translated the Portuguese expression into English is wouldn´t make sense, you need to add the ´just´ for it to mean the same.
543
Sorry to disagree...... " not just a friend" makes him a special friend " not an ordinary friend" suggests he is DIFFERENT rather than special. Even more sorry if this does not help!
1291
No one says, "He doesn't have any friend" in singular. Literally no native English speaker says that.