"Ela cozinha mal."

Translation: She cooks badly.

[jonthedrummer]

So just to clarify

"She hardly ever cooks" = "Ela mal cozinha"
"She cooks badly" = "Ela cozinha mal"

?

[Danmoller]

Yes!

[makar]

Could it also be she cooks bad?

[Paulie-Waulie]

In Australia, in colloquial speech, "She cooks bad" would be totally acceptable. We always drop the "-ly" from adverbs. But I think Duolingo expects "standard" English.

[kcmurphy]

That's not "proper English"--which is what Duolingo wants--and "mal" means "badly" (adverb) whereas "mau" is "bad" (adjective).

[AndersonGlas]

Thanks for explaining that, dl leaves us to figure it out.

[Whirrun]

I don't think so, since this is the 'adverbs' section.

[Jackie-da-China]

she cooks barely???

[frozen3v0lution]

Maybe "she barely cooks" (the other way isn't proper english)

[walt921586]

I cannot distinguish, fast or slow, the last letter of mal; sounds like ma*?
I hope she never tries to speak Chinese. Thanks Mr. & Mrs. Sock in Mouth.
22 IX 2021. Walt

[argovela]

Hi, Walt! The pronunciation I'm hearing from Duo sounds right to me, with the proviso that I'm not a native speaker.

Please forgive me if you're already familiar with what I'm about to write, but I'll make a guess that you might be expecting to hear a sound at the end of the word «mal» like the English dark L in the word «ball». In Brazilian phonetics, the «L» is often vocalized as a «w» at the end of syllables. So, the word «mal» will sound like «mau» with the same pronunciation for the letter «L» as in the words Brasil, fácil, difícil, Pantanal, sal.

The website Forvo is very useful to be able to hear pronunciations by native speakers:

https://forvo.com/word/mal/#pt

Also see:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_phonology#Consonant_phonotactics
(Look for the bullet-point which starts with "The consonant /l/")

[mongoman1]

As a native American English speaker, I'm not sure I would ever use the word badly in this translation as it sounds very odd to me. My preference in the context of this short statement would be to say: "She cooks poorly.".

Badly would be fine or possibly even preferred if there was more to the sentence like in the following examples: "She cooks badly if she doesn't have enough time.", or "She cooks badly when she is tired." For some reason it still sounds somewhat odd to me if badly is toward the end of the sentence like in the example: "After midnight, she cooks badly.".

In general, I would also use a completely different way to express the sentiment of the statement she cooks poorly by saying: "She is a bad cook.", or "She is not a good cook.".

Perhaps it's a personal preference, but I feel that the adverb badly (meaning poorly or not well) is often avoided in everyday speech with a preference toward the adjective bad, at least in my experience. Yes, you can say: "He drives badly." but it is more likely to hear "He is a bad driver.".