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- "Ela tem colocado muito sal n…
"Ela tem colocado muito sal na comida."
Translation:She has been putting too much salt in the food.
37 Comments This discussion is locked.
578
I wrote "She has put a lot of salt on the food" and "on" was marked as a mistake. I corrected it to "in" but in English "on" would be acceptable.
"On" is ok, but it should be "has been putting", since the Portuguese sentence absolutely implies the repetition.
So "muito" can be used for "a lot" and "too much"? I don't see how they mean the same thing
Yes, and it can be used also as very. Too much is also translated as "demais"
- 1433
'...in her food' was marked wrong. Is it wrong to translate the contraction 'na' as a possessive? I thought the article could also be translated as a possessive if that makes sense?
No.
"Na" is just "em (in)" + "a (the, feminine)."
So "na" means "in the"
If it were HER food, it would be "na SUA comida" or "na comida DELA."
This sentence simply means that she has been adding salt to food, not necessarily hers.
Yes, you can say that.
In a lot of cases we do prefer omitting the possessive and it's just implied in the definite article.
But of course, it doesn't happen all the time, just with things that are certainly hers, such as her body parts, her personal things like clothes, pockets, etc.
This food example might fall into that case.
I have seen demais also mean other things than too much also. Like a lot. Confusing.
No, demais is "too much" or "too many".
If you place the right intonation, you can make demais sound like "so much", mainly in personal compliments and love demonstrations.
- 1230
How do we use Muito without making people misunderstood that we mean Too Much ? e.g. I have drunk a lot of water today (in a neutral sense).
- 19
Both "too much of salt" and "into the food" sound odd in English. The only times I can think of for saying "too much of..." is when it's "too much of this [or "that"]" or "too much of the X", if you're talking about a specific allotment of X, e.g. "too much of the budget".
- 1532
American English - sometimes different. It happens sometimes in these lessons. I also learnt 'into' for cases like these. :-)
If I want to distinguish between "muito sal" (as a simple fact about the amount - a lot) and "muito sal" (as a negative about the amount - too much), how do I go about it with this sentence?
"She has been putting" is ok but "she put" is not the right tense of the verb.
"She has put a lot of salt on/in the food" is perfectly okay because the past tense of "have," "has" is put in front of the verb so it's grammatically correct in English.
It does not translate the Portuguese sentence that "does carry" a late repetition sense.
- 1950
Ter and haver use only the main form of the past participle:
- colocado
Ser and estar use the appropriate form, according to the subject:
- colocado
- colocada
- colocados
- colocadas
Why is "she has been putting a lot of salt in the food" wrong? I thought muito can be both much/a lot and too much
- 355
I just think this is a weird usage of the verb "colocar". What is the point of using it instead of "pôr"? We don't say that we placed or allocated too much salt in the food, in English. Spanish either.
- 1063
Who is it to decide whether it is weird? Languages crossing borders leads to strange results sometimes. Embarrassing in English is not in any way identical with embarazada in Spanish. So, whose usage of this word is weird, the English or the Spanish?
- 355
Sorry if my tone was Weird. Nobody decides, people experience. As a native English speaker who is somewhat fluent in Spanish, my experience is, it's surprising that this root developed into a word used this way in Portuguese. That's all.
e se queriamos usar pos em vez de colocar, pode ser? se sim, como seria a forma direta?
