"Eu escrevo a receita."

Translation: I write the recipe.

[DuolingoQueen96]

Does anyone have a tip for not confusing 'a' with the english a? Whenever I see the letter a, my brain gets confused even though I know it's not meant to be an English a :/

[Paulenrique]

when it shows up you think..."ahhhh!!! this is a tricky. it means um, uma"(wooowww i cant imagine how i could make it worse!!)... heheheh

[DuolingoQueen96]

Thanks for commenting :) you confused me even more, haha. But, then you made me think of a way to remember.. 'the' is the one letter word, and 'a' is the two or three letter word :D

[Paulenrique]

but dont forget that "the" can be plural (os, as - two letter words) my comment was based on the "aaahhhhh" (interjection to remember a/an) hehe, but that didnt work out o.O

[DuolingoQueen96]

I know :) but, with the way my mind works, this will help me haha. Thank you though!

[djeidot]

SamaraR, "um/uma" in Portuguese means literally "one". If you learned the numbers you probably already know this. And the English "a" means "one" as well: "I write a recipe" and "I write one recipe" is the same. So just remember if you can replace "a" for "one" in the phrase.

[libotha]

Is it just me who struggles to hear the 'a' in this sentence? Do you just skip over the sound when speaking...how will you know whether it's 'a' or 'uma' ?

[DuolingoQueen96]

or should I say.. obrigada!

[Paulenrique]

Yeah... that's better :)

[jsmoir]

Curious- does the 'r' in Portuguese really, REALLY turn into an 'h' - as in this case, 'hesate-uh'? Or is the computer speaking voice unable to iterate a rolled, or uvular 'r'?

[Paulenrique]

http://www.duolingo.com/comment/486296