Common English Mistakes Portuguese Speakers Make (and How to Fix Them)

Fluent, but tripped up by Portuguese

Whether you speak Brazilian or European Portuguese, the interference with English is nearly identical, because the gap with English is the same. Portuguese has gendered nouns, adjectives after the noun, heavy use of the definite article, and thousands of Latin-root words that look like English but mean something else.

That makes the common English mistakes Portuguese speakers make highly predictable — and a predictable problem is fixable. None of these are carelessness. They are systematic transfer from your first language: your brain applies a rule that is correct in Portuguese to a language that works differently. Once you can name the pattern, you can catch it. Below are the twelve that matter most, each with the Portuguese habit behind it and a quick fix you can apply while you edit.

1. Using "the" before general nouns

Portuguese puts a definite article before countries, abstract nouns, and generic plurals. English drops it for general ideas.

Off: "The life is short. The dogs are loyal animals. I love the Brazil."
Native: "Life is short. Dogs are loyal animals. I love Brazil."

Fix: If you mean something in general rather than one specific thing, drop "the" — before abstract nouns (life, freedom, love), generic plurals (dogs, people), most country names (Brazil, Portugal), and languages (I study English, not "the English"). The mirror error also exists: Portuguese drops the article in a few places English keeps it, so "in next year" should be "next year" and "I play piano" is usually "I play the piano". For the full logic, see articles (a / an / the) for article-heavy and article-light languages.

2. False friends

Portuguese and English share Latin roots, which creates look-alike words with different meanings. Spell-check never flags these.

Off: "I will pretend to travel next year. Push the door."
Native: "I intend to travel next year. Pull the door."

Fix: Because these words are spelled almost identically to a real English word, spell-check and most generic grammar tools stay silent — you have to learn the traps as a set. The full list is in section 9; learn the high-frequency ones first (pretender, atualmente, puxar, parentes, livraria, eventualmente).

3. "Have" for "there is/are"

In Portuguese, ter and haver express existence, so learners map both onto "have".

Off: "Have a party in my house tonight. In my city has many restaurants."
Native: "There is a party at my house tonight. In my city there are many restaurants."

Fix: If no one owns the thing — you are just saying it exists — use "there is" (singular) or "there are" (plural), never "have". Reserve "have" for actual possession: "I have a car." Note also that Brazilian Portuguese leans on ter and European Portuguese on haver for this, but both map onto English "there is/are" the same way.

4. Adjective and word order

Portuguese places adjectives and adverbs after the noun or verb. English fronts adjectives.

Off: "A house big. I only have more two days."
Native: "A big house. I only have two more days."

Fix: In English the adjective almost always comes before the noun it describes — "a big house", "an interesting book", never "a house big". When you stack several, the usual order is opinion → size → age → shape → colour → origin ("a lovely small old round wooden table"), which is why "a house big yellow" sounds so wrong to a native ear.

5. Prepositions (para = "for" and "to")

The Portuguese para covers both purpose and direction, and many Portuguese verbs take a different preposition from their English equivalents, so "for", "to", "with", "in" and "of" get swapped.

Off: "I came here for to study. He is married with a doctor. I depend of my parents."
Native: "I came here to study. He is married to a doctor. I depend on my parents."

Fix: Use "to" + verb for purpose ("to study", never "for to study"), and learn the fixed English collocations rather than translating the Portuguese preposition: casar com is "marry to", depender de is "depend on", pensar em is "think about/of", and sonhar com is "dream about/of". These are memorised pair by pair, not derived from a rule.

6. "People is" and uncountable nouns

"People" takes a plural verb in English, and several Portuguese plurals are uncountable.

Off: "The people is friendly. He gave me some good advices and many informations."
Native: "The people are friendly. He gave me some good advice and a lot of information."

Fix: Treat "people" as plural — "people are", "people have", "many people" — because in English it is already the plural of "person" (use "peoples" only for ethnic groups or nations). And keep uncountable nouns singular with no "-s": advice, information, news, furniture, and research have no plural form, so count them with "a piece of advice" or "some information".

7. Make and do (fazer)

One Portuguese verb, fazer, splits into English "make" (create something new) and "do" (perform an action), plus a set of fixed collocations that follow neither rule cleanly.

Off: "I need to make a research and make my homework. We made a party."
Native: "I need to do research and do my homework. We had a party."

Fix: Roughly, "make" is for producing a result (make a decision, make a mistake, make money) and "do" is for carrying out a task or activity (do homework, do the dishes, do research), but a party is neither — you have a party. When in doubt, memorise the phrase as a unit rather than reasoning from fazer.

8. Gerund or infinitive after a verb

In Portuguese, one verb typically governs another through the plain infinitive (gosto de nadar, parei de fumar), so learners default to "to + verb" everywhere. English is fussier: some verbs demand the -ing form, some the infinitive, and a few change meaning depending on which you pick.

Off: "I enjoy to read. I finished to write the report. I am used to work at night."
Native: "I enjoy reading. I finished writing the report. I am used to working at night."

Fix: After enjoy, finish, avoid, mind, suggest, and after any preposition (interested in, good at, before, after), use the -ing form; after want, need, decide, hope, and to-be-able, use the infinitive. "I am used to doing" (accustomed) is not the same as "I used to do" (a past habit) — a distinction Portuguese collapses.

9. The false-friends table to keep nearby

The left column is what Portuguese speakers often write; the right column is what they actually meant. (Cross-checked against Practice Portuguese.)

10. Dropping the subject and double negatives

Portuguese is a null-subject language: the verb ending already carries the subject, so "Está chovendo" ("Is raining") is a complete sentence and the pronoun simply disappears. Portuguese also uses double negatives as standard — "não fiz nada" literally stacks two negatives — while English allows only one negative per clause.

Off: "Is raining. I didn't do nothing."
Native: "It is raining. I didn't do anything."

Fix: English always needs a grammatical subject, so add a dummy "it" or "there" ("It is raining", "There is a problem") even when the verb feels like enough. And keep one negative per clause: pair a negative verb with anything, anybody, or ever ("I didn't see anyone"), not with nothing, nobody, or never.

11. Capitalization and tense

Portuguese lowercases months, weekdays, languages, and nationalities (janeiro, segunda-feira, português), and its "desde + present" pattern maps wrongly onto English, producing a present tense where English needs the present perfect.

Off: "I am brazilian and I am learning English since 2010."
Native: "I am Brazilian and I have been learning English since 2010."

Fix: Capitalize languages, nationalities, days, and months in English — Portuguese, Brazilian, Monday, January — even mid-sentence. And for an action that started in the past and continues now, use the present perfect ("I have lived here for five years", "I have been learning English since 2010"), not the simple present that Portuguese would use with desde or há.

12. Comma splices and run-on sentences

Portuguese tolerates longer sentences joined by commas more readily than English does, so a comfortable Portuguese rhythm becomes a run-on or comma splice in English.

Off: "The results were clear, we decided to publish, everyone agreed."
Native: "The results were clear, so we decided to publish. Everyone agreed."

Fix: You cannot join two complete sentences with only a comma. Use a period, a semicolon, or a comma plus a joining word (and, but, so, because). If a line runs past about 25 words, look for the point where a second full sentence begins and split it. More on this in sentence fragments and run-ons in English.

A quick self-check before you publish

How Diglot helps Portuguese speakers

Diglot is built for writers who think in Portuguese and write in English. That gap is exactly where article overuse, false friends, and "have a party" come from. Rather than only flagging an error, it shows the natural version and the reason, so the pattern sticks.

• Rewrite Portuguese-influenced sentences into natural English. The paraphrasing tool for Portuguese speakers turns word-for-word translations into fluent English while keeping your meaning.
• Catch the slips a generic checker misses. The grammar checker for Portuguese speakers is tuned for the article, preposition, and agreement errors above.
• Smooth the phrasing. See the patterns behind clunky lines in how to fix awkward English phrasing, and why translated text reads off in why your English sounds translated.
• One workspace for the whole task. Explore the full ESL writing tool built for non-native writers.

Your English already works. Closing this short list of gaps is what makes it read as native. Drop the extra "the", check the false friend, switch to "there is", and your writing stops sounding translated and starts sounding like you.

Try the paraphrasing tool for Portuguese speakers