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

Same roots, different rules

If you are a Portuguese speaker writing English, your mistakes follow a pattern set by your first language. Portuguese drops subjects that verb endings make clear, uses ter (to have) for states English expresses with be, puts a definite article in front of general nouns, and requires double negatives. English does the opposite of each. That kind of systematic carryover is called L1 interference, and it is what makes the common English mistakes Portuguese speakers make so consistent — and so fixable.

There is a second trap most language pairs do not have: Portuguese and English share thousands of Latin-derived words, and many changed meaning on one side or the other. The result is a rich inventory of false friends that sound confident and land wrong. Below are the nine patterns that cause the most trouble, whether your Portuguese is Brazilian or European, each with the habit behind it and a fast fix. The signals are consistent enough that a free tool can often guess which first language your English points to. (They sit alongside the rest of the common English mistakes series.)

1. Dropped subjects: "Is raining"

Portuguese is a pro-drop language. The verb ending tells you who is acting (falo, falas, fala), so pronouns are optional, and impersonal sentences have no subject at all: Está chovendo, É importante chegar cedo. English demands a subject in nearly every clause, even a meaningless one.

Off: "Is raining a lot today. Is important to arrive early."
Native: "It is raining a lot today. It is important to arrive early."

The fix is mechanical: if a sentence starts with a bare "is" or "was", insert "it". English needs the placeholder subject even when it refers to nothing.

2. "I have 25 years": ter instead of be

Portuguese uses ter (to have) for a whole family of states: ter 25 anos (age), ter fome (hunger), ter sede (thirst), ter medo (fear), ter sono (sleepiness), ter razão (being right). English expresses every one of these with be plus an adjective.

Off: "I have 25 years and I have hunger."
Native: "I am 25 and I am hungry."

Off: "You have reason, I have fear of flying."
Native: "You are right, I am afraid of flying."

When you catch yourself writing "have" before an age, a feeling, or "reason", switch to be.

3. "Have many people": tem for "there is"

In spoken Brazilian Portuguese, tem does the job of "there is / there are": Tem muita gente na fila. European Portuguese uses há the same way. Carried into English, both produce sentences that open with a subjectless "have".

Off: "Have many people in the line. In my city have two universities."
Native: "There are many people in line. There are two universities in my city."

English existence statements need "there" as the subject: there is for singular, there are for plural. Keep "have" for possession: "I have a car."

4. Prepositions that follow Portuguese

Portuguese verbs bring their own prepositions, and they rarely match the English pair: depender de, casado com, sonhar com, chegar em. Translating the preposition along with the verb produces some of the most recognizable Portuguese-English signatures.

Off: "It depends of the weather. She is married with a doctor."
Native: "It depends on the weather. She is married to a doctor."

Off: "I dreamed with you last night and arrived in the airport at noon."
Native: "I dreamed about you last night and arrived at the airport at noon."

The only reliable fix is to learn the verb and its preposition as one unit: depend on, married to, dream about, arrive at (a building) but arrive in (a city or country).

5. "The life is hard": articles before general nouns

Portuguese puts the definite article in front of general and abstract nouns: A vida é difícil, Eu amo a música, O amor é cego. English drops the article when you are talking about a whole category rather than a specific instance.

Off: "The life is hard, but the music helps."
Native: "Life is hard, but music helps."

A quick test: talking about the whole category in general? Drop "the". Pointing at a specific one the reader already knows? Keep it — "the music at that party was terrible" points at one specific instance.

6. Double negatives: "I didn't see nothing"

Portuguese has negative concord. Não vi nada and Não conheço ninguém stack two negatives, and the stacking is required, not sloppy. Standard English runs the opposite rule: one negative per clause, and every additional negative word flips to an any-word.

Off: "I didn't see nothing and I don't know nobody here."
Native: "I didn't see anything and I don't know anybody here."

Scan for "not" followed by nothing, nobody, never, or nowhere in the same clause. Keep the "not" and convert the rest: anything, anybody, ever, anywhere.

7. "Make" doing fazer's job

Fazer is a workhorse: it covers making, doing, taking, throwing, asking, and turning. English splits those jobs across half a dozen verbs, so translating fazer as "make" everywhere creates collocations that read as translated.

Off: "I made a question after I made the exam."
Native: "I asked a question after I took the exam."

When "make" feels automatic, pause and check whether English wants ask, take, throw, or turn instead.

8. "I am needing": the gerund habit

Brazilian Portuguese leans hard on estar + gerund: estou precisando, estou querendo, estou achando. English resists the progressive with verbs of state: need, want, know, believe, understand, like, prefer, seem.

Off: "I am needing your help because I am not understanding this report."
Native: "I need your help because I don't understand this report."

If the verb describes a state rather than an action, keep it in the simple present. "I am working" is fine because working is an activity; "I am needing" is not, because needing is a condition.

9. False friends: pretend, actually, push

Because Portuguese and English share so much Latin vocabulary, words that look identical feel safe. Many are not — they are false cognates whose meanings drifted apart. The most famous is on every shop door in Brazil: PUXE looks like PUSH but means pull, which is why Portuguese speakers push doors labeled pull in two languages.

Two of these do real damage in professional writing. "I pretend to finish my master's next year" tells an English reader you are play-acting; you meant "I intend to". And "Actually, I manage a team of five" reads as a correction ("in fact") when you meant "Currently". If a Latin-looking word carries weight in your sentence, confirm it means what you think.

A quick self-check before you send

How Diglot helps Portuguese speakers

Diglot is built for the bilingual workflow, where you think in Portuguese and write in English. That is exactly where "I have 25 years", "depends of", and "I pretend to apply" come from. Instead of only flagging a mistake, it shows the natural version and the reason, so you learn the pattern instead of repeating it.

• Catch L1-transfer errors in context. The grammar checker for Portuguese speakers is tuned for the dropped subjects, ter-idioms, preposition slips, and double negatives above.
• Hear when your writing sounds translated. Paste a paragraph into the sounds-translated checker and it will point at the calques and false friends a native reader would trip on.
• Learn, do not just accept. Each suggestion explains the fix, so your next draft has fewer of the same mistakes.
• See the pattern across languages. This article is part of the common English mistakes hub, which maps the signature errors of each first language.

Your English is already good enough to communicate. Closing this short list of transfer gaps is what makes it read as fluent. Restore the "it", swap have for be, keep one negative per clause, and check the Latin look-alikes — and your writing stops sounding translated and starts sounding like you.

Try the grammar checker for Portuguese speakers