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Roberto Henry Ebelt
24/07/2015 | Erros de inglês que afligem os americanos.
Escrever algo errado pode ser fatal, mas, como dizia o mestre Edison de Oliveira, TODO O MUNDO TEM DÚVIDAS INCLUSIVE VOCÊ. Os americanos frequentemente escrevem incorretamente, bem como nós frequentemente escrevemos incorretamente em português. O importante é estar alerta para este fato e não desprezar o auxílio dos corretores de processadores de texto. Apenas por curiosidade segue uma lista de palavras que atrapalham os native speakers de inglês, compilada por um americano de cujo nome não tenho a mínima ideia. Observe que a lista é de vocábulos, embora a parte mais difícil para que fala um idioma como segunda língua esteja relacionada à estrutura.
- Adverse and averse
Adverse means harmful or unfavorable: "Adverse market conditions caused the IPO to be poorly subscribed." Averse refers to feelings of dislike or opposition: "I was averse to paying $18 a share for a company that generates no revenue."
- Affect and effect
Verbs first. Affect means to influence: "Impatient investors affected our roll-out date."
"Effect" means to accomplish something: "The board effected a sweeping policy change."
How you use effect or affect can be tricky. For example, a board can affect changes by influencing them and can effect changes by directly implementing them.
Bottom line is: use effect if you're making it happen; use affect if you're having an impact on something that someone else is trying to make happen.
As for nouns, effect is almost always correct:
"Once he was fired he was given 20 minutes to gather his personal effects".
- Bring and take:
Both have to do with objects you move or carry. The difference is in the point of reference: you bring things here and you take them there. You ask people to bring something to you, and you ask people to take something to someone or somewhere else.
“Can you bring me that book?"
"Can you take him that book?"
- Compliment and complement:
Compliment means to say something nice. Complement means to add to, enhance, improve, complete, or bring close to perfection.
- Criteria (singular) and criterion (plural):
"We made the decision based on one particular criteria," sounds fairly impressive but is also wrong.
Remember: one criterion, two or more criteria. Or just use "reason" or "factors" and you won’t have to worry about getting it wrong.
- Discreet and discrete
Discreet means careful, cautious, showing good judgment: "We made discreet inquiries to determine whether the founder was interested in selling her company".
Discrete means individual, separate, or distinct: "We analyzed data from a number of discrete market segments to determine overall pricing levels".
- Elicit and illicit
Elicit means to draw out or coax. Think of elicit as the mildest form of extract. If one lucky survey respondent will win a trip to the Bahamas, the prize is designed to elicit responses.
Illicit means illegal or unlawful, and while I suppose you could elicit a response at gunpoint ... you probably shouldn't.
- Farther and further
Farther involves a physical distance: "Florida is farther from New York than Tennessee." Further involves a figurative distance: "We can take our business plan no further."
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