RSG English

  This is about words such as ‘tough’, ‘brought’ (and words like ‘daughter’), ‘cough’, ‘though’, ‘thorough’, ‘plough’ (or ‘bough’ for Americans). The reason why these words have different sounds is because...they are all different. Bear with me. It is important to remember that for most of our history, most people couldn’t read, and so there was not a direct connection between written and spoken language - written language was not intended to be phonetic. The original words in Old English were therefore all different because there was no standard written format: ‘bought’ was pronounced like ‘bawhte’, ‘bough’ more like ‘bowh’, ‘thorough’ was ‘thorweh’, while ‘cough’ was ‘cohhian’. Most of these words end in ‘h’ sounds, which in time came to be reproduced as ‘gh’. In addition, -gh was a common way of representing guttural sounds common in Celtic languages (e.g. loch (lake)) in English, and so also applied to strong ‘h’ sounds like in ‘cohhian’/’cough’. Also significant is an event ca...

 When translating from Portuguese to English, it’s easy to fall into the trap of translating word for word. After all, it feels “faithful,” right? But the truth is: literal translations often sound unnatural and miss the point . 🔍 Real communication is more than words Good translation isn’t just about replacing words — it’s about conveying meaning , tone , and style in a way that feels natural to the reader. For example: 🗣️ “Fazer vista grossa” literally means “to make thick eyes” — that doesn't make any sense in English, we would say “turn a blind eye.” Both expressions refer to the same idea, but only one would make sense to your English-speaking audience. ✅ What to do instead: Think about what the sentence really means Use equivalent expressions in English Focus on clarity and tone , not just structure Read your translation out loud — does it sound like something a native speaker would say? If you are not sure, try googling it - but check that any results...