Class #4 with Alexia, August 6, 2026

note: this is a recording of your private coaching session with Alexia. No one will see it except you, Alexia, and Foster 🙏

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Session summary

Pure conversation from start to finish, and it moved fast. We opened with jewellery and the earring your grandmother bought you in Greece, the one you lost at the festival, went through the six-day tour that started in Manchester, and then sat for a long time on why Brazilians say English words the way they do. After that: your live radio session and the two minutes before it, tipo and né doing the work that like does in English, the shirt your grandfather wore at the Pan-American Games, how you're studying right now, Brazilian music, the Gil family, and Alexia's trip to Belgium.

Two things worth naming. First, you're telling long stories in Portuguese now without being asked to. You still reach for English when the word isn't there yet, and that's fine, because you go for the Portuguese first and only fall back when you have to. That's a different Naima from Class #1. Second, Alexia narrowed the homework on purpose, and it's the whole thing: stay in the simple past. Eu fui, eu fiz, eu andei. You don't need clever sentences yet. You need the easy ones on repeat until they turn up without you thinking about it.

💎 Brincos, anéis e o brinco da sua avó

O brinco — earring (os brincos in the plural)

O anel — ring

A pulseira — bracelet

O colar — necklace (o cordão also works, but colar is easier to remember, so default to it)

Que a minha avó comprou para mim — that my grandmother bought me

Eu perdi o brinco que a minha avó comprou para mim durante o festival — I lost the earring my grandmother bought me, at the festival

She bought it for you in Greece. You knew there was no chance of finding it once it was gone at the festival, so you let it go. First time in your life without earrings in, and you said it feels strange.

Alexia is exactly the same about earrings, long hair or short, always has been. She also can't sleep in anything, and it took her forever to get used to sleeping with her ring on. The back of an earring digs in all night. You both take them out for the same reason.

🎪 Os festivais e a viagem: longe ou longa?

Foi bom — it was good (you kept reaching for "era bom". Era describes how something used to be, across a stretch of time. Foi closes it: one event, finished.)

Agora é o tempo do ano — this is the time of year

É o momento do ano — the same thing

É a hora do ano — the same thing again (tempo, momento or hora all work. Tempo is the easiest, so use it.)

A turnê — the tour

Eu tava fazendo uma turnê de 6 dias — I was on a six-day tour

Começamos em Manchester — we started in Manchester

Longe — far away

Longa — long, in the sense of how much time something took

Eu dirigi muito tempo. Foi muito longa a viagem de carro. — I drove for a long time. The car journey was very long.

This is the one to hold on to. Longe is distance: o Lake District fica muito longe daqui. Longa and longo are length, in time or in size: a viagem foi muito longa, eu tenho unhas longas, o show foi muito longo. You said eu dirigi muito longe when what you meant was that the drive ate your whole day.

The festivals themselves: Bristol up to the Lake District and back in a day, in at ten in the morning, out at nine at night, never sleeping there. Then Cambridge three days ago, a small punk festival with only two stages.

💅 Unhas, esmalte e quanto custa

É muito brilhante — it's very shiny

Faz muito tempo que eu não faço as minhas unhas com uma profissional — it's been a long time since I had my nails done professionally

O esmalte — nail polish

Fazer manicure — to get your nails done (Eu vou fazer manicure. Eu vou fazer pedicure.)

Fazer esfoliação — to exfoliate

O cabeleireiro — the hairdresser

The price comparison, since you asked. London was about £35 each for hands and feet, £70 the pair, and your mother covered it. Alexia pays 13 euros for a manicure with normal esmalte, the kind she can take off at home instead of the gel that needs the machine, and 23 euros for a pedicure with the massage and the esfoliação included. A full wash and cut at the cabeleireiro runs around 50 euros, and 70 only if you go to the very top of the market. Same rule as London, different starting point.

🗣️ Abrasileirar: palavras em inglês na boca do brasileiro

Abrasileirar — to Brazilianise a word, to say it the Brazilian way

Nova Iorque — New York

O costume — the habit, the custom

This was the longest thread of the class and the most interesting, so here it is in full.

In Brazil, saying an English word with a correct English accent in everyday conversation reads as showing off. At university, Alexia and her friends said Powerpoint the Brazilian way on purpose, because the English pronunciation would have got the reaction que horrível, você é muito snob. Same with iPhone, same with mouse.

There's a fairness reason underneath it. Alexia came from a family that could pay for English classes from the start. Plenty of people building the same Powerpoint presentation never had that option, and they say it the Brazilian way because it's the only way they've ever heard it. Saying it the other way draws a line between you and them. So the Brazilian pronunciation is, in her words, the more democratic one.

For place names, Manchester and Bristol both get the Brazilian treatment, vowels fully pronounced and the r's Brazilian. New York goes further and becomes Nova Iorque outright, because that's simply its Portuguese name. Say Manchester in your own accent to a Brazilian who doesn't speak English and three things happen in order: they don't catch the sound, they don't recognise the place, then you say it abrasileirado and get ah, Manchester! Very often they know the city because of the football.

You said countries are already solid in your head and cities are the gap. That's a fair read of yourself, so cities are what to practise.

📻 A sessão ao vivo no rádio

Eu fiz uma sessão ao vivo no rádio — I did a live session on the radio

Fiquei muito nervosa — I got very nervous (nervosa with an a)

Dois minutos antes — two minutes before

Todas as pessoas que estavam escutando — everyone who was listening (ouvindo works just as well)

Normalmente eu consigo respirar e tirar do meu corpo — normally I can breathe and get it out of my body

Mas não funcionou — but it didn't work

Normalmente eu não escuto logo depois — normally I don't listen back straight afterwards

Eu não preciso reconectar com o que eu fiz — I don't need to reconnect with what I did

Dessa vez eu escutei — this time I did listen

Você tá pensando em todas as coisas que não pode falar — you're thinking about all the things you can't say

Coisas inapropriadas — inappropriate things

Five minutes before, nothing. Two minutes before, it landed: all those people listening. And it sat in your body rather than your head, which is the part you couldn't breathe away.

Alexia's version is the podcast, that will they like this one, is my voice bad today loop before every recording. But she's never done live radio, so she gave you that one outright. What you both landed on is specific to live: your head fills with everything you're not allowed to say, and that's exactly what ends up at the front of it.

💬 As palavras de apoio: tipo, né, assim e companhia

You'd assumed Portuguese didn't really have filler words. It has plenty, and tipo does exactly what like does. Alexia put a proper list together for you afterwards, because dropping these into your speech is one of the fastest ways to stop sounding like a textbook.

The ten you'll hear most in everyday Brazilian speech

Tipo — like (the closest thing to English "like". Skews young, and it can turn up three times in a single sentence.)

Assim — like, well, you know (the most versatile one on the list. It covers ground English splits between three different words.)

Né? — right? isn't it? (não é, squashed flat. Everywhere in Brazil, and it usually isn't a real question.)

Então — so (also works as a full stall on its own: Então…)

É… — er… (the basic hesitation sound)

Hum… — hmm…

Bom… — well… (literally "good", used to open a thought)

Quer dizer — I mean (literally "it wants to say". Corrects or narrows what you just said.)

Sabe? — you know? (tagged onto the end, like né)

Na verdade — actually, in fact

And these, which you'll hear just as often

Cara — mate, dude (literally "face" or "guy". Informal, mostly between friends.)

Sei lá — I dunno (a shrug in two words)

Ó / Olha — look, listen (opens a point: Olha, eu acho que…)

Enfim — anyway

Pois é — exactly, yeah (agreement with a small sigh in it)

Meio que — sort of, kind of

Entendeu? / Entende? — get it? (another end tag)

Ou seja — in other words, that is to say

Digamos assim — let's say, so to speak

Aí — then, and then (strings a story together: aí eu falei, aí ele foi…)

Pô / Poxa — man, jeez (milder than it looks)

Na real — for real, actually (the younger sibling of na verdade)

Peraí — hang on (pera aí, from espera aí)

Pronto — there you go, done

Alexia's example conversation

A: Então… eu tava pensando em viajar, tipo, no mês que vem, né?

B: Hum… assim, acho que é uma boa ideia.

A: Quer dizer, depende do preço das passagens.

A: So… I was thinking of travelling, like, next month, you know?

B: Hmm… well, I think that's a good idea.

A: I mean, it depends on the airfare.

What shifts by region and setting

Tipo skews young and stacks up fast. Né? is universal and rarely wants an answer. Assim is the most flexible thing here, sitting wherever an English speaker would say like, well, or you know. Cara is friends-only. And in anything more formal, Brazilians thin the fillers right out and lean on então, bom and na verdade rather than tipo.

Now listen back for them in today's recording

Alexia used a fair few without planning to, which is the whole point of the list. Digamos assim when she explained why the Brazilian pronunciation is the more democratic one. Ou seja when she gave you tempo, momento and hora. Sei lá when she gave up counting Gil's grandchildren. Peraí while she hunted for the word for javelin. Enfim and pronto to close a thread and move on. Catch them once and you'll never stop hearing them.

Alexia's position on using them

It works both ways, you in Portuguese and her in English. When you're learning, reaching for them is a good sign. It means you're going after something more organic than a textbook sentence. It stops being good when it's the only tool you've got, when tipo or like fills every gap because nothing else is there. Protect the variety.

One correction from this stretch of the class:

Se eu morasse no Brasil… — if I lived in Brazil… (you said "se eu morei". This is the form for something hypothetical rather than something that actually happened.)

👕 A camiseta do seu avô e o lançamento de dardo

Ele voltou — he came back (you said "voltei", which is I came back)

Trouxe — he brought (the past of trazer, irregular, worth memorising on its own)

A camiseta — the t-shirt

Memória afetiva — a sentimental keepsake, an object loaded with feeling

O lançamento de dardo — the javelin throw (the event. The object itself is o dardo.)

O javali — the wild boar

Ele fazendo esse esporte — him doing that sport (you don't jogar a throwing event, you fazer it)

Your father came back from Brazil a few days ago and brought you one of your grandfather's t-shirts. Pan-American Games, somewhere in the eighties as far as either of you can tell, and it says Brasil veteranos on it, which neither of you could explain. Until now you hadn't known he threw the javelin at all. That's a memória afetiva, and it's a phrase Brazilians reach for constantly.

It also produced the best confusion of the class. Javelin and javali sound close enough that Alexia went straight to wild boar, which has nothing whatsoever to do with athletics. Neither of you knew the other's word.

📖 Como você está estudando agora

Os verbos no passado — verbs in the past tense

Regulares e irregulares — regular and irregular

Me fez prestar atenção — it made me pay attention (you said "me deu atenção", which means it gave me attention)

As regras — the rules

Eu comecei a ler um livro em português — I started reading a book in Portuguese

Ele escreveu — he wrote

A frase — the sentence (frase is the everyday word for a sentence, spoken or written)

You travelled most of the week, so you didn't sit down with Portuguese. You did listen to a lot of it. A podcast working through the past tenses, regular and irregular, then the imperfect, which made you notice how many verbs in that category you don't have yet. Noticing the gap counts.

You also started O Velho, a short book written by a friend of your father's. Every frase is simple and the story isn't complicated, which is exactly why it's working when the sci-fi he gave you before didn't. That's the right level. Stay there a while.

And you're still on Praia dos Ossos. Alexia likes it too, especially the host's tone and the way she builds the story.

🎶 Música brasileira e a letra da música

Eu consigo — I can, I manage to

Dependendo do ritmo — depending on the rhythm

A letra da música — the lyrics (singular in Portuguese, not "as letras")

Tim Bernardes — the Brazilian artist you saw live and loved

How much you catch depends almost entirely on tempo. Fast songs lose you, and when that happens you go and read the letra. That's the right instinct, keep doing it.

You're not listening to much music at the moment because you play so much of it. You worried that sounded cynical. It isn't. It's what happens when music is the job. Spoken radio and books are what you reach for in your own time.

Tim Bernardes is one of the few Brazilian artists you've managed to catch live, and you loved it.

🎸 A empresa familiar do Gil

Mostra que tem um respeito — it shows there's respect there

Que todos têm uma boa relação — that they all get on well

Os Gilsons — the band made up of Gilberto Gil's children and grandchildren

You said the family wanting to be out on the road with him says something about the man. Alexia agreed and pushed it further: it's the best family business in the world. So many children and grandchildren, across so many marriages, that she's given up working out who belongs to whom. An uncle can be the same age as a niece. The drummer is family. The guitarist is family. The pianist is family. The musical director is family. Whoever runs the Instagram is family. Her version of it is that Gil decided to have children, turn every one of them into an artist, and call it a company. The children and grandchildren have their own band, Os Gilsons, and they're excellent.

He comes through roughly once a year and Alexia has been to every one. Never the same show twice, but always the classics, because he knows the people living outside Brazil don't get many chances at them. At the last one he sat down with his violão and split the night into parts: first the songs he wrote during the dictatorship, telling the story behind each one, then the tropicália and MPB era. Two hours with a story running through it instead of song after song.

Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso have both been all over Europe this year, and Gil went as far as Japan and back. Almost none of it reaches England, which is strange when you think about how big the Brazilian community there is.

One last thing, since Gil has taken over half this page. Aquele abraço is one of his songs. He wrote it in 1969, just out of a military prison in Rio and days away from being forced out of the country, and recorded it on his last night in Brazil before flying to London, where he spent the next few years in exile. It's also how Alexia and Foster sign off every email you've ever had from us. You're learning Portuguese in the country he was sent to.

🪑 Sentar ou ficar em pé

Foi muito longo — it was very long (o show foi muito longo, masculine, because show is masculine)

Eu sempre peço — I always ask

Os produtores, os organizadores — the promoters, the organisers

Eu sempre peço para os produtores — I always ask the promoters

You always ask organisers for seating, because your set is acoustic and a crowd standing through it is a mismatch. Standing works when people are dancing and singing and the energy carries it. Otherwise it's just hard on everyone, and you spent years quietly putting up with it before you started asking.

Alexia is thirty-six, thirty-seven soon, and insists she can still take a festival on her feet. If a seat is going, though, she's taking it. At the Olivia Dean show she and her father got the front row of the seated section, best view in the room, nobody in front of them. The show is lively and that's fine, but during the acoustic part everyone stayed standing with their phones up anyway. You both agreed the point isn't sitting. It's having the choice.

🇧🇪 Bruges, Gante e Bruxelas

Bruxelas — Brussels

Gante — Ghent (another city with its own Portuguese name, same idea as Nova Iorque)

Que eu fui roubada — that I got robbed (you said "eu fiquei roubado". Two things to fix: fui rather than fiquei, and roubada rather than roubado.)

A mala — the suitcase

Um milhão — a million

Cada ano que eu vou para o Brasil eu fico por um mês — every year I go to Brazil I stay for a month (por for a stretch of time)

Neither Alexia nor her father had ever been to Belgium. When Olivia Dean announced a European tour that skipped Spain and Portugal entirely, Alexia went looking for the stop with the smallest crowd, because she wanted intimate rather than arena. The answer came back Brussels, so that's where they went, plus Bruges and Gante.

Gante won. Young, full of people around their age already with kids, everyone on a bike. She fell for it completely. Bruges she loved as a tourist and wouldn't live in, because it's built for tourists and priced to match. Brussels she liked a great deal more than she expected to.

The Portuguese are frightened of Brussels and she has never understood why. She arrived braced for something awful and found good architecture, good food, and museums worth a full day. Her theory is that the expectation is inflated because it's the capital of Europe. London is dirty too. New York is. Madrid is. Lisbon is.

You made the sharper version of the point: any city with more than a million people is a mixture, and every area of it is different, which is exactly what you like about them. That observation was yours. Milhão was the only word you were missing.

Your Brussels story is the counterweight. Someone tried to take your mala in the station car park and you held on to it. Spain and Germany have been the other trouble spots. Brazil, where you spend about a month every year, never has.

🕰️ O passado simples

Eu fui — I went, I was

Eu fiz — I did, I made

Eu andei — I walked

This is the heart of the homework, and Alexia narrowed it on purpose.

Her own rule in English is identical. Anywhere she isn't fully comfortable, or with people she doesn't know well, she stays in the simple past and doesn't attempt anything clever. She saves the ambitious sentences for Foster's family, where getting it wrong costs her nothing.

So: eu fui, eu comi, eu andei, eu dormi. The easy ones, out loud, on repeat, instead of running at every tense at once and stalling. Once the simple past is automatic, the rest opens up on its own.

📚 Homework

1. Drill the simple past out loud

Alexia was specific about this one. At least ten simple sentences in the past, and she wants them ordinary. The sentence isn't the point. The conjugation becoming automatic is the point, so the more everyday the better. Here are sixteen to start you off.

Eu fui ao supermercado — I went to the supermarket

Eu comprei pão — I bought bread

Eu fiz o jantar — I made dinner

Eu comi em casa — I ate at home

Eu bebi um café — I drank a coffee

Eu acordei cedo — I woke up early

Eu dormi bem — I slept well

Eu trabalhei o dia inteiro — I worked all day

Eu andei muito — I walked a lot

Eu dirigi até o festival — I drove to the festival

Eu falei com a minha mãe — I spoke to my mother

Eu cheguei em casa tarde — I got home late

Eu vi uma amiga — I saw a friend

Eu li um livro — I read a book

Eu saí com os meus amigos — I went out with my friends

Eu toquei ontem à noite — I played last night

Four are irregular and just have to be memorised as they are: fui, fiz, vi and li. Everything else follows the regular pattern, which is why drilling a handful hands you hundreds.

Watch the spelling on two of them. Chegar becomes cheguei and tocar becomes toquei, because the u is what keeps the hard g and hard c sounds alive in front of an e. A third one, comecei, turns up in Alexia's list below: começar drops the cedilla, because ce already makes the sound you need on its own. The spelling moves so the sound can stay still. This catches everybody.

And eu saí takes an accent on the i. Without it you've written sai, which is somebody else in the present tense. Small mark, completely different sentence.

Say them out loud, in the car between festivals, not silently in your head. Then swap in your own words: your supermarket, your coffee, your friend. This is repetition, not understanding. You already understand it.

2. Then these fifteen, which Alexia wrote for you

Once the sixteen above feel easy, move on to these. She built every one of them out of something you actually said today, so they're longer, they're yours, and they're the real step up. The italics mark the verb doing the work.

Eu perdi o brinco que a minha avó comprou para mim durante o festival. — I lost the earring my grandmother bought me at the festival.

Eu dirigi muito tempo; foi muito longa a viagem de carro. — I drove for a long time; the car journey was very long.

Eu fiz uma turnê de 6 dias e começamos em Manchester. — I did a six-day tour and we started in Manchester.

Eu fiz uma sessão ao vivo no rádio e fiquei muito nervosa. — I did a live session on the radio and got very nervous.

Dois minutos antes, todas as pessoas estavam escutando o programa. — Two minutes before, everyone was listening to the programme.

Normalmente eu não escuto logo depois, mas dessa vez eu escutei. — Normally I don't listen back straight afterwards, but this time I did.

Ele voltou do Brasil e trouxe uma camiseta para mim. — He came back from Brazil and brought me a t-shirt.

Eu comecei a ler um livro em português na semana passada. — I started reading a book in Portuguese last week.

Ele escreveu cada frase pensando no ritmo da letra da música. — He wrote every sentence thinking about the rhythm of the lyrics.

Eu fui para Bruxelas depois do show em Nova Iorque. — I went to Brussels after the show in New York.

No ano passado eu fui para o Brasil e fiquei por um mês. — Last year I went to Brazil and stayed for a month.

Eles tentaram roubar a minha mala, mas eu consegui segurar. — They tried to steal my suitcase, but I managed to hold on to it.

Eu andei muito pela cidade depois do show. — I walked a lot around the city after the show.

Eu fiz a manicure e a pedicure antes do lançamento. — I had my nails and feet done before the release.

Nós assistimos ao show do Tim Bernardes e dos Gilsons juntos. — We watched Tim Bernardes and Os Gilsons play together.

Two of them are quietly doing something different, so they're worth a second look. Estavam is the imperfect, describing what was going on around you rather than a finished action. And assistimos is spelled identically in the present and the past, so only the rest of the sentence tells you which one you mean.

3. Practise city names abrasileirados

Manchester, Bristol, Nova Iorque. You said countries are solid and cities are the gap. Say them out loud the Brazilian way until they stop feeling wrong in your mouth.

4. Listen to Os Gilsons

Gilberto Gil's children and grandchildren. You said during the class you'd look them up. Start there, then work backwards into Gil himself, which is where all of it comes from.

5. Keep going with O Velho and Praia dos Ossos

Both are at the right level and both are working. Don't add anything new on top.

Want more homework or have any questions? Message us on WhatsApp anytime.