C1 · Fine points and style
Hedging and softening
Topic 131 of 133 · about 4 minutes
Your goal
You can phrase things cautiously and less directly — with se calhar, um pouco, -inho and the imperfect, such as dizia que.
Eu dizia que é mais uma questão de tempo.I would say it is rather a question of time.
Espera só um minutinho.Wait just a minute.
Está bastante bem, digamos assim.It is quite good, if you like.
Done at 6 of 8 · about 5 min
Explainer video
Watch first – then practise
The essentials
Rememberse calhar shrugs, um pouco softens, -inho shrinks — and the imperfeito claims less.
Your hedging sits in a modal verb; here it sits in which word you pick — and it changes the mood.
- Signal words
- bastante
- um pouco
- um bocadinho
- se calhar
- digamos
- eu dizia
- ao que parece
The form
The forms and what they mean
Each row gives the meaning first, then the form in Portuguese.
| quite, rather | bastante |
| a little, somewhat | um pouco |
| a tiny bit | um bocadinho |
| maybe (soft) | se calhar |
| let us say | digamos que |
| I would say | eu dizia que |
The rules one by one
The form this topic is about
se calhar takes the indicative and is softer than talvez.
Se calhar tens razão.Maybe you are right.
um pouco and um bocadinho soften a criticism.
A resposta dele foi um pouco curta.His answer was a little short.
The diminutive makes small what one does not want to make large.
Há um probleminha com a fatura.There is a small problem with the invoice.
More rules (1)
The imperfeito claims less than the present.
Eu dizia que o projeto ainda não está maduro.I would say the project is not mature yet.
Example sentences
1 more example sentences
Ao que parece, houve um mal-entendido.There seems to have been a misunderstanding.
The trap English speakers fall into
Watch out
The diminutive does not always make things smaller. Um probleminha can be a small problem, or a large one that somebody is playing down. And um minutinho in Portugal is rarely a minute. The ending says how the speaker would like it seen, not how it is.
Lesson
The full explanation
Read it all · about 1 min
English hedges with modal verbs. « That may be wrong », « that might be wrong », « that would seem to be wrong » — the softening is carried by a verb, and the rest of the sentence does not move. Portuguese hedges with separate words, and one of them takes the verb with it.
Está errado is a flat claim. Está um pouco errado is polite. Digamos que está errado invites disagreement. And se calhar está errado commits to nothing at all.
Se calhar is the word no dictionary explains properly: « maybe », but softer, with a shrug inside it. It is commoner in conversation than talvez, and it takes the indicative where talvez takes the conjuntivo — so the choice of hedge decides the form of the verb after it.
Portuguese also hedges with the diminutive: um probleminha, um bocadinho, só um minutinho. And the imperfeito softens: eu dizia que claims less than eu digo que. Ao que parece is how the press reports what it cannot prove.
The verbs on this page, in every form: dizer · estar · haver · ser · ter · parecer
Now write it yourself3 sentences on this topic, typed and checked instantly.
Words you will need10
They appear in this topic’s examples and exercises and are new at this point on the learning path.
- se calharmaybe
- curtoshort
- a faturathe invoice
- o projetothe project
- maduroripe
- o cerne da questãothe heart of the matter
- bastantequite, enough
- o mal-entendidothe misunderstanding
- sérioserious
- a fábricathe factory
Missing a word? Look it up in the dictionary