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PRONOUNCING BRAZILIAN PORTUGUESE
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Language Materials: Cultural Materials: General Information:
Joshua
Rudder
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to: AS
VOGAIS The Vowels Auditory impression. Brazilian Portuguese will sound a little "lighter" than standard European Portuguese, mainly because Brazilians always pronounce the vowels. Keep this in mind when you're imitating the pronunciation! Brazilian Portuguese vowels have two variants: unstressed final vowels (the last syllable of a word) and, well, everywhere-else vowels (the default pronunciation). Here are the default vowels, approximate values in English, and short Portuguese words where you can clearly hear the pronunciation: Vowels
"E"
and "O" Why are there two ways to pronounce "e" and "o"? Latin had two separate stressed sounds for each of the above vowels, but only the "e" and the "o" keep the same distinction in Portuguese. >never
fails
Otherwise, there's no all-encompassing rule to determine when "e" and "o" have one sound or the other. You must generally learn to pronounce them word by word, although you will quickly pick up on patterns (one good reason to buy a Portuguese dictionary with phonetic spelling alongside each word!). Unstressed Final Vowels
Be sure to listen for the STRESS (the more pronounced/accented vowel). Notice that it doesn't fall on the highlighted syllable. Also note that, fortunately for you, "i" and "u" always sound the same. Try to approximate the shorter, purer Portuguese vowels: don't pronounce a "y" or "w" sound after e, i, o and u (keep your lip stiff from beginning to end).
The consonants will generally cause you less trouble, although you may run into a few difficulties. The following consonants are pronounced like their English counterparts: b,
f, j, l, m, n, p, v "h"
is silent "j"
actually makes the sound of "s" in treasure "r"
has a hard "h" sound (Scottish loch) "rr" has that same hard "h" sound "c" and "g" have one variant before "hard" (back) a, o and u and another before "soft" (front) e and i: hard
c as "k" in king hard
g as "g" in gather These rules also apply to "c" and "g" in English, but in Portuguese they are true in every case (there are no contrary examples like "give").
d
as "d" in dare t
as "t" in stair
hard
gu as "gw" hard
qu as "qu" in quick When
"gu" and "qu"
need to make the hard sounds before e and i,
we write them gü and qü s, x and z s
sounds like "s" in sing When
we need the s to make the "sing" sound between
two vowels, we write it ss
The unstressed "es" in esp-
and est- is pronounced like the "as"
in taste. x
sounds like "sh" in she "ex"
at the beginning of a word makes roughly the sound of "ays"
in days x
also sounds like "x" in some words z
sounds like "z" in zebra
*the
"sock" one
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