[HN Gopher] The enigmatic Portuguese R (2013)
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The enigmatic Portuguese R (2013)
Author : olvy0
Score : 137 points
Date : 2022-01-14 12:30 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (hackingportuguese.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (hackingportuguese.com)
| pjmlp wrote:
| Very interesting article, however from Portuguese point of view,
| it left out plenty of dialects, not only it is somehow diverse
| across the mainland and islands, the african versions are also
| not one per country rather it also varies per region and the
| local criolo influences.
|
| However the author does acknowledge that his knowledge is focused
| on Brasil, so there is that.
| marcodiego wrote:
| Yes. I've personally heard people from Cabo Verde and the way
| people from Brazil, Portugal and Cabo Verde speak is clearly
| different.
| diego_moita wrote:
| Scottish people can pronounce the same sound!
|
| When you say "Loch Ness" with a very thick Scottish accent, the
| "ch" in loch is quite close to it.
|
| Also the sound is quite common in other languages: "roi" in
| French, "reisen" in German, ... Even some Spanish dialects like
| Galego have the same r. Only Castilian/normal Spanish doesn't
| have it.
|
| OTOH, just ask a Brazilian to pronounce simply "the". The "th"
| phoneme is quite hard for Portuguese speakers.
|
| Better yet, ask a native from Rio to pronounce any word with a
| mute "t" or "d". It's hilarious. "Brad Pit" becomes "brahdjee
| peetchee".
| marcodiego wrote:
| People from Northeast inland will pronounce "breadee peetee".
| pelasaco wrote:
| Hot-Dog: Rotchi-Dogee
|
| Hardcore: Rardjee-Core
|
| Armlock: Army-locky
| aforwardslash wrote:
| Hobby: Rhobby
| weinzierl wrote:
| Facebook = Fassy-Bookee
| lvass wrote:
| >"Brad Pit" becomes "brahdjee pitchee"
|
| I think this is very much standard all over Brazil. It's a
| common pattern in a large amount of english words, I think most
| or all of us can pronounce it correctly, but we don't because
| it'd be harder say and recognize while trying to pronounce it
| like an american almost sounds like pedantry here.
| lucis wrote:
| > I think this is very much standard all over Brazil.
|
| You mean about the "mispronunciation"? Because the j in
| "bradhjee" I hear mostly in southeastern accents, where
| people in Northeast says it more closely with how it's spoken
| in English.
| SwiftyBug wrote:
| I believe the standardization refers to adding the vowels
| to the end of thos consonant-ended words. I believe most
| northeasterners would say "bredi piti".
| ratww wrote:
| That's so true! The thing with "th" I see is that we Brazilians
| speak it as "fink" (fINGk) or "sink" (sINGk) rather than the
| traditional "thINGk". But I find that's mostly a pedagogical
| problem, with teachers also doing it and students copying.
| However after quick explanation and practice, most can learn (I
| think I did :).
| SwiftyBug wrote:
| I think that phoneme sounds and looks silly. The whole
| putting the tongue out in order to properly pronounce "th" is
| very weird for Portuguese speakers. Like in this scene from
| The Hunchback of Notre Dame, where Claude Frollo says: "The
| sentence: death!":
|
| https://i.imgur.com/lBEU5Zk.png
|
| It's very funny to watch this in Portuguese because the word
| he uses is "morte", and he looks very stupid putting the
| tongue out after saying "morte".
| darkwater wrote:
| > Even some Spanish dialects like Galego have the same r
|
| You are opening a can of worms here considering that Galego is
| officialy a language, not a dialect, and it's basically very
| very similar to Portoguese, up to a point in which a galician
| colleague of mine, when we were at a conference in the USA
| would talk in Galego with a couple of Brazilian guys and they
| talked to him in Brazilian Portoguese and they went along just
| fine. Modern galego and portugues stem from the same root[1]
|
| [1] https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idioma_gallego#Historia
| diego_moita wrote:
| > You are opening a can of worms here considering that Galego
| is officialy a language, not a dialect, and it's basically
| very very similar to Portoguese,
|
| True, you are right. I stand corrected.
|
| The difference between a language and a dialect is often just
| politics.
| darkwater wrote:
| > The difference between a language and a dialect is often
| just politics.
|
| Indeed! It can be defined by loosing or winning a war. If
| you win, it's a language; if you loose, it's a dialect.
| mprovost wrote:
| "A language is a dialect with an army and navy"
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_language_is_a_dialect_wit
| h_a...
| mlinhares wrote:
| That's pretty much why it's called "Portuguese", they
| pushed the moors before other parts of Hispania did it
| and decided to get their own kingdom started instead of
| waiting for all the other nobles to finish the work. If
| it wasn't for that Portugal might not even exist as a
| country in itself.
| marcodiego wrote:
| Portuguese is very rich in terms of phonemes compared to other
| western languages. Brazil is a very big country with many
| different accents, but when we talk about popular artists and TV,
| there are some which are popular in the whole country. This makes
| the people well aware of how people from different parts of the
| country speak and, naturally, people have developed a "common way
| to speak" that can sound "neutral" to most people.
|
| I've heard people calling this way to speak "fala de apresentador
| da Globo": which means "Globo's presenter way of speech"; Globo
| is Brazil's most popular TV network and its presenters have a
| clear way to speak that sounds very neutral and free from accents
| from one region or another.
|
| I lived in Rondonia during the 90's. It was a very recent state
| and, at the time, people from all over the country went to live
| there to make good use of the new opportunities offered by a
| recent new state. So, the people living there were mostly from
| other places and there was a mix of accents which made it
| basically accent-free.
|
| All forms of pronouncing "r" are very easy to me. And, to help
| people understand what I say and because I lived among very
| different accents, I speak in a very "neutral" way. People have
| once said I have a "fala de apresentador da Globo". But this way
| of speech is not uncommon in most developed regions neither among
| people who have to talk to people of different parts of the
| country.
|
| Result of this: Brazilians can speak most of the romance
| languages and even other less phoneme rich languages from Asia or
| Europe without much difficulty. We even make fun of hispanophonic
| latin-americans because they can't say "cair no poco nao posso".
| xwolfi wrote:
| As a French what I find insane is that I can sorta read it (and
| I suppose Portuguese can decypher French too), but I do not get
| what they say at all. Italian, Spanish or Romanian I can, but
| Portuguese is like totally alien - I wonder how the
| pronunciation of Latin could derive so much from Italian.
| devilbunny wrote:
| As an American who can read basic Spanish and understand
| spoken Spanish (insofar as I understand the words being
| spoken), I concur. Written Portuguese is reasonable. Spoken
| Portuguese is a black box.
| mlinhares wrote:
| This is really surprising, Portuguese is pretty close to
| Spanish (it is derived directly from Spanish) so other than
| the nasal vowels it tracks pretty close to it, it also has a
| considerable vocabulary of words that sound pretty close to
| their Italian counterparts.
|
| I've never heard an Italian or Spanish person say they can't
| understand anything in a spoken Portuguese conversation.
| pdpi wrote:
| Italians and Spaniards should have an easy time
| understanding at least some Brazilian portuguese. European
| Portuguese is _really_ hard, though, because our vowels are
| all sorts of weird. When I moved to London, it really
| struck me how people speaking Russian sounded to me like
| they were speaking Portuguese, which always forced a double
| take when I tried to "tune in" and realised it wasn't my
| own language.
| oblio wrote:
| He he. That's partly why we make fun of you as the most
| Western Eastern European country.
|
| Developing economy, speaking with a strong Slavic accent,
| recovering after a long dictatorship, you check many
| boxes :-p
| pdpi wrote:
| I'd never heard that one, that's amazing. Who's the "we"
| you speak of?
| oblio wrote:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/PortugalIsEastEurope/
| ncmncm wrote:
| Must be Spaniards.
|
| I worked with someone from Romania. He said Portuguese
| sounds just like Romanian until you try to understand it,
| then it sounds like someone making fun of Romanian.
| oblio wrote:
| I'm actually Romanian and I can confirm that. Portuguese
| is Romanian background noise at a party :-p
| mlinhares wrote:
| Oh yeah, I wonder why PT-PT is so different in terms of
| pronunciation, it would make sense for Brazil to move in
| a different direction given the waves of immigration and
| how insular it is in South America and Portugal to stay
| closer to Spanish/Gallego given how close they are there.
| salicideblock wrote:
| Portuguese (at least the one from Portugal) has 9 vowel
| phonemes, compared to 5 for spanish. If you count the
| nasals it's 14. And you can add some additional vowel
| richness in diphthongs.
|
| It's very very varied phonetically when compared to the
| neighboring Spanish, which IIRC underwent considerable
| simplification at in the 16th century with unification of
| Spain.
|
| I've heard many French and Spanish native speakers
| expressing the difficulty to understand it.
|
| Source: Portuguese native speaker with decades-long
| immersion in Spanish and French-speaking communities.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| andrepd wrote:
| Even Portugal, a small country of 10 million people / 100k
| km^2, has quite a lot of linguistic diversity.
| EL_Loco wrote:
| Portuguese ranks sixths on number of native speakers,
| according to Wikipedia.
| simtel20 wrote:
| Portuguese as spoken in Portugal is very different from how
| it is spoken in Brazil which has a population about 30x
| larger.
| andrepd wrote:
| "BBC english" is also the name given to the rp "neutral" accent
| of British English.
| ilamont wrote:
| RP = "Received Pronunciation"
|
| Mentioning this because the term is not widely known in the
| U.S., at least in my circles.
|
| https://www.bl.uk/british-accents-and-
| dialects/articles/rece...
| yeahforsureman wrote:
| How well do you cope then with e.g. Germanic and Eastern
| European features (such as vowels a, o, u/y, y/y and schwa,
| difficult consonant clusters, and short/long vowels and
| consonants independent of stress)?
| simtel20 wrote:
| You don't have to go that far afield. Most Brazilians have a
| tremendous challenge in saying "the" and will be taught to
| say "th" as "d" and often it's good enough to be understood,
| but far from natural sounding.
| pelasaco wrote:
| Normally Brazilians have issues with the german R as spoken in
| the North of Germany.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNU6ZLaZ7Z8
| pportela wrote:
| Yup, I'm a brazilian living in northern germany, and one of
| the words I struggle with the most is "rechts". It's just
| really difficult to get that 'r' sound right.
| ratww wrote:
| "Rechts" also has the "ch" sound which is not as foreign
| per se to speak, but kind of deceptive and maybe too subtle
| to Portuguese speakers. I got the R quickly since it's more
| obvious, but for the ch it took me a bit longer to even
| notice the difference between my ch and the German ch.
| [deleted]
| bkantt wrote:
| Similarly and for the same reasons, they have a lot of
| trouble combining the Spanish R with the Spanish G or J
| sound. Spanish words such as "jarra," "Jorge," or "rojo" tend
| to be very difficult even for Lusophones who are advanced
| Spanish speakers. But I agree that Portuguese is a lot more
| phonetically complex than most (if not all) Western European
| languages.
| jventura wrote:
| It's just a regular "r" for us pt-pt natives... :)
| pelasaco wrote:
| Yes in Portugal, I tend to see a lot of similarities with
| German by the spoken Portuguese.. Like "Ei" sounding like
| "Ai" and "P" sounding like "B" in the beginning of
| sentences.
| ratww wrote:
| I was really surprised at how close the alphabet letters
| are pronounced in German and Portuguese.
| chefandy wrote:
| Though I don't speak Portuguese myself, my immediate
| family roots are Azorean and grew up among the huge
| Azorean population surrounding New Bedford and Fall
| River, so I've heard it regularly for my entire life. I
| lived a bit further north during High School and
| regularly encountered folks from Russia and the Ukraine.
| I thought I was crazy for thinking spoken pt-PT and
| Russian sounded similar from a distance. However, my best
| friend who grew up in St. Petersburg and has a degree in
| linguistics said he often does a double-take when hearing
| pt-PT speakers on the street! He had some sort of
| technical explanation for it (that didn't stick in my
| head being a non-linguist and (sadly) monolingual.)
| wenc wrote:
| It's because Pt-Pt is a stressed timed language vs Br-Pt
| which is a syllable timed language.
|
| Pt-Pt drops a lot of unstressed vowels whereas Br-Pt
| almost all syllables are pronounced.
|
| Langfocus did a video on why (European) Portugues sounds
| like Russian.
|
| https://youtu.be/Pik2R46xobA
| pelasaco wrote:
| me too. I grew-up between Germany and Brazil and now I
| live mainly in Portugal. In the beginning I was amused by
| that too. Now I can really speak PT-PT. Even "Ja" can be
| used to say yes.
| marcodiego wrote:
| Indeed, this 'r' sound where the vibration lies deep into the
| throat is not part of our phoneme repository. I have no
| difficulty with it though.
| bigodbiel wrote:
| This really reminds me of "tranatlantic accent" which prevailed
| in the mid 1900 and for many non-English speakers was
| considered as the de facto English, mainly because of it
| popularization via news and entertainment industries.
|
| Just like Hollywood and news broadcast, Brazilian soap operas
| have created the de facto Portuguese accent for non-Portuguese
| speakers.
| ilamont wrote:
| I knew it as "mid-Atlantic" ... you sometimes hear it in old
| black and white Hollywood movies featuring upper crust East
| Coast Americans and media personalities like William F.
| Buckley. I believe FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt used it as well.
| VeninVidiaVicii wrote:
| As a Spanish speaker who has studied Portuguese, I love this.
|
| My first time in Portugal was a mess -- I couldn't understand
| anything. There were a few words I kept hearing people say that
| got me really mixed up: "Morrer" (to die) sounds a lot like
| "Mujer" (woman) in Spanish, whereas "Morar" (to live) sounds a
| lot like "Morir" (to die).
| asveikau wrote:
| When the author is sampling R sounds of the world, two prominent
| omissions come to mind:
|
| - American English uses the r flap for the letters t and d
| between vowels. I think I may have also heard Australians do
| this?
|
| - I've heard Puerto Ricans when speaking Spanish do something
| close to what is described as a "Brazilian R". A /x/ type of
| sound where /r/ would be in other accents. Backed up here:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puerto_Rican_Spanish#Feature...
| umanwizard wrote:
| Also, it's false that the alveolar approximant is the same as
| the retroflex (some Americans have the retroflex version; some
| don't). To be fair, they sound virtually identical (at least to
| me).
|
| Furthermore, it's _extremely_ false to claim that either of
| these sounds is exclusive or nearly so to American English;
| they are present in many languages, including but not limited
| to various dialects of European languages, and also including
| Mandarin, which has several times more native speakers than
| Am.E. does.
| umanwizard wrote:
| > American English uses the r flap for the letters t and d
| between vowels
|
| I think it's more constrained than this; I don't have it in
| "baton", for example. I'm no phonologist, but I suspect it has
| to be followed by a liquid (L or R sound). I have it in e.g.
| "butter" or "little".
| FeteCommuniste wrote:
| Has to be between vowels and at the start of an unstressed
| syllable, I believe. Compare "attic" to "attack," for
| example.
| umanwizard wrote:
| Great example -- I guess I stand corrected and it doesn't
| have to do with liquids at all!
| asveikau wrote:
| Like another comment I can think of examples without a liquid
| following. "Latin" is one. (I have a distant memory of being
| called strange for saying that as [t])
|
| I think I sometimes only do it if I'm talking fast.
| Pronouncing it as [t] isn't often outside the acceptable
| range, or something that makes you sound too foreign.
| FeteCommuniste wrote:
| The "t" in "Latin" is just a glottal stop for me. Using [t]
| sounds vaguely British to my ears.
|
| Same goes for other words that end in "t" + unstressed
| "en," e.g. "fatten," "batten."
| asveikau wrote:
| That's a tad ironic because British people are some of
| the biggest users of glottal stops for /t/.
| Tagbert wrote:
| Received Pronunciation English does emphasize the /t/ in
| these cases, but other British dialects use glottal stops
| for /t/ in many cases.
| FeteCommuniste wrote:
| Definitely. I was thinking more of the sort you hear from
| BBC reporters.
| umanwizard wrote:
| For me the /t/ in Latin is a glottal stop. Where are you
| from?
|
| > Pronouncing it as [t] isn't often outside the acceptable
| range, or something that makes you sound too foreign.
|
| I don't know about that. I'm pretty sure someone
| pronouncing the /t/ in "butter", "little", etc. as [t]
| would make me very confident that they weren't American.
| asveikau wrote:
| > Where are you from?
|
| I was born in Washington DC to a family that had recent
| roots all over Europe. And had some young interest and
| exposure to Spanish. I'm American, but my accent is a
| little all over the place.
|
| I don't get much grief over this in the northeast, but on
| the west coast people are pretty confused by the way I
| talk.
| umanwizard wrote:
| I'm from Arizona (not the West Coast, but culturally and
| physically close enough).
|
| My mom would always try to correct my pronunciation of
| "Latin", "mountain", and similar words with a /t/
| realized as a glottal stop.
|
| She's from the East Coast, so indeed, maybe that
| pronunciation isn't as common there.
| asveikau wrote:
| Yeah. That amuses me. I'll need to be honest... When I
| hear people overdo the flap pronunciation of /t/ in those
| specific words, it triggers something judgemental in me.
| I've been on the west coast for 14 years now, so I think
| I've gotten over it somewhat.
| SamBam wrote:
| Repeating "butter" is actually a great way to teach people
| how to make the rolled R [r].
| umanwizard wrote:
| By "rolled r", do you mean the trill? The trill and flap
| are different sounds in some languages (for example,
| Spanish "perro" (dog) has the trill whereas "pero" (but)
| has the flap). The /t/ in Am.E. "butter" is the flap.
| asveikau wrote:
| If you start with a flap and add a little air and
| lengthen it, you get into trill territory. This is a good
| way to teach the trill.
|
| Once I recall I pronounced a drawn out /d/ when cold and
| startled, and a friend commented that I "rolled my D" and
| it was weird.
| forinti wrote:
| I'm a native Portuguese and Spanish speaker. The phonetics of
| Portuguese are much richer than Spanish, even though they are so
| similar in vocabulary. I think this is the reason you can speak
| Spanish so much faster (even if you are fluent in both).
|
| But I think the most difficult r is the Spanish r in perro. I
| like the way Chileans kind of sneak a zh in there: perzho.
|
| Personal anecdote: once my mother (who speaks Spanish first)
| asked for me to dry the table with a sponge: Pega uma esponja e
| seca. Now, Spanish only has one e, but in Portuguese "seca" with
| an open e is "to dry" - the verb - and with a closed e is the
| adjective "dry". So I handed her a sponge and was duly
| reprimanded.
| ravishi wrote:
| As a Brazilian learning Spanish, I definitely have a hard time
| saying perro. Perrito is way more difficult.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| >I like the way Chileans kind of sneak a zh in there: perzho.
|
| Do Argentines do this too or is that with just ll?
| lhorie wrote:
| A discussion of Portuguese Rs wouldn't be complete without at
| least a mention of Jimmy Five[0] (aka Cebolinha), a character in
| the Monica's Gang cartoon.
|
| > Due to dyslalia, Jimmy Five is incapable of pronouncing the
| letter "r", replacing it with the letter l, in the Portuguese
| version, or with the letter w, in the English version. When the
| letter is used at the end of a word, however, he pronounces it
| normally (as in "car" or "locker").
|
| What is fascinating about this cartoon is how diverse it is. I'd
| be hard pressed to name any other publication where one of the
| main characters has a speech impairment (which is often used to
| make jokes and puns), and that has side characters with various
| other disabilities, notably Hummer (Humberto), who's mute, and
| more recently Luca, a wheelchair-bound yet physically active boy.
| The cartoon isn't afraid of running stories about touchy topics
| like disability challenges, nor of using these topics for
| lighthearted comical effects.
|
| It also pretty much single-handedly exposed generations of
| Brazilians to Guarani indigenous culture (e.g. what Monica fan
| doesn't know what Tupa[1] is), and frequently publishes stories
| about ecology preservation and morality.
|
| IMHO, it's one of the best examples of minority representation in
| mainstream media done right.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Five
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tup%C3%A3_(mythology)
| rglullis wrote:
| I think Mauricio de Souza is an underrated genius and Turma da
| Monica is the first and best example that comes to my mind when
| I'm overseas and get asked about Brazilian culture. But please,
| let's not measure its virtues by some broken standards like
| Identity Politics.
|
| I mean, yes, they have "diversity" and I think they have
| "minority representation done right" but - unlike any example
| of modern American cultural production - they don't do it to
| "tick checkboxes". The art and the stories come first. The
| characters are there to support the story, not to push some
| agenda.
| lhorie wrote:
| > The art and the stories come first
|
| Yes, this can't be emphasized enough. I mentioned inclusivity
| to weave a narrative, and although one _could_ argue that
| more recent characters like Luca are more of the checkbox-
| ticking variety, generally speaking the character cast of
| Monica 's cartoons is mind-bogglingly diverse, far beyond
| "wokeness" lines. There's Chico Bento (a hillbilly boy living
| in a farm) and his gang, there's Papa-capim (a Guarani boy
| living in the rainforest) and his gang, there's Piteco (a
| pre-historic man) and his friends, Bidu (a blue dog) and
| friends, Penadinho (a ghost) and friends, Austronauta (a
| spaceman), Rolo/Tina (young adults), Capitao Feio (an anti-
| hero), Horacio (a vegetarian t-rex), Louco (a literally
| insane guy) and the list goes on.
|
| In a single edition, you could go from one story about a dog
| talking to a rock (yes, the _rock_ is a recurring character),
| to another about the grim reaper bringing people to the
| afterlife (yes, she 's a recurring character too), to one
| about Magali's gluttony vs Dudu's aversion to food. There's
| so much going on in the cartoon's universe that it's hard to
| do it justice with just a short comment on HN.
| rglullis wrote:
| It is _Mrs. Rock_ , she is an old lady and demands respect.
| ;)
|
| Seriously, I think I basically learned to read with their
| comics (along with Disney's) and it is impressive how some
| of these stories get stuck in our heads and definitely take
| a role in forming our personalities. With Disney's, there
| is the story where the kids use the duplicating machine to
| make infinite money, and end up learning about inflation.
| With Monica, there is one story where one of the boys (I
| think it's Cebolinha) are talking with Anjinho about the
| consequences of doing what they do to Sansao and if they
| are going to Hell for it, which becomes an amazing short
| but beautiful affirmation of Judeo-Christian values.
| Paraphrasing, Anjinho says something like "do not worry
| about Heaven or Hell and the afterlife, just use this life
| to bring as much of Heaven to Earth as you can"
| quirino wrote:
| Here are the main characters from Monica's Gang:
|
| - Monica (Monica) - has ludicrous physical strength (quite
| easily the strongest person in the world in the cartoon). Gets
| made fun of by the boys for her big front teeth and responds by
| hitting them with her blue stuffed rabbit.
|
| - Jimmy Five (Cebolinha) - Can't pronounce some words properly
| (as described above). Has exactly 5 strands of hair on his head
| and is always trying to steal Monica's rabbit, in an attempt to
| become the "owner of the street".
|
| - Maggy (Magali) - REALLY likes to eat, is able to do so
| indefinitely. Many stories revolve around how quickly and much
| she can eat. Is often seen with a big slice of watermelon on
| her hands.
|
| - Smudge (Cascao) - Has never taken a shower and is extremely
| afraid of water. The canon is that Smudge has never even
| touched a single drop of water in his life. Even has his own
| set of supervillains whose only goal is to get him to take a
| shower.
|
| This is not even the tip of the iceberg of the shenanigans and
| characters from these comics. Monica's gang is such a special
| part of Brazilian culture and I hope someday it gets the
| international recognition it deserves.
| simtel20 wrote:
| Bravo for explaining it. But how could you not include Sansao
| as a primary character?
| EL_Loco wrote:
| Quirky anectode: I befriended an american hobo who travelled to
| Brazil in the 90's (he came here again every now and then). He
| didn't shower much, truly looked like a crusty vagabond, and
| when he found out about it, he absolutely loved the character
| named Capitao Feio ("Captain Ugly"), a dirty, crusty
| supervillain whose superpowers are spreading dirt around.
| Capitao Feio lives in the sewers and got his powers and he got
| crushed by all the dust and dirt of his huge, old comic book
| collection. He's also Cascao's uncle, and his goal is to become
| dirtier than his nephew.
|
| edit: I don't know what he's actually called in english.
| Captain Ugly is the literal translation. By the way, 'Little
| Onion' is way cooler than 'Jimmy Five'.
| simtel20 wrote:
| Regarding cebolinha, absolutely his name is better in
| Portuguese. Especially since that's the word for green
| onions/scallions, which his hair resembles.
| lhorie wrote:
| > I don't know what he's actually called in english
|
| His english name is Captain Fray (a name that was presumably
| carefully chosen in order to avoid the need for redrawing his
| shirt, which has a big F on it)
| kentosi wrote:
| As an English speaker who learnt Portugal Portuguese (PT-PT),
| which has its own "r" pronunciations, imagine my surprise and
| confusion when I heard Brazilian Portuguese (BR-PT) for the first
| time :-)
| samueloph wrote:
| If you're interested in Portuguese in general, I suggest
| listening to Azorean Portuguese. It's so different it sounds like
| a different language to most Brazilians (and I assume to other
| nationalities as well),
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7efyRaaTUU
| throwaway599281 wrote:
| There are certain interviews to Azoreans that require subtitles
| to be added, otherwise nobody from the mainland will understand
| anything that they're saying due to a very thick accent.
|
| But as far as I know it's due to the colonization of the
| islands with both Portuguese people and people from the low
| countries.
| ORioN63 wrote:
| Link is dead.
|
| As an anecdote, to kick off discussion, I, as a native European
| Portuguese speaker, that was born in France (moved to Portugal
| when I was 4), can _barely_ pronounce them correctly.
|
| Not all R's have the same roll of the tongue. They're usually in
| the middle of the word. Hate those R's.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Don't worry, as native European Portuguese speaker, the way we
| speak the H means (hint for others, we really don't), has
| already landed me in some funny situations in languages where
| it actually makes a difference, like German.
| ptsneves wrote:
| The difference between the sounds of "a penis" and
| "happiness" is mostly the h vocalization which European
| Portuguese basically ignores.
| soneca wrote:
| My name is Rodrigo and I work remotely for an american company
| with only American teammates. When I say my name I pronounce the
| way Americans would pronounce it to simplify communication, but
| it always feels a little phony. Like I am making up a nickname
| that's actually not mine to a new group.
|
| Not anything that bothers me, just a curiosity of global remote
| work and our R.
| Karto wrote:
| I had a similar experience in spite of not needing any R,
| living and working in several English speaking countries. My
| name is Mathias, and the variety of ways English speakers
| called me was a proper issue, in the sense that I sometimes
| didn't even recognize that somebody was talking about me, or
| calling me across a workshop. When I started introducing myself
| as "Matt", all became easy. Never had this issue with pretty
| much any other culture I worked with :D (all kinds of Europeans
| and Arabs mainly)
|
| If it's about Rs, I worked on an oil rig with a Mexican guy
| named Javier. The American OIM had such hard time telling
| "Javier" (with the two different gutturals) on the tannoy,
| Javier got called "George" for the rest of our stay.
| aforwardslash wrote:
| If the problem was only with R's.. In my case (Joao) i just got
| used to have my name pronounced as "joao" :)
| kergonath wrote:
| Lots of languages don't have nasals and native speaker are
| almost physically unable to pronounce it.
| digorithm wrote:
| Hah! I'm also Rodrigo, and I've been living in Canada for 6
| years now. I've given up hoping people would get the
| pronunciation of my name right. At this point I think I'm even
| more used to the North-American way. Rodrigo is a hella hard
| name if you've never spoken Portuguese.
| Kaze404 wrote:
| "Rod" might work as a suitable nickname, since it's also used
| for names like Roderick (which sounds eerily similar to Rodrigo
| now that I think about it).
| soneca wrote:
| No one calls me Rod, I am not comfortable creating an actual
| nickname. I am happy enough just changing the pronunciation
| kergonath wrote:
| My approach as well. I'm not bothered with different people
| pronouncing my name differently. Does not stop me from
| being pedantic about pronouncing other people's "correctly"
| :)
| Kaze404 wrote:
| You don't necessarily have to frame it that way. "Hey
| folks, I understand my name can be difficult to pronounce
| sometimes so feel free to call me X". But I also totally
| understand if you don't feel like it's necessary. Just
| something to keep in mind :)
| SwiftyBug wrote:
| To me names are simply not translatable. A name is not a word,
| is a sound we associate with our selves. The Americanized form
| of "Rodrigo" is not the sound you associate with your self I'd
| too feel weird to introduce myself trying to emulate an accent.
| samueloph wrote:
| I used to do the same for "Samuel" but figured I'm happier
| saying my name the correct way when asked instead of having
| that weird feeling. I don't mind if people say it differently
| with their accents or don't try to say it like I do, but it's
| nice when somebody says it correctly.
|
| "correct pronunciation" to me, in terms of names, roughly means
| the pronunciation that that person grew with (so it's about
| where they're from).
| soneca wrote:
| I thought about it, and I don't think I would be happier not
| changing the pronunciation. This weird feeling is very minor,
| just a matter of curiosity, not something that bothers me.
|
| And one key difference is the said Portuguese R. It's
| trickier than Samuel variations. I think a lot of people
| would not understand what my name is at all if I pronounce it
| the way we do it in Brazil.
| weinzierl wrote:
| When I was in Brazil in the 90s someone asked me if I liked 'nuns
| and hoses'. Took me a while to figure out she meant Guns 'N
| Roses.
|
| The Brazilian R is very variable as the article points out but
| often it is closer to an H than to an R and sometimes this is
| even true when Brazilians speak English;-)
| emblaegh wrote:
| I heard a story of an English speaker being confused when a
| Brazilian asked them if they liked "hedge hotch", the endearing
| way Brazilian fans refer to the band red hot chilli peppers.
| ncmncm wrote:
| These treatments always skip over the elephant in the room: "r"
| where there is none. E.g. Brit pronunciation "agender" for
| agenda, and most problematically "drawring".
|
| It appears that appending "r" sounds was once a marker for "posh"
| status in England, and adopted by the middle class as an attempt
| at upward mobility. But they went overboard, and added Rs the
| posh wouldn't. Arguably, it was initially done in mockery, but
| the mocked missed the joke. I don't know any way to test that
| hypothesis.
| wefarrell wrote:
| I can never get over the way my Brazilian wife pronounces the
| currency.
|
| Singular - hey-ow
|
| Plural - hey-I.
|
| They're spelled real and reals respectively.
| samueloph wrote:
| The correct spelling for the plural form is 'reais' (the 'l'
| from the singular form 'real' becomes an 'i').
|
| I think I've never heard anybody pronounce 'reais' without the
| sound of s at the end, are you sure she doesn't say it? It's
| probably something like hey-eyes (hey-eye-shh for cariocas)
| cesarb wrote:
| A small historical note: there are/were _two_ different
| Brazilian currencies called Real. The current one has
| "reais" as the plural, but the old one had "reis" as its
| plural form.
| zanellato19 wrote:
| real and reais, not reals.
|
| hey-I on the plural doesn't make a lot of sense to me, you are
| probably not hearing something she is saying.
| wefarrell wrote:
| You're right there is a very subtle s as the end that I
| wasn't noticing, especially at the speed of normal
| conversation.
| pantuza wrote:
| We pronounce 'r' in Portuguese as 'h' in english words. For
| example: the word 'mice' in Portuguese is 'rato' which we
| pronounce as if it was 'hato'. Similar to 'hat', 'hate' or 'hit'.
|
| But never as the english word 'rat'. For us it sounds like
| 'rrrrrrrat', because the 'r' is too long in the pronunciation.
|
| Summarizing: Portuguese don't use long 'r' phonemes when the word
| starts with 'r'. We usually pronounce as if the word starts with
| 'h' in english.
|
| The long 'r' is used when 'r' or 'rr' appears in the middle of
| the words.
| salicideblock wrote:
| Actually, I am familiar with a rolling r such as in English
| 'rat', used in place of the the initial R or double RR, in
| rural central and northern Portugal.
|
| The linked article acknowledges this at the end
| throwaway599281 wrote:
| >Summarizing: Portuguese don't use long 'r' phonemes when the
| word starts with 'r'. We usually pronounce as if the word
| starts with 'h' in english.
|
| Either I didn't understand what you mean or I have never seen
| any Portuguese native speaker (including me) pronouncing it
| like you say we do.
| kubb wrote:
| Just look up the pronunciation in a dictionary.
| CrociDB wrote:
| I, a native portuguese speaker, recently wrote about the German R
| pronunciation was one of the most complicated for me to grasp in
| this language. Even listening and identifying it is really hard
| for me. https://crocidb.com/post/on-the-german-r-pronunciation/
| meepmorp wrote:
| tl;dr - /r/ in Portuguese apparently has a wide variety of
| allophones
| StephenSmith wrote:
| I took some Spanish in school but my most notable experience
| attempting to learn (Brazilian) Portuguese as a native English
| speaker was hearing the difference between the names Jose and
| Roberto.
|
| There's the quintessentially, native-English-speaking
| pronunciation of Jose with a hard J. With Spanish, the J is
| obviously silent, or extremely soft, but in Brazilian Portuguese
| (I can't speak for other forms), you pronounce it almost like
| someone reading the name for the first time in English, with the
| hard J.
|
| And then you have the opposite with the name Roberto, in Spanish
| the R is hard and present (and easy for native-English-speakers),
| but in Portuguese, the R has that same soft J sound that Spanish
| speakers use on Jose.
|
| It's fun how these (three) languages intertwine.
| Rygian wrote:
| As a Spaniard, I am confused by the "the J is obviously
| silent". The most neutral pronunciation of Jose in Spain (the
| one you would hear in Spanish broadcast news) is indeed
| /xo'se/.
|
| Spanish is extremely rich in pronunciation variations, due to
| the large population spread over several continents, so in most
| cases when you observe something about "Spanish" you need to
| focus on a specific region or dialect, for the observation to
| have a proper context.
| FeteCommuniste wrote:
| Maybe they got Spanish "J" confused with Spanish "H?"
|
| There are some cases like "halar" / "jalar" but I don't think
| I've seen the name "Hose" before. :-)
| umanwizard wrote:
| It's also /xo'se/ in Mexico as far as I can tell. I'm not
| Mexican but I know a lot of Mexicans and am pretty sure
| that's how they'd pronounce it.
|
| I would be very surprised if the "Spanish J" is silent
| anywhere; the person you're replying to almost certainly just
| made a mistake.
| kergonath wrote:
| From my experience, native English speakers have a very
| hard time pronouncing the Spanish /j/ (or the German /ch/,
| for that matter, or even the French /r/), so they just
| pronounce it as a somewhat stressed /h/ (for lack of a
| better term).
| umanwizard wrote:
| "ch" in German actually represents two different sounds:
| e.g. the one in "ich" and the one in "Bauch".
|
| I'm a native English speaker and I find those extremely
| difficult to distinguish. But the French r is fine. (I
| spoke French to a near-native level 15 years ago; it's
| probably decayed to "advanced intermediate" by now).
| cassianoleal wrote:
| The R in Roberto can be soft like a Spanish J, or it can be
| pretty hard, albeit with the _back_ of tongue bouncing off the
| palate rather than the tip, depending on many factors - local
| accent, the speaker 's mood or energy level, etc. Mind you, to
| us it will still be the same phoneme, just at different
| "softness" levels.
|
| In other accents, the tip of the tongue is used in the same
| fashion as in Spanish. This is especially present in border
| regions.
|
| In other regions, that R is a single hit of the tip of the
| tongue, especially around Italian and German colony regions,
| similar to what a single R in the middle of a word typically
| sounds in Portuguese.
| umanwizard wrote:
| What is a "hard J"?
|
| As another speaker pointed out, the J in Jose is not silent or
| nearly-silent in Spanish. It is a sound that doesn't exist in
| mainstream English, but is most close to the English "h" sound.
| [deleted]
| bradrn wrote:
| This is an excellent article! However, I find the definition of
| phonemes very unsatisfying:
|
| > Phonemes are not exactly the same thing as sounds, and they're
| not exactly the same thing as letters. They are kind of like
| connecting categories that map letters to sounds ... Phonemes are
| a way of saying, If you see a letter "r" is this situation, use
| Sound A for it. If you see "r" in this other situation, use a
| different Sound B for it. But Sound A and B are not fixed -- they
| will vary depending on the specific dialect.
|
| The problem is that this relies on letters, which is a problem
| because (a) many languages are unwritten, and (b) many other
| languages have weird irregular orthographies (e.g. English,
| French, Irish and Tibetan). Instead, in linguistics, the standard
| definition is that two sounds are different phonemes if _they can
| be the only thing differentiating two words_. For instance, in
| English, /p/ and /b/ are different phonemes, because we have
| pairs of words like _pat_ and _bat_ , which differ only in that
| one has /p/ and the other has /b/. By contrast, Mandarin has no
| such word pairs... but it _does_ have the distinction between
| /p/ and /pk/ (where the latter has an extra puff of air, or
| 'aspiration'), in words like /pa2/ 'fall' and /pka2/ 'crawl'. But
| [p] and [pk] are not distinguished in English -- we have a single
| phoneme /p/ which can be pronounced in either way, with no
| difference whatsoever.
|
| (Of course, this definition can sometimes get difficult to apply.
| For instance, English has no minimal pairs between /h/ and /NG/
| [the sound ending words like 'sing'], because the one only occurs
| at the beginning of a syllable, and the other occurs only at the
| end. But by and large it works satisfactorily.)
| kortex wrote:
| (Not saying you are wrong, I'm trying to clear up my
| misconceptions) I didn't realize that phonemes were
| perceptually distinct units of sound, in the same way graphemes
| are visually distinct units. (yes there is the whole "some
| speakers recognize different sounds in their brain as the same"
| wrinkle).
|
| What would the term be for units of sound which are
| perceptually distinct regardless of listener's perspective?
| E.g. [p] and [pk] are non-phonemic in English but are in
| Korean, and you can tell them apart with a spectrogram. Or is
| that just not a distinction linguists make?
| [deleted]
| umanwizard wrote:
| Phones.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phone_(phonetics)
| tombh wrote:
| You got me thinking about minimal pairs of /p/ and /pk/ in
| English (at least my British English anyway). I'm not a
| linguist, but is this not a minimal pair?
| Mice pour (water into a jug) My spore (as opposed to
| your spore)
|
| Or can minimal pairs not cross word boundaries?
| rogerallen wrote:
| LOL, I really expected to read an article about a variant of the
| statistics programming language R...
| tasha0663 wrote:
| I often entertain the notion that SQL would be way more
| enjoyable in Spanish.
|
| See also Fjolnir https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fj%C3%B6lnir_(pr
| ogramming_lang..., where the program usually seems to end with
| "GRUNNUR". My understanding is that this is basically just the
| name of a standard library package "ground", but screaming
| _GRUNNUR_ at the end of a program feels like something out of
| an issue of Heavy Metal.
| kortex wrote:
| As a GAE native speaker quite comfortable with [r] (inverted r),
| the voiced [post]alveolar approximant, I find this sound super
| fascinating. It's _very_ rare in languages, suggesting it is very
| unusual phonetically, but it happens to be prominent in two of
| the most widely-spoken languages, so many speakers can pronounce
| it.
|
| I've always found alveolar trills more aesthetically pleasing,
| but you casually drop them in English conversation and you get
| weird looks and questions.
|
| Question for the peanut gallery: what the heck is the difference
| between the voiced alveolar approximant and the r-colored vowel,
| e, (schwa plus hook)? They have different IPA so presumably they
| have distinct pronunciation, but I cannot hear a difference, nor
| can I feel a difference in my tongue placement when I say them.
|
| Also, curse HN's lack of unicode support. ~~I think it's related
| to MySql's stupid utf8 is actually utf8mb3 thing~~. I think they
| rendered? I see it in my comment after posting, but they are
| blank squares in the text form.
| jayroh wrote:
| As a BR-born son of an American and a Brazilian, this
| post/article brings me all sorts of joy. To this day, the sound
| of people speaking in BR-PT out in public brings a smile to my
| face. (To be clear, I live in Boston so there is a pretty large
| Brazilian population here)
|
| All languages have their own beauty but there's something special
| about Brazilian Portuguese - the flow, the "sing-song'y" nature
| of it, it's almost like a dance. Admittedly I am biased, but I've
| heard similar from people without the background.
| pelasaco wrote:
| "Take this with a grain of salt, because I am not as familiar
| with the European dialect."
|
| Actually as expected in Portugal, they have many dialects too.
| There are four main Portuguese dialect groups, all mutually
| intelligible: Central, or Beira, Southern (Estremenho), including
| Lisbon, Alentejo, and Algarve, Insular, including the dialects of
| Madeira and the Azores. There is even an extinct one,
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaeo-Portuguese. The Portuguese
| version of this wiki article has more information
| https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judeu-portugu%C3%AAs
| nwatson wrote:
| I can't imagine any two English accents as far apart from each
| other as are the Portuguese accents of "standard Globo TV
| presenter in Brazil" and that of the Azores.
|
| I grew up on and off in Brazil (Rio de Janeiro and Brasilia)
| and later spent 20+ years in the SF Bay Area. Once in a while
| I'd run into old-school Azoreans who'd lived in the Portuguese
| towns (Santa Clara, Newark, San Leandro, Half Moon Bay,
| Pescadero, Castro Valley) for a few generations and it was
| almost impossible to understand them until I started listening
| occasionally to the Bay Area Portuguese radio station. I'd
| mimic those accents and got a bit better at understanding those
| folks, but with cost/benefit ... Brazilians have said I now
| sound Portuguese, and Portuguese people say they can understand
| my Portuguese better than a normal Brazilian's.
|
| I'm not sure how it's changed in the last decade, but in many
| SF Bay Area and Central Valley towns there are Portuguese
| "Sociedade do Espirito Santo" (Holy Spirit Society) halls and
| Catholic churches where Portuguese/Azoreans maintain their
| traditional festivals and music.
|
| I think Neto's shut down its huge Santa Clara restaurant/market
| and reincarnated in a strip-mall/sausage-making operation, but
| at least a couple years ago you could still go and get an
| excellent Linguica sandwich.
|
| EDIT: Sociedade Espirito Santo, Neto's
| arcticfox wrote:
| Is this a reasonable example of the Azores Portuguese??
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeVHjELjR9s
|
| Sounds like a Russian speaking Portuguese to me (American
| fluent in Brazilian Portuguese), pretty amusing but I can
| follow everything. I often think that when I hear PT-PT as
| well - interestingly someone in the comments says this sounds
| less Russian to them. I have very little exposure to non-
| Brazilian accents so no idea in general, but the difference
| sounds about as much as American English<->Scottish English
| to my ears.
|
| I wonder if there's a way to measure the distance between
| accents? That would be really interesting. I'd be curious how
| close all the American accents are to each other, versus the
| British accents, etc. and then also in comparison to
| Portuguese accents and other languages.
| paol wrote:
| > Is this a reasonable example of the Azores Portuguese??
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeVHjELjR9s
|
| Yes, but every island has a different accent. That was
| filmed in S. Jorge and the accent there is quite mild. Some
| islands have stronger accents. Most notably S. Miguel,
| which in it's thickest form can be very hard to understand
| for mainland speakers.
| FeteCommuniste wrote:
| The syllable-eating, "Slavic-ish" sound of PT-PT is why I
| chose to learn it over Brazilian. I love it.
|
| I have trouble with Brazilian accents, on the other hand,
| because I mainly listen to PT-PT.
| nwatson wrote:
| That sounds quite like the Azorean Portuguese I'd hear in
| the SF Bay Area, except I think modern Azoreans in the
| Azores probably have been exposed to a lot of Brazilian TV
| and music and so have probably "normalized" a bit toward
| the "centroid" of a pan-luso pronunciation. The SF Bay Area
| Azoreans I'd hear probably stuck to an "older original
| accent" and so were probably further from the Brazilian
| Portuguese I grew up with.
| umanwizard wrote:
| > I can't imagine any two English accents as far apart from
| each other as are the Portuguese accents of "standard Globo
| TV presenter in Brazil" and that of the Azores.
|
| I don't know anything about Portuguese, but I find a lot of
| Scottish varieties to be totally incomprehensible (I'm
| American).
| somewhereoutth wrote:
| and Mancunian and Liverpudlian (I'm English).
| pelasaco wrote:
| The base of the Florianopolis immigration is from Azores.
| They are called "manezinhos" and have their own dialect
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florianopolitan_dialect
| coliveira wrote:
| The letter R in Portuguese can range from a strong sound to
| voiceless. It all depends on where the r appears in the word, the
| context in the phrase, and the dialect used.
| paol wrote:
| Just a heads up for non-portuguese speakers: brazilian portuguese
| and european portuguese can differ quite extremely in
| pronunciation. Then there's also african portuguese
| pronunciations, though to my ear those tend to be closer to the
| european.
|
| The article is written from a brazilian standpoint, so keep that
| in mind when comparing with your own experiences of the language.
| lucis wrote:
| That's right, this is for Portuguese, not Portuguese (PT) /s
|
| Recently, there was a polemic in social media that Portuguese
| mothers were worried their kids were only speaking "Brazilian",
| due to the dominance of Brazilian content creators in Youtube,
| Instagram, TikTok...
|
| [1]:
| https://www.correiobraziliense.com.br/mundo/2021/11/4962302-...
| (Portuguese)
| ginja wrote:
| I'm Portuguese and I share this concern - PT-BR does have a
| lot of differences in vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation.
|
| Pronunciation bothers us the least actually, but other things
| are weird and/or plain wrong for us:
|
| - Lots of weird words adapted from English like "time"
| (pronounced "tee-me") which means team in PT-BR. Portuguese
| has a fine word for that already - equipa ("equipe" in BR) -
| and most of us speak good English so "time" is beyond weird
| for us.
|
| - Wrong verb conjugations are used in informal conversation,
| e.g. "tu vai a praia?" (correct would be "tu vais a praia?"
| and generally we'd omit "tu" [you] because it adds no useful
| information)
|
| - Many Brazilians seemingly think "mas" (but) and "mais"
| (more) are the same word because they pronounce it similarly
| and thus end up using "mais" for everything, even in writing
|
| - Different usage of pronouns, e.g. "eu dou-lhe" in PT vs "eu
| lhe dou" in BR (or worse, "eu dou a voce" - sounds like
| caveman language plus "voce" is considered rude in PT)
|
| Vocabulary differences make for some really funny
| misunderstandings sometimes though. My Brazilian neighbor's
| kid was really confused and scared when she was told she
| needed to "levar uma pica" (get a shot, as in an
| injection/vaccine) - in Brazil this same sentence means "take
| a dick". I hadn't laughed that hard in a long time.
| rglullis wrote:
| In a way I agree with your concerns but I'd say that the
| main issue is with some evolutionary aspect of the
| language. My guess is that we see it happening in Brazil
| more due to sheer population size.
|
| Looking at your examples:
|
| - Brazilians borrows words from other languages a lot more
| easily than the Portuguese, _especially_ when the foreign
| word is shorter. No wonder "time" gets more usage than
| "equipe".
|
| - "tu" is going to become extinct in Brazil within the next
| generation or two. People only use first- or third-person
| conjugation anyway. "Voce" is going to be used for making
| the distinction between the actual subject of the sentence,
| and coloquially people just say "ce", which is just as
| short as "tu", so I don't see it surviving for long.
|
| - Disagree on "Mas/mais". Yes, it is true that a lot of
| people make this mistake or (worse) don't even know the
| distinction, but this type of error is equivalent to
| English "they're/their/there": there is no redundancy or
| efficiency, so I don't see why the language would change
| here.
|
| - "dou-lhe", "lhe dou": also going to be extinct due to the
| redundancy with propositions. You (and I) may not like the
| "caveman language", but it's undeniably more efficient to
| just throw verb + proposition + person than to deal with
| different pronouns.
| EL_Loco wrote:
| Sorry to ask you this, and please fell free to not respond.
| But I have wanted to move to Portugal with my wife and kids
| for quite some time, but the large number of Brazilians
| linving and moving there bum me out to an extent. Mostly, I
| don't know what is the general feeling towards Brazilians
| in Portugal (I went there a few times, and absolutely loved
| it, but it was travel, not living). I'm not a fan of
| Brazilian mainstream culture, mostly. We are outgoing,
| friendly and warm, sure, and those qualities I embrace and
| celebrate, however, there are many negatives to Brazilian
| culture that are widespread (anti-intellectualism, veiled
| prejudice, sexism etc). I don't know what most Brazilians
| in Portugal are like, and I know that it will vary greatly,
| but how much hostility is there towards Brazilians? Every
| person I met in Portugal was pretty nice, and some were
| downright great people, and I would love to live there, but
| I'm afraid my kids might have a bad experience from being
| Brazilian immigrants in school, etc.
| pcardoso wrote:
| I'm not the original commenter, but I'm Portuguese living
| a small city and I'd say most Brazilians that live here
| can blend easily. My kids have some Brazilian friends at
| school at they get along well.
| samueloph wrote:
| Yes, it's funny in a way that Brazilian culture is
| influencing Portuguese's other than the reverse (since
| Portugal colonized Brazil). I guess during the internet era,
| having a bigger population is a big factor on "culture
| pressure" or whatnot (there's more Brazilian online content
| than Portuguese, or any other lusophone country).
| mprovost wrote:
| When Sesame Street was first popular in the 1970s my great
| aunt in Massachusetts famously forbade her grandchildren from
| watching it because she didn't want them to learn how to
| speak like New Yorkers.
| forinti wrote:
| Brazilians have a hard time understanding European Portuguese
| (I think that pronoun placement is a major factor other that
| the actual phonetics - they just don't expect certain phrases).
|
| And I've also heard from Portuguese that they find Brazilians
| easier to understand than some of their own compatriots,
| especially now that telenovelas have spread Brazilian
| vocabulary in Portugal.
| paol wrote:
| Yes, I think the asymmetry is entirely due to Portuguese
| people being regularly exposed to Brazilian pronunciation,
| whereas the reverse is much rarer.
|
| In the late 80's & 90's Portugal started importing TV
| programs from Brazil. Since the 2000's this happens much
| less, but that has been replaced by a large number of
| Brazilian immigrants settling in Portugal.
|
| As far as I can tell there are no equivalent influences going
| in the other direction, so Brazilians are rarely exposed to
| Portuguese pronunciation.
| SkeuomorphicBee wrote:
| That is certainly a factor. But in my personal experience
| one of the biggest hurdles for Brazilians is the fact that
| Portuguese have a much shorter vowel pronunciation, so the
| separation between syllables is much less pronounced. In
| contrast, some Brazilian accents have comically long
| vowels, so it sounds like they are spelling out every word.
| EL_Loco wrote:
| It's easy to have a brazilian sound like she's speaking
| portuguese from Portugal: just stop pronouncing the
| vowels. If you're brazilian, try it. It actually works.
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