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The enigmatic Portuguese R (2013)

hackingportuguese.com

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Re: The enigmatic Portuguese R (2013)

#61

Post by Karto »

soneca wrote: post #22

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.

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.

Re: The enigmatic Portuguese R (2013)

#62

Post by salicideblock »

pantuza wrote: post #56

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…

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

Re: The enigmatic Portuguese R (2013)

#63

Post by bkantt »

pelasaco wrote: post #13
marcodiego wrote: post #9

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…

Normally Brazilians have issues with the german R as spoken in the North of Germany. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNU6ZLaZ7Z8

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.

Re: The enigmatic Portuguese R (2013)

#64

Post by pdpi »

mlinhares wrote: post #55
xwolfi wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: The enigmatic Portuguese R (2013)

#65

Post by VeninVidiaVicii »

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).

Re: The enigmatic Portuguese R (2013)

#66

Post by arcticfox »

nwatson wrote: post #41
pelasaco wrote: post #17

"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.…

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 Brasília) 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, C…

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 EnglishScottish 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.

Re: The enigmatic Portuguese R (2013)

#67

Post by emblaegh »

weinzierl wrote: post #12

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;-)

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.

Re: The enigmatic Portuguese R (2013)

#68

Post by ratww »

diego_moita wrote: post #19

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…

That's so true! The thing with "th" I see is that we Brazilians speak it as "fink" (fɪŋk) or "sink" (sɪŋk) rather than the traditional "θɪŋk". 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 :).

Re: The enigmatic Portuguese R (2013)

#70

Post by devilbunny »

xwolfi wrote: post #53
marcodiego wrote: post #9

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…

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.

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.
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