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The enigmatic Portuguese R (2013)

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Re: The enigmatic Portuguese R (2013)

#131

Post by EL_Loco »

SkeuomorphicBee wrote: post #109
paol wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Since the 2000's this happens much less, but that has been replaced by a large number of Brazilian immigrants settling in Portugal.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…

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.

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.

Re: The enigmatic Portuguese R (2013)

#132

Post by salicideblock »

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.

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.

Re: The enigmatic Portuguese R (2013)

#133

Post by kergonath »

School-Cotton wrote: post #79
Rygian wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Spaniard, I am confused by the "the J is obviously silent". The most neutral pronunciation of José 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 obs…

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.

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).

Re: The enigmatic Portuguese R (2013)

#134

Post by kergonath »

aforwardslash wrote: post #84
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.

If the problem was only with R's.. In my case (João) i just got used to have my name pronounced as "joao" :)

Lots of languages don’t have nasals and native speaker are almost physically unable to pronounce it.

Re: The enigmatic Portuguese R (2013)

#135

Post by kergonath »

soneca wrote: post #42
Kaze404 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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).

No one calls me Rod, I am not comfortable creating an actual nickname. I am happy enough just changing the pronunciation

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” :)

Re: The enigmatic Portuguese R (2013)

#136

Post by [deleted] »

pportela wrote: post #28
pelasaco wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

[deleted]

Re: The enigmatic Portuguese R (2013)

#137

Post by lhorie »

EL_Loco wrote: post #130
lhorie wrote: post #98

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…

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 Capitão Feio ("Captain Ugly"), a dirty, crusty supervillain whose superpowers are spreading dirt around. Capitão Feio lives in the sewers and got his powers and he…

> 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)

Re: The enigmatic Portuguese R (2013)

#138

Post by EL_Loco »

ginja wrote: post #110
lucis wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

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 goo…

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.

Re: The enigmatic Portuguese R (2013)

#139

Post by pdpi »

oblio wrote: post #116
pdpi wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

I'd never heard that one, that's amazing. Who's the "we" you speak of?

Re: The enigmatic Portuguese R (2013)

#140

Post by somewhereoutth »

School-Cotton wrote: post #76
nwatson wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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).

and Mancunian and Liverpudlian (I'm English).
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