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The enigmatic Portuguese R (2013)

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Re: The enigmatic Portuguese R (2013)

#161

Post by bradrn »

kortex wrote: post #54
bradrn wrote: post #5

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 So…

(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. […

> phonemes were perceptually distinct units of sound, in the same way graphemes are visually distinct units

Yes, exactly! This is a great way to describe it. (I think I might steal it for the future, even.)

> What would the term be for units of sound which are perceptually distinct regardless of listener's perspective?

The closest is ‘phone’, as mentioned by umanwizard, but I’m not sure there is any one word for this, because the concept itself is poorly-defined, and you can make two sounds arbitrarily close. Can you tell apart [a æ]? What about [a̝ æ̞]? How close can they get before you can’t distinguish them by ear? Before a speaker of another language can’t distinguish them by ear? Before you can’t distinguish them even with a spectrogram? And the language you speak really is important — I’m fine distinguishing [p pʰ], I think, but I know people who can’t even hear a difference. Linguists talk as if there were specific sounds, but really there’s only ‘fuzzy’ sets of sounds which people perceive as being more or less similar.

Re: The enigmatic Portuguese R (2013)

#162

Post by simtel20 »

pelasaco wrote: post #21
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…

Hot-Dog: Rotchi-Dogee Hardcore: Rardjee-Core Armlock: Army-locky

Screen capture: prin-tche

Re: The enigmatic Portuguese R (2013)

#163

Post by simtel20 »

marcodiego wrote: post #44
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…

People from Northeast inland will pronounce "breadee peetee".

Also on the coast

Re: The enigmatic Portuguese R (2013)

#165

Post by ginja »

EL_Loco wrote: post #138
ginja wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mai…

In the 90s and early 00s there were a lot of lower class/uneducated Brazilian immigrants moving here and a small but significant part of them would cause all sorts of trouble, from bothering neighbors with loud parties in apartment buildings all the way to being involved in prostitution and violent crimes. This caused a significant amount of prejudice but that has mostly subsided since then as the next waves of Brazilian immigrants have been progressively higher class and more educated, and thus better integrated in our society.

Nowadays there is still some prejudice but the vast majority of people does not have any issues with Brazilians and, unless you are unlucky enough to run into some asshole, you'll probably not notice it at all. Kids care even less about these things so your kids are very unlikely to be bullied in school or anything like that.

In fact, my partner is originally from Brazil and her family moved here when she was 13. She always had friends, never really felt discriminated against, and is now sitting next to me working on her PhD thesis. The rest of her family loves it here too.

So I would say if you want to move here, go for it! Boa sorte :)

Re: The enigmatic Portuguese R (2013)

#166

Post by silasdb »

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…

After TV has became almost universal, there is indeed a unification of accents. I believe it also happens in other countries as well. For Brazil, I believe it is not "accent-free brazilian portuguese" popularized by the media, but rather accent from the southeast region, specially Rio-São Paulo (the most economically developed region) and totally excludes beautiful accents like northeast (Nordeste) and south (Sul) ones which rarely find a way on media with exception of local TV shows.

Re: The enigmatic Portuguese R (2013)

#167

Post by tombh »

bradrn wrote: post #158
tombh wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You got me thinking about minimal pairs of /p/ and /pʰ/ 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?

Interesting question! Not a linguist, but I’d be inclined to the view that the word boundary itself is phonemic: these can be transcribed (for me) as /ma͡is poː/ vs /ma͡i spoː/. Supporting this analysis is the fact that the [p] vs [pʰ] distinction then can be derived using the same phonological rules as usual; also, for me, the /a͡i/ in /ma͡is/ is slightly shorter than that in /ma͡i/. But, as I said, exactly pinning…

Thanks for the cool IPA! I think that seems totally reasonable that the word boundary itself is phonetic, as such it could be intentionally accentuated (as a longer than usual pause) to clarify. Oh wait but isn't [pʰ] word-initial only anyway? So in a way it has an implicit word boundary.

BTW does your accent not aspirate "pour"? So you don't do /ma͡is pʰoː/?

Re: The enigmatic Portuguese R (2013)

#168

Post by EL_Loco »

ginja wrote: post #165
EL_Loco wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mai…

In the 90s and early 00s there were a lot of lower class/uneducated Brazilian immigrants moving here and a small but significant part of them would cause all sorts of trouble, from bothering neighbors with loud parties in apartment buildings all the way to being involved in prostitution and violent crimes. This caused a significant amount of prejudice but that has mostly subsided since then as the next waves of Brazi…

Thanks a lot for your reply!

Re: The enigmatic Portuguese R (2013)

#169

Post by EL_Loco »

pcardoso wrote: post #154
EL_Loco wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mai…

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.

Thank you too for your reply!

Re: The enigmatic Portuguese R (2013)

#170

Post by yeahforsureman »

simtel20 wrote: post #146
yeahforsureman wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How well do you cope then with e.g. Germanic and Eastern European features (such as vowels ä, ö, ü/y, y/ы and schwa, difficult consonant clusters, and short/long vowels and consonants independent of stress)?

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.

Totally forgot the most obvious ones! I think "the" and "thing" are difficult to some degree for most non-English speakers. Actually, languages that have those both or something very close naturally are very rare. Only Icelandic comes to mind. And then peninsular Spanish, Galician, Albanian, Greek and many Arabic dialects have the "thing" at least.

Of all the approximates people use for "the", the soft Latin "d" is quite close to the original, compared to, say, the Franco-German "ze"! Even here in Finland, we are quite fluent in English as such but many completely disregard the difference brought by the "h" in both phonemes, and just aspirate the "t" like you would do without the "h" (and then pronounce the other t's softly without aspiration at all!).

It's all comprehensible as long as its regular, I guess. Still, as an elementary Spanish speaker, I still often get distracted by the Brazilian r's, since instead of "r", I hear the Spanish "jota" or otherwise something I would describe as in the range of h-like sounds, not r's.

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