Vowels and Diphthongs in Brazilian Portuguese

[Raphacom123]

Nossa, até eu (que tenho um sotaque carioca puxadíssimo) estou aprendendo...

[eduardosanchez1]

Quero te parabenizar pelas tuas aulas, principalmente pela dedicação.

Sou brasileiro e fico feliz com a tua iniciativa.

É um ótimo professor, também parece dominar bastante minha língua, siga assim!

Quando voltar ao Brasil visita meu estado, o Rio Grande do Sul, que fica no extremo do sul pais. E se puder experimente o "Chimarrão", nossa bebida típica, pesquise a respeito.

Um Abraço

[londonshawtii]

can you post a lesson on colours in portugese?

[LucasLin]

@londonshawtii red : vermelho yellow : amarelo green : verde blue : azul orange : laranja grey: cinza white : branco black : preto pink : rosa purple : roxo brown : marrom

[rogerpenna]

@londonshawtii

colors are very complicated, even in your own language. Take a look at Wikipedia page for MAGENTA in the portuguese language.

To me, that is PINK (Rosa). But no, they call it magenta. I have no idea why. And in the table below the article, they call pink as "Fúchsia" WTF?

[murked77]

amazing. thank you so much!

[Daniiell14]

i'm from brasil =D

i speak in portguese =D

[hugstablebear]

Muito bom! Brigado!

[DarkestProphecy]

Another great video! But, is there anyway you can put your videos in note format? Like, text? Because I'd love to have all this information written down so I can refer back to it if need to.

[JusteunMusicien]

Also, are you sure about your "Saudade" pronunciation? I haven't a clue, but it sounded accented when you said it.

[languagenow]

Yes, the pronunciation I give of "saudade" is correct for most speakers of Brazilian Portuguese. What aspect were you curious about?

[JusteunMusicien]

Just the way it was said at around 7:33, it seems that the diphthong is stressed. But it could be me, I don't much about Portuguese. I think your videos are great by the way, which state do you teach in?

[languagenow]

Thanks, I live in Missouri. In Saudade, the penultimate syllable is tonic. I may have over-emphasized the diphthong just for illustrative purpose.

[JusteunMusicien]

I think it could trip someone up when you pronounce the letter i like in Portuguese, but then saying other letters like in English. Like at 6:08 there was not very much distinction, as right before, you pronounced the i like in English. I followed you, but only because I've studied other languages.

[languagenow]

possibly, but that is why I added the subtitles on the screen at that partciular moment. It's hard to stay consistent.

[BRDisney]

Anyway, congratulations for your vids, Prof. Jason! Your pronunciation is pretty good already! Needing anything, please let me know!

About the Ortography "Update", I think it's totally useless. They want to make the differences between european portuguese and brazilian portuguese smaller, but I think the ortography is the less relevant part of all the differences between Brazil and Portugal. As I said on your other video, the differences aren't only graphical/phonetical... [to be continued]

[BRDisney]

This "Acordo" (that's a pretty ironic name, since "acordo" ["deal"] denotes something discussed by everybody involved. But we haven't decide ANYTHING about it.) CAN'T help brazilians understanding portugueses and vice-versa... It'll just take out a lot of signals and hyphens, that's all. Annoying and useless...

What I mean is: a cellphone will still be called "telemóvel" by a portuguese and "celular" by a brazilian. This "Acordo" won't help at all.

[languagenow]

I agree... it's unnecessary and will confuse a lot of people with the spelling changes. It will have no impact on how people actually talk, and it won't bring the Portuguese and Brazilians any closer ;-) Nas minhas aulas, eu geralmente ignoro o acordo...

[mato710]

opinião não é com "p" mudo.

[TheBer1m]

eu sei eu escrevi errado sem querer :D

brigado por corrigir :)

[languagenow]

muito obrigado pelo comentário!

[mato710]

it's Professor Pasquale, sorry

[mato710]

hey, you can find out things about Professor Pascual, he is a great teacher of Portuguese in Brazil, but he doesn't teach in English,then it would be more like an in-depth study for people who already know something

[mato710]

always that there's the diphthong -ui- the strong vowal is -u-. Ex: fui, fluido and cuidado. I'm sure now

[languagenow]

e nao palavra muito?...

[mato710]

na palavra "muito" também, isso acontece em todas as palavras, eu só dei alguns exemplos.

[clayLavl]

i like your vids. i watch them over and over. i'm preparing to return to brazil next week. your vids have helped me learn more about brazilian portuguese. thanks!

[beechgrovejoe]

I'm new to Portuguese and when I listen to Portuguese on Brazilian radio stations or in some songs. I notice that there seems to be an attempt to avoid hiatus between words by dropping the vowel sound at the end of the first word. It kinda reminds me of non-rhotic english speakers saying "water ice" where they pronounce the "r" to avoid hiatus. Is there some rules that go with this or should I just listen closer?

[languagenow]

joe, can you give me an example in portuguese...?

[beechgrovejoe]

I can't think of one off the top of my head. But I seem to remember it with words like "gente" and "noite" followed by a word that begins with a vowel. The final "ee" sound was not pronounced. Or could this be just a dialect thing?

[beechgrovejoe]

I found one: "Tudo em nome do amor". I would have expected "tu-du-em-no-me-do-a-mor". But is sounds more like "tu-dem-no-me-da-mor" to me.

[mato710]

actually, it would be "tu-doem no-me doa-mor" But there's no rule, it comes with the fluency, ok?

[beechgrovejoe]

Interesting! I will listen more closely. Quickly spoken Portuguese seems to run together much more than the mid-western English I speak natively. Thanks for the pointer.

[BRDisney]

@beechgrovejoe Well, I'm no linguist or so, but I think I can explain why it happens. This phenomenon is called "elision" and it's pretty common in the languages.

In BR, when you have a word with an unstressed final syllabe, the vowel is reduced. It means... let's take the portuguese word "ante". This final E isn't stressed, resulting on its reduction. It means, the E won't sound like the E on word "café" or "meu", but more like the sound of I in the english word "ship".

[To be continued]

[BRDisney]

@beechgrovejoe Well, the same happens with all vowels. Both reduced I and E will sound like the I in ship, reduced O and U sound like a "short" O (I don't think you have this sound in english), and reduced A sounds a bit like U in the english word "but".

Well, once reduced, the vowels get similar to APPROXIMANTS (sounds that aren't really vowels, but consonants similar to vowels. That is: in the word "say", Y isn't a vowel, it's an "approximant".)

[To be continued again :P]

[languagenow]

Good examples of this (post-tonic) vowel reduction are:

FALa, MALa, etc. [like first or final A in America]

SETe, GENTe, VINTe, etc. [like I in machine]

TODo, POVo, etc. [similar to O in movie]

[BRDisney]

@beechgrovejoe In this example you gave, "Tudo em nome do amor", the words "Tudo" and "nome" are stressed on the PENULTIMATE syllabe, and the words "em" and "do" are unstressed. It means the vowels will be reduced, turned into approximants and an elision will happen.

It would sound like "Tu-dwem no-me dwa-mor". The reduced vowel tends to reach the next one and make elisions.

I hope I could explain properly! Tell me if you haven't understood, I can explain it on a private message if you want ;)

[beechgrovejoe]

Actually that helps. So the elision happens when a word with an unstressed final syllable is followed with a word beginning with a vowel? This definitely makes it easier to pronounce and avoids the hiatus between words. So what about when the stress falls on the last syllable? Would that alway get pronounced? For example I would then expect "Você é bom" to get pronounced "vo-SAY-é-bõ". And "Tudo é bom'' would be "TU-dé-bõ". Am I heading in the right direction?

[BRDisney]

@beechgrovejoe Yes, the elision happens in some cases and the "synalepha" (pointed by Prof. Jason) in other cases. For example, unstressed A tends to make elision. In a sentence like "Hora errada", it sound like "orerrada", because the A will be so reduced that it disappears. The other vowels tend to turn into semi-vowels (or approximants), E and I turn into /j/, O and U into /w/. In your last example, it would be "TU-dwé-bõ" ;)

But we don't introduce semi-vowels between [to be continued]

[BRDisney]

@beechgrovejoe ... 2 stressed vowels.

In your example "Você é bom", it's actually pronunced "Vo-CÊ-É-bõ", because both "ê" and "é" are stressed and can't be reduced.

When the stress fall on the last syllabe, it won't be reduced, because the word could get a totally different meaning. A classic example would be "sábia", "sabia" and "sabiá". Accent in antepenultimate, penultimate and ultimate syllabe respectively, and totally different meanings.

[beechgrovejoe]

OK, now I'm starting to get it. The unstressed final sylable may drop out almost completly. "Toda a noite" would be "to-da-noy-chi". But "Todo este" would then be "to-dw-esh-chi". And "mais que um" would me "majsh-kj-um". This seems to make the words roll off the tonge much better.

[BRDisney]

Yes, you described it really well :D It works in most of brazilian accents I know ;)

[beechgrovejoe]

Now that I know about this I notice it more and more all the time. Muito obrigado.

[languagenow]

Or we could say that the post-tonic Os in Tudo and in Do are "reduced" to the semi-vowel /w/ which naturally forms a rising diphthong with the subsequent vowel. What is also happening here is a phenomenon know as "sinalefa" (the Spanish term), which is the combination of vowel sounds between two separate words.

[languagenow]

see wikipedia entry on synalepha

[beechgrovejoe]

This would make for great videos in both Spanish and Portuguese.

[BRDisney]

@languagenow You're totally right, but it's interesting to point that in neutral ambients, that is, without any word following it, these vowels can't be semi-vowels, they're simply reduced. If you check out the International Phonetic Alphabet, you'll see the reduced vowels are there, but in BR portuguese they happen only in specific cases, and if a person mistakes it (not reducing the vowel), it doesn't make difference. The "worst" that could happen in this situation is having a foreing accent.

[tunasoupjj]

Oi, Sou Coreana, adoro suas aulas!!! Muito Obrigada.

[barsorrro]

I wish I had a more constructve comment, but after watching it once all I can say is: THANK YOU VERY MUCH, Professor Jason! This is probably as thorough as it gets :), but it's great that way!

I guess there's never enough as far as hints on pronounciation go.

Personally, though,, my dream would be that you take on a subject like the comparison of conditionals English vs. Brazilian Portuguese, or the sequence of tenses in BR :)

Thank you again and all the best to you, Professor!

[languagenow]

olá amigo, muito obrigado por ter assistido meu vídeo! Está tudo bem com voce ai?

[barsorrro]

Não, não -- o prazer de assisti-lo foi todo meu :)))

Sim, está tudo certo aqui, obrigado! :) E como vai você? :) Acho que você deve ter muito pra fazer, né? :) Quero lhe desejar muita boa saúde e energia pra fazer coisas boas como aqueles lições legais!

[MarcioNSantos]

Very good Jason. There are many details.

Do you intend to talk about the "acordo ortográfico" later?

According to the new ortography:

jóia --> joia

lêem --> leem

[languagenow]

Marcio,

Yeah, I actually thought about those recent changes when I included those words. I left the accents on because in the case of jóia it helps non-natives to recognized the open O, and in the case of Lêem, the accent reinforces the idea of the vowel separation... What do you think about the reforma...? I have no real opinion, as a non-native speaker, and no immediate plans for a video... now THAT would be a long video!! Brigado por comentar, amigo!

[dersonne]

I think the reform extracts some of peculiarities of Brazilian Portuguese language by taking away the dutch/german influences in the witting language, but in other hand it give us a standardization of the language improving the understanding among portuguese speakers wordwide.

[MyDesertStorm]

hi man. You speaks nice potuguese. Are you brasilian?

[languagenow]

Thanks for the comment. I am from the United States, but very interested in Brazil!

[jvictorthegreat]

5 star!!! Wonderful

[zerfsun]

excelente prof. Jason!