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Lesson Transcript

Braden: Hello, and welcome to Pronunciation lesson 1 - basic Portuguese vowels. Braden here. Welcome to our pronunciation series. I don't wanna scare you away, but we only have five lessons in this pronunciation series. So these lessons will be pretty intense.
Thássia: But you probably have to think a lot.
Braden: So let's get going. Portuguese uses the same alphabet as English, but even though the letters are the same, every sound is different.
Thássia: Some people refer to Portuguese as a phonetic language.
Braden: That means that spelling follows the same rules as pronunciation. What you say is what you write,
Thássia: not like English, where you have words like enough and through that have the same "ough", but different pronunciation.
Braden: Exactly. Each letter in Portuguese has a specific sound that can be modified slightly, but only according to simple specific rules.
Thássia: In this lesson, we are going to learn the vowels.
Braden: Now, vowels in Portuguese are very important, much more important than in English. And because they are so important, you gotta get 'em right.
Thássia: That's right. The vowel sounds can change according to specific rules, and one way is that vowel sounds that happen at the beginning or in the middle of the word, have different sound than vows that occur in the end of a word.
Braden: So to make things a bit easier, we're going to give you some English equivalence for these sounds in Portuguese.
Thássia: But remember, these are just approximations. To get the sound just right, you need to listen very carefully to the natives.
Braden: We'll show you what we mean. Let's start with the letter A. The letter A in Portuguese is pronounced like the A in “father.” Could you give us some examples?
Thássia: Sure. The word for “knife” is faca; and the word for “expensive” is caro.
Braden: Now this is the base pronunciation rule for the letter A in Portuguese. We'll go through the base sounds for the other vowels in Portuguese before we start talking about their modifications.
Thássia: Good idea. The letter E is pronounced like the E in “get.”
Braden: Could you give us some examples of that, Thássia?
Thássia: Sure. Well, the word for "nap" in Portuguese is soneca, and the word for "basket" is cesta.
Braden: the letter I is pronounced just like the I in “ski” or “machine.”
Thássia: And the word for "I saw" is vi, and the word for "China" is China.
Braden: The letter O is pronounced similar to the O in “hope,” but the truth is we don't really have this sound in English.
Thássia: The word for "sweet" is doce, and the word for "tower" is torre.
Braden: The last one is the letter U, and it's pronounced like the U in “flu” or “rule.”
Thássia: The word for "grape" is uva, and the word for "juice" is suco.
Braden: Now we'll cover how the pronunciation of some of the vowels changes when the vowels are at the end of the word. We'll look at the vowels A, E, and O.
Thássia: But just to be clear, the previous rules described the sounds that happen at the beginning or in the middle of the word.
Braden: Exactly. And these next rules describe what sounds these vowels make at the end of. So the letter A at the end of a word is an, A, like the A in “about.”
Thássia: For example, the word for “salad” in Portuguese is salada. Can you hear the A at the end of the word, salada?
Braden: The next letter is the letter E. The letter E makes an E sound like the Y in the English word “messy.” Some examples?
Thássia: Well, the word for "face" is face. And the word nesse, which is a contraction that means “in that”; these words has both of the base sounds for the letter E in Portuguese.
Braden: Last we have the letter O. This is an interesting sound because the sound that the letter O makes in Portuguese doesn't really exist in English, which makes it hard to give good examples.
Thássia: But as close as we can get, the letter O makes an U sound like the U in the English word…
Braden: “Put.” This is a tricky one, as it can change from dialect to dialect or even from person to person, but basically, the sound is somewhere between an [o] and an [u]. Could you give us some examples?
Thássia: Sure. The word for "dry" is seco, and the word for "finger" is dedo.
Braden: Okay. So these last few rules were for the vowels, A, E, and O, when they're at the end of a.
Thássia: That is an important distinction to make.
Braden: Right. Vowels are very important in Portuguese, so they need special attention, and you need to listen extra careful so you can get the sounds just right.
Thássia: We should talk about open and closed vowels too.
Braden: You're right. Some Portuguese vowels also change by opening or closing the sound.
Or you could think of them as relaxed and tense vowels. I had one professor teached it to me that way.
Thássia: Hmm, interesting. So the vowels O and E have open and closed versions.
Braden: This is pretty advanced stuff, isn't it?
Thássia: Yes. For English speaker, this is very hard to hear.
Braden: Could you give us an example for the E vowel?
Thássia: Sure the word ego, which means “ego,” has an open sound; and the word mesa, which means “table” has a closed sound.
Braden: I know these sounds are very similar to the ear of a native English speaker. I still have a lot of problems with it, so let's hear them one after another. First, slowly.
Thássia: Ego. Mesa.
Braden: And one time fast.
Thássia: Ego. Mesa.
Braden: It's usually very hard for English speakers to hear this, but to a native Portuguese speaker, they're about as different as t and p. It's obvious to them, and they never get it wrong.
Thássia: Open and closed vowels, though, do vary a bit by dialect.
Braden: That's right. I was taught that feminine words are usually open and masculine words are usually closed. Is that a good rule to go by?
Thássia: No. There are two many exceptions to a rule like that.
Braden: But the open and closed thing is pretty important, right?
Thássia: Yes, very. The open and closed valves are one of the easiest ways for us to invite foreigners. You can always tell just by looking, but as soon as they open their mouth, we knew.
Braden: So could you give us some examples for the E vowel?
Thássia: Sure. The words for “error” and “I make mistakes” are erro and erro.
Braden: So that first one, erro, is a closed sound and the second one, erro, is an open sound. What's your next example?
Thássia: The words “burial” and the verb “I bury” are enterro and enterro.
Braden: Okay. So the first one is a closed sound.
Thássia: Enterro
Braden: And the second one is an open sound.
Thássia: Enterro
Braden: Could you give us some examples for the letter O as well?
Thássia: Okay. The word “egg” is ovo, and the word “eggs” is ovos.
Braden: So the first word, ovo, has a closed sound and the second one, ovos, has an open sound. Could you give us another example?
Thássia: Sure. The word for “fire” is fogo, and the word for “fires” is fogos.
Braden: So the first one is closed, fogo. And the second one is open, fogos. Now, like we said before, these open and closed vowels can change a bit from dialect to dialect, but there are some rules that are universal, right?
Thássia: Right. Like singular to plural, and noun and verb and accent marks.
Braden: Could you explain the rule for plurals then?
Thássia: Okay. Some words like porto, which means “port,” change from single to plural. In the single form, they are closed, porto. And in the plural form, they are open, portos. Porto and portos.
Braden: And what about rules for nouns and verbs?
Thássia: Well, generally the nouns are closed. Erro, which means “error.” And the verb is open, erro, as in “I make mistakes,” erro. Erro, erro.
Braden: Now, this rule is pretty advanced because you need to understand a bit about verb conjugations for it to make sense.
Thássia: There are quite a few rules for this, so we'll talk more about them as time goes on.
But now, especially for this pronunciation lessons, we suggest listen to them over and over.
Braden: As well as going to the site and listening to the line by line audio and using our voice recording tool.
Thássia: That way you can listen objectively to how you sound and see if it matches the native pronunciation.
Braden: Remember, pronunciation is more important than grammar because even if you use the grammar perfectly, if you don't say it right, they still won't understand you.
Thássia: He's absolutely right. We'll try and be very nice about it, but in the end we are just smile and nod.
Braden: Exactly! Well, that looks like everything for this lesson.
Thássia: Make sure to practice this over and over until you really get the feel for them.
Braden: And we'll see you next time at PortuguesePod101.com
Thássia: Até logo!
Braden: See ya!

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