Learn sounds for more Portuguese consonants
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| Braden: Welcome back, everyone. This is Pronunciation, lesson 3 - Portuguese consonant sounds, part 2. Braden here. |
| Thássia: Welcome back to the Pronunciation series. Thássia here. |
| Braden: In the past two lessons, you learned basic pronunciation of the five Portuguese vowels and rules for seven of the consonants. |
| Thássia: In this lesson, we'll cover 14 more consonant sounds in Portuguese. But don't worry, that sounds more difficult than it really is. |
| Braden: We'll start off with the D and the T. Now, in English, D and T are pronounced by tapping the tip of your tongue on the ridge just behind your teeth. |
| Thássia: You can feel it if you say, "Tapping the tip of the tongue," out loud. I can hear it very clearly. |
| Braden: That's important! To a Brazilian, the English T and D sound very harsh. The Portuguese D and T are pronounced by touching the back of the teeth with your tongue instead of that ridge. Could you give us some examples? |
| Thássia: Of course. The word for "finger" is dedo, De-do. Dedo. And the word for "talent" is talento. Ta-len-to. Talento. |
| Braden: Beautiful. Now, the D and T change in specific instances. |
| Thássia: When they are followed by an E sound. |
| Braden: Exactly. In these situations, the D and T are usually pronounced like the letter G, in the case of the D. And "chi," in the case of the T. We're going to need some examples for that. |
| Thássia: As an example for the letter D, we have bondade, which means "kindness." And divino, which means "divine." |
| Braden: And for the T? |
| Thássia: For the T, the word assistir, which means "watch." And the word tinta, which means "paint." |
| Braden: We should cover the letter Y before we move on, right? |
| Thássia: You're right. The letter Y, called ípsilon in Portuguese, makes the E sound too. |
| Braden: Like the E in "feet." |
| Thássia: So, when it's after a D or a T, it causes the G and "chi" sounds respectively. |
| Braden: Until recently, Y wasn't part of the Brazilian alphabet. In fact, neither were the letters K or W. |
| Thássia: We've only recently been incorporated because so many W and Y words have been borrowed from English and other languages. |
| Braden: And Portuguese pulled the pronunciation from those languages too. So, the pronunciation can vary a bit. Are W and Y and K used very often? |
| Thássia: Only in names and important words. |
| Braden: And the W either makes a V or a U sound, right? Cool! Now, we'll go over the LH, the NH, and the X. So, the LH in Portuguese is pronounced like the LY in the phrase "will yield." |
| Thássia: Could you give us some examples, Braden? |
| Braden: Hey, let's keep my bad Brazilian out of this! How about you do it? |
| Thássia: Okay. The Portuguese words for "woman" is mulher." Mu-lher. Muhler. And the Portuguese word for "noise" is barulho. Ba-ru-lho. Barulho. |
| Braden: The next sound we'll talk about is the NH. |
| Thássia: The N in Portuguese and H serves to nasalize the preceding vowel. And the H serves like a /ye/. |
| Braden: What did you say? What's nasalized? |
| Thássia: Nasalized is when the air goes primarily through your nose instead through your mouth. Like in English when you go "nn." |
| Braden: Good example. The sound obviously isn't going through your mouth because it's closed. So, the sound has to go through your nose. So, the N in the NH nasalizes the previous vowel, and the H kind of acts like a Y, like a "ye" sound. |
| Thássia: Perfect! These are those other H sounds we talked about before. The H is normally silent, but when it's together like in LH or NH, then it makes a kind of "ye" sound. |
| Braden: How about some examples for the NH? |
| Thássia: Well, the word for "sir" is senhor. Se-nhor. Senhor. |
| Braden: One quick tip though, the tip of your tongue should not touch the roof of your mouth. |
| Thássia: The letter X is next. |
| Braden: The X in Portuguese can make four different sounds. It can be a Z. It can be a S. It can be a Ks. And, it can be a Sh. Thássia, is there a rule for knowing when to use which sound? |
| Thássia: No. |
| Braden: There is no set rule, so you'll need to learn the sound of the X in each word, right? |
| Thássia: Right. Two examples for the Z sound are exame, which means "exam," and efeito, which means "result." Usually, a good result. |
| Braden: For the S sound, we have two more examples. The word… |
| Thássia: Próximo. |
| Braden: In Portuguese means "next." And the word… |
| Thássia: Expressão. |
| Braden: Means "expression." Notice how in Portuguese, it's an S sound. But in English, it's a K sound. "Expression," expressão. You should also know that this can actually vary by region. |
| Thássia: For the Ks sound, the examples are taxi, which means "taxi," and fixo, which means a "fixed." |
| Braden: And then, the SH sound can be found in the words… |
| Thássia: Luxo. |
| Braden: And… |
| Thássia: Puxa. |
| Braden: Which mean "luxury" and "to pull," respectively. |
| Thássia: We should also point out that particularly the X can change by dialect. |
| Braden: It will pretty much always be one of these poor sounds. Like it won't randomly become an R or something weird like that. But, for example, some places will say the word "extra" as… |
| Thássia: Estra. |
| Braden: And others will say… |
| Thássia: Eshtra. Wow! That was a lot of information. Be sure to reveal that carefully. Now, we'll finish up with the S sounds, the S and the double S. |
| Braden: That's right. The S in Portuguese has a /s/ sound when… |
| Thássia: Number one, it begins a word. As in sala, which means "room." Sorte, which means "luck." Or, sem, which means "without." |
| Braden: Number two. It follows a consonant as in… |
| Thássia: Pulso, |
| Braden: which means "wrist." Or… |
| Thássia: lapso, |
| Braden: which means "lapse." |
| Thássia: And number three, when it occurs before the consonants C, F, P, Q, and T. For those of you with Linguistics background, these are the voiceless consonants in Brazilian Portuguese. |
| Braden: Some good examples would be… |
| Thássia: Justo. |
| Braden: Which means "just." |
| Thássia: Esquerdo. |
| Braden: Which means "left." And… |
| Thássia: Espera. |
| Braden: Which means "to wait." |
| Thássia: What about the double S sound? |
| Braden: The double S sound is very, very simple. Anytime you see a double S in Portuguese, it always makes the /s/ sound. Could you give us some examples for that? |
| Thássia: Sure. The word for "broom" is vassoura. And the word for "pastime" or "hobby" is passatempo. Okay. That's it for this lesson. That was a lot of stuff, wasn't it? |
| Braden: Yes, it was. But before we wrap up, we need to point out that a lot of these things can change slightly because of the dialect. Like we mentioned with the letter X. |
| Thássia: The changes aren't ever very big. But just like English, there are lots of dialects in Portuguese. |
| Braden: We can't really teach all the variations because that would just make things confusing. But what we're teaching is standard Portuguese. Not everybody will speak this way, but this is the standard Brazilian dialect. |
| Thássia: And plus, we're trying to keep this series to just five lessons. So, we have to pack a lot of information into each lesson. |
| Braden: And we've built it in layers. So, you listen to them now, then in six months, you'll listen to them again and they'll seem like different lessons. |
| Thássia: And following along with the lesson notes helps too. |
| Braden: That's all for now. Bye-bye |
| Thássia: Até mais! |
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