Lesson Notes

Unlock In-Depth Explanations & Exclusive Takeaways with Printable Lesson Notes

Unlock Lesson Notes and Transcripts for every single lesson. Sign Up for a Free Lifetime Account and Get 7 Days of Premium Access.

Or sign up using Facebook
By clicking Join Now, you agree to our Terms of Use, Privacy Policy, and to receive our email communications, which you may opt out at any time.
Already a Member?

Lesson Transcript

Braden: Olá and welcome back everyone to Portuguese pronunciation, lesson 5 - Portuguese accents, nasals, and special marks. Braden here.
Thássia: Thássia here. We're now on our last lesson of the series.
Braden: That's right. We warned you it'd be an intense five lessons, were we right?
Thássia: I don't think it was so bad.
Braden: You can say that, you're a native. Anyway, once you're done with this lesson, you'll be on your way to having excellent Portuguese pronunciation.
Thássia: In this lesson, we will discuss accent, nasals, and special marks in Portuguese.
Braden: Sounds great! These are very important because many learners of Portuguese never study these things enough to really understand how to use them.
Thássia: And often makes their speech difficult for Brazilians to understand.
Braden: So, the accent marks are an extension of the last lesson on the rhythm that words have in Portuguese.
Thássia: Accent marks are small symbols written above certain syllables to indicate some peculiarity in pronunciation.
Braden: That's right. For example, the word…
Thássia: Palíto.
Braden: Which means "toothpick," has the tonic syllable on the penultimate syllable.
In contrast, the word…
Thássia: Palitó.
Braden: Which means "suit coat," is spelled exactly the same way, and it has an accent mark on the last syllable.
Thássia: This accent mark changes the tonic syllable to the last syllable, and then alters the pronunciation of the word final O from the closed "ooh" sound to an open O.
Braden: These little accents are pretty powerful.
Thássia: Yes, they are. The shift in tonic syllable changes the meaning.
Braden: In both English and Portuguese, every word has a different rhythm. One major difference is that English can have multiple tonic syllables per word. But, Portuguese can only have one.
Thássia: Portuguese is simpler because the rules for identifying which syllable is the tonic syllable are finite and simple. Whereas, English has no discernible patterns.
Braden: So, what accent marks are there in Portuguese?
Thássia: There are three accent marks in Portuguese. The acento agudo (´), the acento circunflexo (ˆ), and the crase (').
Braden: The first two accents, the…
Thássia: Agudo.
Braden: And the…
Thássia: Circunflexo.
Braden: One, mark the tonic syllables, and two, modify the sound of the vowel there over.
Thássia: The crase (') indicates a contraction with a preposition -a.
Braden: We aren't going to talk about the crase much right now because it's actually pretty complex grammatically. And, we'll cover it in another series. For now, just remember that most of the time, it means "to the."
Thássia: Some examples of the acento agudo are lápis, which means "pencil," país, which means "country," and saúde, which means "health."
Braden: Without the accent marks, lápis would be pronounced lapís, which doesn't make any sense.
Thássia: An example for the acento circunflexo is the word Português, which is how you say Portuguese in Portuguese. The circunflexo is on the E and marks the tonic syllable, and makes the E have a close sound.
Braden: Can you hear the rhythm of that word? Português. It has a little bounce at the end. Ta-ta-ta.
Thássia: And the word ônibus, which means "bus," has a circumflex on the O in the first syllable. That change the tonic syllable to the first syllable and closes the O from O to Ô, ônibus.
Braden: Now, we'll move on to the letters M and N. These are very different from the English M and N.
Thássia: Really? I thought they were pretty similar.
Braden: They can be similar. But, Portuguese makes everything nasal, which English hardly ever does.
Thássia: When O is followed by an M or an N, followed by another consonant, or at the end of a word, it is pronounced roughly like the O in…
Braden: "Bone." Yeah. It passes through your nasal cavity. Kind of like the "oun" part of the word "sound," but the M and N are silent in these situations.
Thássia: Right. Like in the word bom, spelled B-O-M, which means "good," the O is nasal and the M never closes like it put in English.
Braden: And when E is followed by an M or an N, followed by another consonant or at the end of a word, it's pronounced similar to the E in "length."
Thássia: Once again, the M or N is silent.
Braden: Could you give us some examples for those?
Thássia: Sure. We have the word bem.
Braden: Spelled B-E-M.
Thássia: Means "well." Also the word lenda.
Braden: Spelled L-E-N-D-A.
Thássia: Means "legend."
Braden: My favorite word is quem, spelled Q-U-E-M. It means "who," but sounds almost exactly like Cain from the Bible story about Cain and Abel.
Thássia: Just remember not to close M or N. It's Quem.
Braden: Not /came/. There's no M at the end. Portuguese also has two special symbols. tThe cedilla and the tilde.
Thássia: But we call them the til and the C-cedilha in Portuguese.
Braden: Right. The til, or tilde, is a symbol used to nasalize vowels. You can only have a til over the vowels A and O.
Thássia: That's true. The São, part of São Paulo, is nasalized. As well as the words like cão, which means "dog," violão, which means "guitar," and mamão, which means "papaya." All of these words use a til.
Braden: Nasalization can occur in every vowel. But, the tilde can only be used on the A and the O. To nasalize other vowels, you have to use either M or N. Some examples would be quem, which means "who," irmã, which means "sister," and fim, which means "end."
Thássia: In each of these words, the vowels are colored by nasalization.
Braden: The other special symbol Portuguese has is the…
Thássia: Cedilha.
Braden: Which looks like a little squiggly underneath the letter C.
Thássia: That's right. When a cedilha is placed under the C, it makes what would normally be a /ck/ sound into a /s/ sound.
Braden: Like the word dançar, spelled D-A-N-C-cedilha, A-R, which means "to dance." If it weren't for the cedilha, it would be pronounced dancar, which is incorrect.
Thássia: You should know that it's very normal in Portuguese to have several accent marks in only one word. The word bênção is a great example of this. It has a circumflex over the E, and the C-cedilha.
Braden: And a til all in the same word. Açúcar is another great example.
Thássia: True. There is a C-cedilha, and an acento agudo over the /u/.
Braden: We should point out that there is an R at the end of this word.
Thássia: Normally, that would pull the tonic syllable to the last syllable. But since the acento agudo in on the /u/, the tonic syllable goes to where the accent mark is.
Braden: It's kind of a hierarchy. Accent marks are the strongest, then the special letters at the end of the words.
Thássia: If none of those are present, then the tonic syllable is the penultimate syllable.
Braden: Well, that's it for the Pronunciation series. Well, we went through a lot of information really fast.
Thássia: Yes, we did! But the good thing is that our listeners can just go back and listen again if they didn't catch up all at the first time.
Braden: The first time? I don't think Superman could have caught all of that the first time.
Thássia: I don’t know. We have some pretty amazing listeners.
Braden: That's true. Just keep listening and repeating. That's the quickest way to get the sounds down.
Thássia: Yep. That's all for Pronunciation. Can't wait to hear from you in our other series.
Braden: Stop by, say hi, and be sure to leave us a post.
Thássia: Até mais!
Braden: Bye!

Comments

Hide