Harder than I thought

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I am learning European Portuguese because I will be hiking part of the Camino Portugués in June. I am finding the pronunciation surprisingly difficult. “Surprising” because I speak French, which also has nasal vowels, and have a PhD in linguistics, so I understand articulatory phonetics (what people do with their mouths etc. to make sounds) and also phonology (sound systems), including how the context of a sound can affect its pronunciation.

But the Portuguese vowels are so hard for me! I play words like tem and ten over and over again and can’t figure out what the speakers are doing. They don’t sound at all like French nasal vowels.

The alternations between s/sh as pronunciations of “s”, and open/closed vowels, are also driving me nuts. I know that s is pronounced sh at the end of syllables but this rule doesn’t seem absolute. Likewise it seems that not every unstressed open vowel is pronounced close. So when I look at a word I am not sure how it’s supposed to be pronounced. I am obviously missing some subtleties.

I expect that if I am patient, do a lot of listening and repeating, and dive deeper into the lessons, I’ll figure it out. But as I said, I’m surprised. I wonder if other newbies have a similar reaction.

Thanks,
Judy

PS I’m a Spanish teacher, so the vocabulary and grammar are mostly a piece of cake.

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Hi Judy,

That’s wonderful that you’re getting Portuguese ready for your Camino adventure!

I was really interested to read your pronunciation experience so far. I also speak French and Spanish and like you have found the pronunciation of European Portuguese (PT) to be a real head-scratcher. The combination of what in my head is a “French sound” (like ‘de’ in PT) but then an ‘s’ which sometimes acts like a ‘z’ (like Italian), or and ‘s’ like in Spanish or…“sh”. And yikes, don’t even get me started on all the ways ‘o’ can sound in PT depending on where it is in the word.

I had visions of me being able to have basic conversations after a few months of study, but I got kind of stuck on pronunciation. I knew from my other languages that if I fossilised incorrect pronunciation, it would be a real job to fix later, so I focused on just pronunciation for months. Practice Portuguese was the absolute best for this (I hear Rui’s voice in my sleep :joy:).

I didn’t stress about it too much, and when I went to Portugal, I found I could understand about 80% of what people said to me, but because I’d focused so much on the pronunciation over grammar and vocab, actually speaking was a bit of a challenge. I’m working more on that now.

I’ll also say that I studied pronunciation rules heavily on other PT learning platforms (I’ve tried them all), and it made my head hurt because like you, I found that those rules were far from absolute. Again, what’s helped the most is just ‘listen and repeat’ over and over and over here on Practice Portuguese. The ‘slow’ version of the audio was particularly helpful at the beginning.

But…the interesting thing was that after all that repetition, something finally clicked and I can say those sounds now. Not perfectly - no one is going to think I’m from Porto - but at least reliably. It just kind of happened. I think it will for you too. Your brain and your tongue will finally just catch up with each together. Don’t give up hope!

A bit funny though: I spent a week in Spain after my Portugal trip and the first few days people kept asking me if I was French. I finally figured it out that while I was able to switch from trying to speak Portuguese to speaking Spanish without too much trouble, I’d worked so hard to say the PT ‘de’ vs the Spanish ‘de’ that that one little word was carrying over to my Spanish, which is why people kept saying, “Oh are you from France?”. :joy:

That was long-winded, but bottom line is welcome and you’ll get it! :blush:

Emily

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@judy.hochberg welcome to the forum and thanks for sharing your story :slight_smile: When it comes to Portuguese pronunciation, we really cannot deal in absolutes. Our Pronunciation unit is part of our efforts to help people bridge that gap. This Learning Note, in particular, might be especially relevant:

I’d also highlight this one, for example, outside of the unit:

Like @emily_horch said and as you already know yourself, repetition and patience are key. Hopefully, things will start to stick soon.

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Welcome Judy :slight_smile:
I wish you a lot of patience with listening, listening, listening.
It takes time to adjust the own listening habits to the sound chains in Portuguese.
Good luck :slight_smile: chris

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Thanks Joseph :slight_smile:
these links lead to excellent information on pronunciation.

I wish they were supplemented with extensive exercises that would allow me to practise each detail over and over again.

Preferably with auditory control through the system with immediate feedback. :slight_smile: chris

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It is a comfort to know that people with advanced language skills find Portuguese pronunciation difficult. Makes my feeble attempts seem less feeble! :+1:

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Right there with you, Judy. PhD in linguistics here too (albeit socio-) and speak multiple languages, but Portuguese pronunciation is doing my head in. I can now reliably predict the quality of ‘s’ ([ʃ] when in final position or followed by an unvoiced consonant, [z] between vowel sounds, and [ʒ] when in final position followed by a voiced consonant). But in rapid speech even that isn’t set in stone. As for these vowels - total madness. I hope something clicks eventually.

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Thank you everyone for your warm replies! I have been sticking with the PP program and do feel like I am making progress. My big reward is the “shortie” (or is it “shorty”) at the end of each lesson. I’ve started listening to them audio-only before allowing myself to peek at the text.

It’s so cool feeling the language coming alive in my head. It reminds me of my fourth week or so studying Hebrew in college, when suddenly it made sense that consonants were the important sounds, with the vowels dancing around them.

I’ve decided that all those close vowels and sh sounds make me feel like I’m speaking with a mouth full of marbles. It worked for Demosthenes…

Jhmccubbin, my undergrad thesis was in sociolinguistics and William Labov was my hero. I had the honor once of giving a conference talk that he attended, and speaking with him afterwards. I ended up focusing on first language acquisition in grad school and then working in computational linguistics for 15 years before being reborn as a Spanish teacher.

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Judy, I also speak Spanish, so I can understand a bit of your pain.

Since PT is a stress-based language, the staccato of ES is absent, which leads to a feeling of “lost in ambiguity” since the rhythm is missing. What helps is to focus on the stressed arcs of intonation that lead to that stress at the end of the arc. The arcs can join phonemes or phrases.

Phonetic stressed arc:

  • tem has a linear stress aimed through the vowel terminating in the consonant. Like an arrow thunking into its target.
  • têm (i.e., “tah.em”) has a curved rise and fall through the nasal air and terminating in the consonant…somewhat like shooting an arrow high up so that it slams down onto the target.

Phrase stressed arc:

  • (phrase ending in “s”) (phrase started with voiced vowel) the “z” sound is the overlapping of the ending sibilant with the beginning of the voiced vowel.

These arcs of stressed intonation allow PT to be remarkably expressive and resonant. Indeed, try singing your PT exercises and it will get easier.

The stressed intonation also makes consonants sound different. The PT “d” is different when used to join vowels. Great example is “padaria”, which EN speakers struggle with word since their minds insist on saying “pa-daria” or “pad-aria”, which stumbles. Instead, simply say “padapadapada…” until it smooths into an undulating flow. THAT undulating d between vowels is naturally accommodated by retracting the tongue slightly from the teeth so that the vowel resonance is gently paused rather than harshly interrupted as we do with our rhythmic languages.

Practice PT in the shower singing at full resonant volume. Belissima!

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And the weird thing is that the challenging pronunciation is now my favorite part about Portuguese. It’s like a party in your mouth. :joy:

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I’ve yet to experience a party in my mouth but it’s a great phrase. I’ll keep trying. Hopefully I’ll get there eventually. :+1:

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I did the Portuguese coastal camino starting in Baiona. It’s a beautiful route. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

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Hi Judy! I came across these papers recently while working on a piece of my own about why spoken European Portuguese presents such a headache for learners.

Delvaux, V., Metens, T., & Soquet, A. (2002). French nasal vowels: acoustic and articulatory properties. Paper presented at the Seventh International Conference on Spoken Language Processing.

Oliveira, C., Martins, P., Silva, S. S., & Teixeira, A. J. (2012). An MRI study of the oral articulation of European Portuguese nasal vowels. Paper presented at the INTERSPEECH.

Reading them both, basically what emerges is that when French speakers produce nasal vowels, they not only lower the soft palate but also change the shape of their mouth and tongue, whereas European Portuguese speakers mostly just lower the soft palate.

Hope they might be helpful!

Best,

Jim (aka Professor Caloiro)

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@ProfessorCaloiro
thanks a lot :slight_smile:
.
But how do I make the 2nd link working?
Obrigado :slight_smile: chris

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Sorry! Try it now…

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This is fascinating! I will keep it in mind. Can you suggest any words to contrast between French and Portuguese in this regard?

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Thank you! Elsewhere in The Café I found a link to a YouTube video that helped me a lot, although it focuses on listening rather than speaking.

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Ah, I love Liz’s vids. I hadn’t seen it, but it is a good watch and I upvoted it (thanks for the link!)

“Cmktchmas?” :joy:

There is a downside to this abbreviated speech.

The downside is that it reduces the day-to-day conversational vocabulary to a tiny subset of the full PT language. Written PT has its own wondrous beauty with its own rich vocabulary that is incredible as an audio treat when spoken and heard (see Audible!). And when we use that rich vocabulary in day-to-day conversation it is another fun listening adventure to look into. Speaking what is written gives the full measure of PT in its sonority and eloquence. :heart_eyes:

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Ooph … I haven’t studied French at all. I wonder if someone else in the forums could help out here.

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Nasal português et nasal français

Different, yes.
It took me a while to accept,
that I can’t pronounce them ‘comme en français’.

Compare: bom pt + on fr

Links with more examples:
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https://hinative.com/questions/16882054
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