Harder than I thought

The Café Introduce Yourself
1

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.

3 Likes
2

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

3

@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.

2 Likes
4

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

5

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

1 Like
6

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