Portuguese mangled speech

The Café Challenges
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I’m a rank beginner, and I’ve been baffled by the way the Portuguese drop syllables and mush words together when they speak. How do these people understand each other?? :grinning: I see a lot of the same frustration from others in the lesson comments here too.

But it occurred to me last night that we do exactly the same thing in English. Consider the sentence “Is that the best you can do?”. We don’t pronounce it the way it’s written. In normal conversation we say something like “izzat th’ bes’ you c’n do?” Words mushed together, syllables mangled, just like the Portuguese. How do WE understand each other?? It’s just the way languages are, for the most part, and you do slowly get used to it.

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Thanks for your post, @gerrit!

A lot of my time here involves seeing users get frustrated with certain aspects of the Portuguese language that are no different from what they also get in their respective native languages.

These quirks become more apparent when we are consciously learning a language other than our own, and it’s only natural for people to be surprised. More often than not, it does get better with time and appropriate practice, so my only hope is that people don’t give up too soon. We’re here to help as much as we can :slight_smile: