Pronunciation of agua in "Voces tem agua e sumo?"

[sociallydistant]

In one of the audio clips (in basics 2) the sentence is "Voces tem agua e sumo?". It sounds like the Portuguese speakers are saying "Voces tem **e** agua e sumo?"

Is it a general rule that an extra e-sound is pronounced between a nasal and a stressed "a"? Or am I hearing things? Or is there some other reason for this?

Thanks

[davidcowling949]

Hello. It might be that you are hearing what sounds a bit like a double e because of the accent in the conjugation têm . Hope this helps.

[Joseph]

@sociallydistant, the pronunciation of the word ‘tem’ itself has a ghost “ee” sound at the end, regardless of the word that comes after. It can be even more pronounced in the word ‘têm’ (the actual word on that sentence), like @davidcowling949 said. In Portuguese, we’d actually think of it as an “i” sound: têim.

Tem

Têm

[Joseph]

You’re welcome! As you see (or hear), accents are quite important in Portuguese

[Maggie]

I just encountered this and I’m happy to know I wasn’t the only one who heard it this way. I kept hearing an “e” where there wasn’t one after têm in the written sentences. I thought I wasn’t pronouncing têm correctly. I repeated “têim” (as it was pronounced by the speaker) as well as the entire sentence, yet failed to achieve 100% audio translation. This went on too many times to count. Finally, after reviewing the speaker’s translations again both fast and slow I could clearly hear an “e” so I repeated the sentence adding a clear “e” after “têim” and I scored 100%.

Thank you Joseph for explaining the pronunciation of têm, it’s most helpful.

[Joseph]

You’re welcome, @Maggie! Glad to hear it helped.