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Uma velha tinha tinha
Na cabeça a tinha
Quanto mais coçava a tinha
Mais a velha tinha tinha -
O Papa Paulo papa pato no prato de prata, no prato de prata o Papa Paulo papa pato.
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O Papa papa papa (here papa has three meanings, 1. pope 2. porridge or pap 3. he crunches or he champs) The Pope champs pap
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A Xuxa acha a Sacha chata e a Sacha acha a Xuxa chata.
O rato roeu a rolha da garrafa do rei da Rússia
O tempo perguntou ao tempo quanto tempo o tempo tem. O tempo respondeu ao tempo que tem tanto tempo quanto tempo o tempo tem.
Joel, I actually understood your tongue twistie. But the others were not understandable. Some of the words are not in my dictionary, either!
Being of the opinion that everyday Portuguese is enough of a tongue twister at the best of times, I’m wishing I hadn’t read this topic!
@Joseph: Check out these two videos (if you haven’t seen them already) by Ana Laíns, whom I just learned of by listening to the podcast, “Histórias de Portugal: saudade e outras coisas”. This one is Ana performing live on RTP, and this one is a great little “behind-the-scenes” video. Both use Portuguese speech that seems slow and clear enough for intermediate speakers to understand.
Ela é engraçada, não é?
I’ve been studying Portuguese for a couple of years now and it took me a year to pronounce the /R/ correctly. This tongue twister truly helped me, although I wanted to throw my computer out the window after numerous trials when I first started saying it.
She may be funny, but THAT is lost on me. Maybe this is slow enough for INTERMEDIATES, but no go for us BEGINNERS. Some of you native speakers and teachers FORGET that we have to translate almost all the words as beginners, so rapid speech is a dead- and dread-end! Song is very nice, though!.
@hscharnhorst - I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset anyone by including it.
I thought it was funny that Ana Laíns had basically taken the same tongue twister that Joseph had posted, and turned it into a traditional type of Portuguese folk song style and small band of musicians called a “charanga”, including the bass clarinet, drum, and accordion and a very-very common back-beat from that type of music:
O tempo perguntou ao tempo quanto tempo o tempo tem. O tempo respondeu ao tempo que tem tanto tempo quanto tempo o tempo tem.
I’m neither a native-speaker nor an instructor, just a student of Portuguese at more or less the intermediate level myself. Apologies if it is frustratingly difficult/impossible to understand the dialogue. I thought the back-story video especially was at a pretty reasonable pace and you might be able to catch phrases and sentences there to get the gist of what the to singers are saying, perhaps if you pause and back up in places.
Pois então, peço desculpa. Tudo bem ?
Please do not apologize!! I am a beginning beginner and will probably never advance beyond that stage. The language is beautiful, but extremely difficult for non-natives. I can neither write it nor speak it well. By being an “intermediate” you are already speaking the language, something I do not. I appreciated the link and to hear the song, but I simply did not understand very many words. All has to be translated to be understood and that means I lose the meaning quickly! It is frustrating, but I accept it as reality!!
I even had to use a translation service to understand your comment: Pois então, peço desculpa. Tudo bem While I get the Tudo bem part, the other words were not comprehensible to me. I also needed a translation service to get the other line you wrote as well. The trouble with translation services is they are not accurate at all, but at least I got the gist. Thanks anyway!