Words ending in "am"

Portuguese Questions
1

I’m having a difficult time pronouncing words ending in “am” such trabalham, falam, estudam, etc.

I know that the “m” at the end is not pronounced.

Are there English words with endings that sound similar to PT words ending in “am”?

Thanks?

2

Don’t close your lips. Draw your tongue further back on the roof of your mouth and think ‘ng’ instead of ‘m’. Like sing.

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3

Yes, the ending M is not articulated (lips don’t make contact), but indicates that the preceding vowel is nasal. If helpful, remember that -am and -ão represent the exact same sound.

As @steveptrsn suggested, the English ‘-ng’ sound is probably the closest reference. Just keep in mind that with ‘-ng’, your tongue actually touches the palate (roof of the mouth) and seals off the mouth. The Portuguese nasal sounds aren’t as closed. So think of working back from the ‘-ng’ position towards some kind of middle ground where the tongue is higher, but not blocking oral resonance altogether.

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4

Wow, okay, so this is really a wakeup call for me.

So if I start thinking of, for instance, “eles falem” as “eles falão” it will help my pronunciation…….. this is a game changer – thank you!

Maybe you could build a lesson around this?

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5

I think I must be missing something. After writing my last response to this I plugged in the phrase “They speak from the heart” and the translation was of course “Falam com o coracão” and the pronounciation of “am” was not even close to the same as “ão”. I’m confused.

6

yeah….I, too, still couldn’t figure out how pronouncing “am” is similar to “ão”. I can easily pronounce ão (sounds like ow but nasally).

I just wish there is an English word that can help in this situation.

I viewed this short video so many times and I’m still having a hard pronouncing words ending in -am !! :rofl:

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7

The sound of -am and -ão is the same, but they’re stressed differently within a word, as -am always corresponds to an unstressed syllable, while -ão is the stressed one. In the rare exceptions to the latter, such as órfão and órgão, we’re forced to have an extra accent in the word. The exact same principle applies to -em vs. -ãe, and explains why the same sounds have two different spellings. It might be easier to compare the sound in small word pairs, such as assam (roast) vs. ação (action), cantam (sing) vs. cantão (canton), or quem (who) vs. mãe (mother).

This is why it might be a useful trick to think of -ão when trying to pronounce -am just to get to the right sound, and then shift the inflection to a less ‘stressed’ one.

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8

Thanks, Joseph, for more clarification.

I think I’ll just need to listen to more -am words and practice.

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9

All of the above is very helpful, I’m beginning to understand, obviously more practice on my part is in order!

Thanks to you both!

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