Two hints for understanding Brazilian Portuguese

Hurray for the Brazilian Portuguese (BP) 'r' sound, I say!  I struggle with the trilled 'r' that is necessary to describe the picture above in Spanish as a  ferrocarril  (railroad), but I can produce the Brazilian equivalent estrada de ferro with no problem.

This is because in BP, a written 'rr' calls for a sound that is not a trill, but one that sounds very much like a strong 'h' in English, or the 'j' sound in Spanish.  Now that I can manage!  And I can use the same sound when a Portuguese word begins with an 'r'.

Just for a little fantasy, let's imagine ourselves at the FIFA World Cup in Brazil, meeting Cristiano Ronaldo, the famous Portuguese soccer player.

A Brazilian making the introduction would pronounce the first sound in Ronaldo with a sound like the 'h' in 'heaven'.  If you are a Spanish speaker, you might imagine that his last name was spelled 'Jonaldo'.   A visitor from Portugal saying his name would trill the 'r' sound.  A Spanish speaker would immediately recognize  Cristiano's last name as Ronaldo.  And an American saying Ronaldo would make an 'r' sound like those in "red rabbit sitting on a rock". The Spanish and BP speakers would probably think, "Wow, what an American accent."  (Just kidding!)

So the moral to this story is, don't let that strong 'h'  sound  in BP fool you.  Here are a few practice words. 

rota  (route)

robô (robot)

regular ( regular)

roda ( wheel)  [No laughing allowed, Spanish speakers!]

rancho (small farm)

Did you resist the temptation to make a Spanish or English 'r' sound at the beginning?

Another tip about BP pronunciation is that there are certain consonants that Portuguese speakers do not like to hear as the last sound in words.  So they add a sound to the word like 'ee' in English to make a more pleasing sound to their ears.  Sometimes the extra sound can be seen in the spelling of the words.  English 'rink' becomes BP rinque; English 'jeep' becomes jipe.  

Sometimes you just hear the sound but don't see it written. English Walmart pronounced in BP has a 'chi' sound at the end, as does Internet. (You may remember from last week's post that in  BP 't' becomes a 'ch' before the 'ee' sound.  Whew!  Lots to remember!)

The addition of the 'ee' sound  results in some words that sound amusing to English speakers because we add the 'ee' sound to words as a sort of diminutive (similar to 'ito' in Spanish). 'Blanket' becomes 'blankie' when we talk to our two year old child.  'Sweet' becomes 'sweetie' when we talk to our spouse.  'Aunt' becomes 'auntie' if we like our relative.  A movie villain becomes a 'baddie' when we secretly admire him. But BP speakers are not adding any additional meaning to the words they end in an 'ee' sound; they just know it sounds better to them.  

I hope these two hints have made Brazilian Portuguese pronunciation a bit more accessible to you. To me,  it is well worth the effort of playing a few mental games to understand this melodious language.