Portuguese pronunciation will be much easier when Pedro has explained everything for you! Here’s everything you need to know to speak better in European Portuguese.

Before we begin…

Choose how you want to enjoy this episode – video with subtitles, podcast on the go, or read the blog version below.

The Video

The Podcast

Portuguese Pronunciation 101: Everything You Need to Know to Speak Better (with Pedro, Portuguesepedia)

This episode is a little different! It’s not so much an interview, but more so a lesson!

If you get stuck on pronunciation with Portuguese (which according to my Instagram followers is a biggie!) then you’ll love this.

Do you like this format? If so, let me know and I’ll reach out to more language experts & teachers to share a lesson on those tricky topics.

Links from this Conversation

Portuguesepedia: https://portuguesepedia.com/

Lessons on Portuguesepedia on pronunciation: https://portuguesepedia.com/?s=pronunciation&ct_post_type=post%3Areads%3Acourses%3Adips%3Alisten%3Alessons

Transcript

Lindsay:

Hello, welcome back to how to learn a language.
This is our final interview in the series.
And I say interview, this one is a little bit different.
So I, when I first spoke to Pedro, I knew that I wanted to talk about Portuguese.
So Pedro runs Portuguesepedia, which is a phenomenal resource.
Definitely go and check that out.
If you’re learning Portuguese, there’s just so much good stuff there.

And, uh, And I thought, let’s talk about something Portuguese, let’s make this almost like a lesson.
So you’ll see as we go, this kind of evolves into a bit of a lesson as we go.
So sometimes this was a bit unplanned in quite the way we end up doing it.
So sometimes things end up on the whiteboard, a little bit delayed because I’m taking them from the chat and copying them out.
But overall, I really enjoyed this one and our focus is on Portuguese pronunciation, in particular European Portuguese.
But we do discuss at the beginning a little bit of those differences that you might expect that you might come across with Brazilian and with European Portuguese.
And yeah, I think you’ll enjoy this one.

All right.
Enjoy.
Pedro, hello.
Welcome.
Ola, I should say.
Tudo bem.

Pedro:

Well, thank you.
It’s a great pleasure to be here.

Lindsay:

Thank you, thank you.
I’m glad you’re here.
I really want to talk to more Language specialists, language teachers this year and dig into those difficult points that lots and lots of learners face.
And so when we connected and you are Portuguese, Portuguese teacher, I thought, okay, let’s, let’s start here.
This is, we’re going to, we’re going to dive into this.
But first before we do, in fact, what we’re going to talk about, I should, I should say that first is pronunciation.
I asked on Instagram this was the thing that came up again and again pronunciation and accent I was like okay this is what we’d suspected and what we wanted to discuss and also what people want to hear about so that’s what we’ll discuss and before we do I do want to give you a brief chance to just introduce yourself.

Pedro:

Yeah sure, so I’m Pedro, I’m from Portugal, so the Portuguese I teach is like European Portuguese for the most part.
I’m not living in Portugal, I’m living in Sweden, I’ve been living in Sweden for a long time and actually that was an important Part of me getting into language and language teaching because I’ve learned Swedish from scratch as an adult and I became interested in language learning back then.
And eventually I started to teach Portuguese here in Sweden and then you know things moved on and I started blogging first and now I have like a membership site it’s Portuguesepedia.com and yeah it’s there’s a lot of different kinds of content for people to practice on European Portuguese so in a
nutshell basically that’s it.

Lindsay:

It’s so thorough, such a good resource.
When I first went onto the website, I was like, Oh!
Oh, this is huge.
There’s just so much good stuff.

Pedro:

Yeah.
So much work too.
It’s a lot of content and it’s me producing all content.
It’s me managing the platform.
You know, there’s a lot of time going into, there’s a learning curve when it comes to, you know, building a website, how to marketing a website, how to, you know, all those things.
So it’s, it’s been a fascinating journey, but a lot of work.
Yeah.

Lindsay:

You mentioned as well that what you teach obviously being from Portugal is European Portuguese and this is perhaps an interesting start point in terms of pronunciation because something that I notice a lot more with Portuguese than any other language is the divide and the distinction that’s made as
a learner between Brazilian Portuguese and European Portuguese.
I just don’t see it to that same extent with other languages you know with Spanish you might get Spanish from you know European Spanish and then Latin American Spanish which is obviously in itself a vast mix of accents and dialects and all sorts of ways of speaking but it just gets In terms of what
we’re going to talk about today, pronunciation with Brazilian and with European, is there a massive distinction?

Pedro:

Yeah, yeah it is and I think pronunciation plays a key part in that distinction, that divide.
So of course there are, you know, it’s different standards and you have specific idiomatic expressions for example on either side of the Atlantic obviously.
But pronunciation, so European Portuguese in general, people, it’s a romance language, but people, they get a little bit confused because it sounds Slavic.
Sometimes people will, it’s kind of Russian, I mean, we have a lot of, we have our Vowel sounds are very closed.
We have a lot of nasal sounds.
There are some phonetic features that stand out if we think about other Romance languages such as Spanish or Italian.
And what happens between European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese is that they don’t have this all the time so if I say uh this is European version we have a lot of at the end of words uh any words uh ending with a s will be Sound.

And they have more SH. Vamos.
I say Vamos.
They say Vamos.
And vowel sounds, for example, they open up more the vowel sounds.
It’s easier maybe for a language learner to hear the syllables more clearly.
in Brazilian Portuguese than it is in European Portuguese.
So I think pronunciation is it plays a big part in it and you have this thing you know between natives for us it’s much easier to understand Brazilian Portuguese Then the other way around.

And this is why, because we have these more closed vowel sounds and maybe they are troubled sometimes to understand us.
So imagine language learners.
Yeah.
And so I normally say, not normally, I mean, you know, obviously if someone is learning Portuguese because Planning to go to Brazil or Brazilian friends or a Brazilian lover.
It’s obvious you want to learn Brazilian Portuguese.
I mean, you know, if you can choose and the other way around.
But if you are, you know, like you don’t know, you just want to learn Portuguese, I usually I well then learn European Portuguese, because if you learn this standard, then you can easily understand it’s easier than to dive into Brazilian Portuguese than the other way around.

Lindsay:

That’s reassuring to hear because yeah, this is something, my Portuguese is very much on an island in the middle of the Atlantic where I started, I had tutors from both Portugal and Brazil, but probably more from Brazil.
So it’s this mix and yeah, I’m excited for myself as well to learn today, like Let’s get this down in terms of European Portuguese.
What are those tricky pronunciation things that people struggle with, that learners struggle with?
So yeah, let’s, let’s get started.
You mentioned that at the end of like, like vamos.
So that should, maybe that’s a good place to start.

Pedro:

Yeah, so for instance we have like in English our way to the plurals, how we form plurals is with S at the end, right?
So that’s the standard and so S at the end it’s always S sound and so any word said in plural will be S. Todos, carus, this is cars.
But there are other spelling patterns that will produce this sound and so it will be very prominent.
Shh, shh.
So if I say a sentence, Todos, usdias, iokomo, douas, massage.
So every day I eat two apples.
Todos, usdias, iokomo, douas, massage.

And again, in Brazilian Portuguese, if we keep comparing a little bit, it would be more soft.
Todos us dias, eu como dos masas.
You are also now hearing the vowel sounds more close in European.
Todos us dias, eu como dos masas.
Todos us dias, eu como dos masas.
So, yeah.
Shh, shh.

Lindsay:

Can we can we write this down if I bring up a whiteboard so we can see?
I think that would be really useful.
That’s a good example sentence.

Pedro:
So every day I eat apples.
So it just stands out the sh sh.
Yeah.

Lindsay:

There’s some other stuff here as well, like instantly as a notorious language lover of language scripts, shall we say, I’m noticing this and I’m noticing this in apples.

Yeah, so that’s a little crook under the C. It’s telling you that sound will be S not K. So like in English for example you know that if a C is followed by A or O, I think I’m not saying anything wrong, in principle the sound will be K. Come here, come, right?
But if it is followed by E or I, it will be S. And that pattern, it holds for Portuguese and for many other languages.
And that little thing under the C, it’s called a cedilia.
It’s just telling you that though it is followed by A, the sound will be S. Not k, so it’s not makash, but it’s masash, okay?
So it only makes sense to have that sdile when c is followed by a or o or u, when c is supposed to sound k. Then you know sometimes you want it to sound like and then you have to put that little under okay and yeah and this is like its heritage from the moors that they were in Portugal for a
long time And it comes from there.
Then you also underline the A with a tilde, I think you meant that, and that tilde, it’s doing two things there.

It’s marking the stress, so the stress is on the last syllable, and it’s also telling you that we’ll have a nasal vowel sound.

Lindsay:

Okay, my favorite thing about Portuguese.

Pedro:

Yeah, and that’s another phonetic trait of Portuguese, European and Brazilian.
Here there’s no big distinction, maybe they even mark more the nasal sounds.
There’s a lot of nasal sounds and there’s like consonant nasal sounds, vowel nasal sounds, then there are nasal diphthongs like all the uh, oing, if, you want we if you want we can dive into that too but nasal sounds is it it’s big yeah i do i do love the nasals That is one of my favorites.

Lindsay:

I always end up kind of doing this with my hand, curving around in my nose to remind me that, bring it up here.

Pedro:

Yeah, yeah.

Lindsay:

So which letters get a nasal or could get a nasal?

Pedro:

Right, so for example, any word finishing with M as in to do bang, Right.

Lindsay:

Okay.
So M, but only when it’s at the end.

Pedro:

At the end.

Lindsay:

Right.
So for example, where we’ve got you, como.

Pedro:

So como, it’s the normal, the M sound people are used to, right?
We close our lips and then, but in, exactly.
In tudo bang, Right.
In to the bang, as I’m seeing now on the screen, that M is at the end.
Right.
And, uh, do you want me, sorry, do you want me to wait while you, you are coloring the M?

Lindsay:

No, it’s all good.

You don’t need to wait for me to color the M. Keep going.

Pedro:
All right.
So yeah.
So in that little phrase, to the bang M at the end, then we don’t, we don’t want to, to say the M sound.
It’s not to the bang, like.
People will say at the beginning it’s more to do bang and this is a nasal sound so my lips they are not closing look to do bang My mouth is open.
It’s just a nasal sound so you know the airflow comes through your nose or partially at least.
And that’s the case for any word ending with M. And then of course we have all those Vowel, nasal sounds, for example this word Entown.
This is a soul, Entown.

That’s N followed by T. Well, in English we have the e-n-g, right?
Ing.
It’s very similar.
It’s also a nasal sound.
It’s a vowel nasal sound.
So it’s a nn, nn.
Right?

Lindsay:

Nn, nn.

Pedro:

And then we have, so that’s the first part, the first syllable, that’s a nasal sound there, nn.
And then we have the second syllable, This is a diphthong.
A diphthong, of course, for your listeners that can’t remember what a diphthong is, basically is like two vowel sounds from one sound to the other.
So if we have a non-nasal Diphthong, like Rachel, the name Rachel, we say the sound ae, we go from ae to ae, but in this case, so that’s the diphthong, but in this case it’s nasal.

Lindsay:

It barely gets to the mouth.

Pedro:

Yeah, yeah.
The first A, this is normal, but then it shifts to nasal.
A
classic is John in Portuguese.
People will struggle to pronounce John in Portuguese.
João So if you say, for example, lemon, it will be limão.
People need to drill a little bit this nasal sounds.

It’s a little bit nerdy, but it really helps if you take some time to drill.
Even just hold it there.
If you pinch your nose, if you are doing it right and then you pinch your nose, you will know it because you can’t go.
Yeah, exactly.

Lindsay:

That’s a good tip.

Pedro:

It’s a good tip.
And so just every vowel.
Pronunciation, people sometimes forget, but pronunciation is a physical phenomena, right?
It’s physical.
Like we have our vocal tract, we have our vocal cords, we have our tongue, our palate, our teeth, our lips and all happens here in this part and it’s all physical, our nose.
And so it’s good that people connect with the physicality of pronunciation and pay more attention.
I mean, people that want, I think pronunciation is big when it comes to language learning, this is my opinion, it will just open up, it will make things much easier on the medium term and long run.

And so I very much advise people to invest a little bit on pronunciation from day one.
And then that is helpful to remind yourself that it’s a physical phenomena and you should connect with your body in this case, with your vocal tract and, you know, like keep an eye on what’s going on there.
Right.
Yeah.
And so in this case, yeah, sorry.

Lindsay:

Now I was just going to say because the obvious is that it helps with speaking but it also helps with listening because the more time you’re spending with those sounds when you then come across them sort of in the wild if you like as you hear stuff as well oh I know that sound I know what word
that’s from you know so it helps in both of those skill sets

Pedro:

Totally, totally. Those are interconnected.
You can’t just tease them apart.
Like your ability to make one sound, I mean if that sound is not in your mother tongue and if you can’t make it, probably you won’t be able to listen, really to listen that sound.
So I have a good example.
So in Swedish there are vowel sounds that are not present in Portuguese or in English we have like the ah and you know in the beginning I was not really listening the sound I was my brain was mapping on the closest sound I had registered in my brain and so my pronunciation was just a reflex
of that so I was not pronouncing it well.
I was pronouncing with the closest sound that I could hear and it really took some time and I was not when I was learning this is like 11 years ago I was not really focusing on pronunciation I was focusing much more on grammar and vocab and that kind of things and so it took me a long time to really be able to hear the sounds and then be able to make those sounds and that’s why I think you know also from my personal experience that pronunciation is key The more you can tune into the sound system of your target language, the sooner you will be able to speak with confidence and with better
pronunciation.
Everything gets easier because then if you’re talking to some friend, native, It will also be more pleasant the conversation overall for everyone right and you will feel more confident and you know you want more and more you want to speak more with people so it’s like a virtuous circle and yeah and
pronunciation will just facilitate that.

Lindsay:

I had one question about the Does it appear or can it appear on every vowel, the A, E, I, O, U, can you get a nasal version of each of them?

Pedro:

Yeah, so if I got your question, so when you have this spelling A, O with a T on it, then it’s always M. Was that the question or?

Lindsay:

No, I mean like the sort of five vowels of A, E, I, O, U in English pronunciation.
They all have a nasal version?

Pedro:

But that is in terms of spelling is very easy to spot because it’s your ing kind of thing so any vowel being followed by n or m Will produce a vowel-nasal sound.
So we have the example in Aintown, so that’s first syllable.
But if I write this word impossible,
So that’s yeah so in inpusival we have i being followed by m and so the i in Portuguese is e in this case will be in so it will be the nasal version So if I write this word then too so then that first syllable we have on the a so a followed by n will get the uh vowel sounds uh the nasal vowel sound as opposed to uh we get um I think I have one final question on the nasal point.

Lindsay:

Is it just M and N that have that effect?

Pedro:

Yeah, so exactly.
So vowels being followed by N or M and then also there are this case, for example, in sister.
Irma, or we also saw before the word masa, the first example I gave, so masa is apple, Irma is sister, and both those words have the tilde on the a and then yeah it’s a. And in this case it will be a nice of all sounds so it’s not
okay so those are the spellings for vowel-nasal sounds, not diphthongs here, it’s just vowel-nasal sounds.
So either any vowel followed by N or M or A at the end with a tilt on it, then it’s a nasal sound.

That’s what we’re going to get.

Lindsay:

Okay.
You’ve also led me nicely to a next question.
I’m going to just clear the board so we can focus on the next bit.
This one.
Imposible.
Imposible

That is sort of an indicator of stress? Like I’m bringing that knowledge in from like Spanish, French.

Pedro:

Yeah, so word stress in Portuguese is very consistent actually.
And yeah, you are right.
So what happens is that by default words are stressed on the next to last syllable.
So in this case, That’s not the case in this word because then there are exceptions and so one of the exceptions is words ending with L like impossible then the stress is on the last syllable and that’s what the that What the accent mark is doing there is telling you okay though the word ends with L
you should stress on the last syllable but we want to stress it on the next last syllable and then we mark it you know with the accent mark so without the accent mark the way you read this word is impusivel okay we are stressing the last syllable impusivel but the pronunciation is
impusivel And therefore the accent mark.
And by the way, in Portuguese, so I know that in French and other languages, Italian, there are both directions, the accent mark, right?

And in Portuguese, we also have the other direction, but that’s not like to mark word stress, we just use this.
That one will be to mark contractions because we have contractions between prepositions and articles.
Okay and so for so an example let’s go down yeah let’s go there let’s yeah okay so for example uh this here uh okay is the contraction between um where is my plus
So it’s marking a contraction between a as a preposition and a as an article.
So I’m giving an example of this phrase
This is I’m going to the market.
That is a contraction and in that we have the preposition of movements.

I’m going to And then you have the article, the definite article, THE MARKET.
You see, FEDA is a feminine word and we bring on gender too.
So FEDA is a feminine word.
So we have VOA, I’m going to, and then The market’s a faitem.
And a plus a is a. And also the pronunciation because the basic form of this preposition is just a, we say a. But with a contraction, the sound will open up.
So a plus a, it’s intuitive also because there are two a’s, so a vo a faitem.
This is back to the accent mark because we were talking about that.

So this is the only case when we use the accent mark that direction because otherwise word stress is always the other way.

Lindsay:

Hmm.
Okay.
That’s good to know.
I don’t know if I’ve ever been taught that before, so I’m learning.
This is great.
Um, actually this is a good sentence to take us onto our next topic.
So we have this vowel.

I know you mentioned earlier about diphthongs and I’m wondering about sort of double vowel sounds.
Are there any things that we need to look out for there?

Pedro:

Yeah, so these are also diphthongs.
The difference is that they are oral, they are not nasal, right?
So the first one is Vou depending on if you are from the north or south of Portugal like I come from the north so I tend to say the diphthong ou, vou.
In Lisbon they will say more ou, vou, vou without diphthong but yeah let’s say it’s a diphthong ou.
O. The other one in market theta is A. But again the difference comparing to the O we saw before is that these are just normal non-nasal just oral diphthongs and so if you see two vowels together if you see two vowels together then chances are it will be a diphthong.

Lindsay:

Cool, all right.
Hey, okay.
What next?
What haven’t we discussed yet that is like top of the list?

Pedro:
Oh, so many things. So many things.
I mean, with pronunciation.
So, uh, one sound that I will, I will focus a little bit, um, on sounds that, uh, students learners tend to struggle a little bit with.
One is this L.H.
sounds in Portuguese.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed before.
So, for example, let me think of a word.

Let’s say, let’s go with garlic.
Do you like garlic?

Lindsay:

Yeah, of course.

Pedro:

Garlic in Portuguese is
And so this LH, it’s called what we call a digraph.
It’s when like two letters, they stand for one sound only, right?
So LH, they always stand for the same sound and that’s L, A, L. L, L. Can you say the word A, L, say it again?

A, L, A, L. Yeah, you are quite good.

And people, they struggle a little bit with this L and L, so they tend to just pronounce a L sound.
L, ALO, you know, ALO.
So this is, I’ve noticed A tense to be a difficult sound so you have to pronounce this you have somehow to stretch your lips and to push a little bit the tip of your tongue up against your palate and then yeah and then you release it yeah

Lindsay:

Yeah, I find maybe in all languages that when there is a new to me double consonant it’s sometimes harder than the double vowels because with a vowel at least you can kind of guess When it’s a double consonant, sometimes I look at this and think, whoa, L, H. I’ve never seen an L and a H next to each
other.
You know, it’s so unusual in my own language that then takes a bit more getting used to sometimes.

Pedro:

Yeah, that’s right.

Lindsay:

I don’t associate those letters together.

Pedro:

That’s right.
You need some exposure and eventually then you’ll get it.
But those patterns, they are also important.
Another one is NH.

Lindsay:

Okay.

Pedro:

Yeah.
And, uh, that will be the sound.
For example, this word, ningu.
Do you know what ningu is?

Lindsay:

Guessing it means child.

Pedro:

That’s in Spanish.
Yes.

It’s a false friend.

Lindsay:
Okay.

Pedro:
It’s a false friend.

This is nest.

Nest in Portuguese.

Nest is a nest.

Lindsay:
Oh, okay.
Actually.
Yeah.
It is similar to the Spanish.

Pedro:

For people that know some Spanish so this is it’s equivalent of the n with a tilde on like nino in Spanish it’s child if you remember the spelling is n with a tilde on it and so it’s the same sound it’s just that our spelling is different it’s with n h okay right yeah it it’s interesting actually With Spanish, with both of these words, with garlic as well, because I think of it as like aho with a J and sort of that helps because then I can picture, oh yeah, the H, I need that H with the L, not just alo in Portuguese, I need to put the H in.
And can you say the NH again?

Lindsay:

Is that a nasal?

Pedro:
Yeah, it’s a nasal consonant sound.
Yeah, absolutely.
And speaking of the H, it’s always good to remember or to keep in mind that H otherwise is silent in Portuguese as it is in Spanish, so words starting with H like Right.
This, this is a cognate, so it’s a hospital, but you know, we just say, as if the H was not there.
Or, just at the beginning of words.

Yeah, it’s just the H appears either at the beginning of words and then it’s silent or appears in those digraphs as in LH and NH.
But then it’s just the unit, the sound unit.
But otherwise, like, as they stand alone at the beginning, that’s where you see the H. And then it’s silent.
Right.
It’s there just because the etymology, right.
You know, but it’s, yeah, it’s silent.

Lindsay:

Okay.
That is also good to know.

Pedro:

So there’s no more double consonants that we need to know Yeah, I mean we have the double s you see a lot, I mean it’s the same consonant, it’s a double consonant and it’s interesting because in Portuguese like if you have so there is also it’s redundancy in terms of spellings and
pronunciation so when I say redundancy here is that you have different spellings to produce the same sound basically It’s not one-to-one relationship.
And the other way around, you have different sounds sometimes and it’s just one spelling and so you have to figure out those patterns, right?
And that’s very much the case for Portuguese.
There are languages more straightforward in that relationship.
So double S, it’s always S sound.
And we need it because this word here Which I probably know what it is.

So whenever you see S in between vowels the sound will be will be a voiced sound as in zest, right?
Yeah, you feel your vocal cords, they vibrate if you put your hands here.
And that’s the pattern is so S in between vowels.
With double S, it’s always So sometimes, you know, whenever you want a sound in between vowels then you use double S as in birds.

Pasero, pasero.

That’s bird.
So if you don’t use double S in this word, pasero, then you will pronounce pasero, but it’s not pasero, it’s pasero.

Lindsay:

I have a follow-on question.

Pedro:

Yeah.

Lindsay:

How, I don’t know if it’s a real word, but how would I pronounce this?

Pedro:

Kazza.

Lindsay:

And can you say the top one again?

Pedro:

It’s a made-up word, but it’s the pronunciation, it doesn’t matter.
The pronunciation would be the same pronunciation, so S in between vowels is like a Z sound, so there’s no difference in pronunciation between those two words.
So that’s what I was talking about.
There’s redundancy in Portuguese in terms of spellings and sounds because we also have the Z and we use the Z too.
But again, this connects back to etymology.
That’s why we have redundancy.
It’s difficult to all of a sudden just start changing spellings.

Lindsay:

Don’t worry, English native speaker here.
It’s hopeless!

Pedro:

English is hopeless.
I mean, in terms of that relationship, it’s a mess.
I mean, you just know it, right?
And those learning English as a second language, well, good luck with that.
It’s a mess.
Yeah.
But yeah, so that’s the case too.

So S in between vowels.
And then also, and like, if we are honest, then S words starting with S. Like Bell, Sino.
So S at the beginning will be S also.
And finally going to our example at the start of this conversation S at the end will be SH as in Todosh, all.
So S produces three sounds either at the beginning for example, right, in between vowels and then at the end of words.
This is a one of those examples that we have one letter and three sounds with one letter depending on the position in the word and things like that.

Lindsay:

Do you ever get written an S and a H next to one another?
No?

Pedro:

No, that doesn’t happen.
That would be your shh in English, but no, we don’t have it.
But we have, like now that you said that, we are talking about digraphs, two letters.
That’s our thread here.
And we have this one.
Which is our S.H.
I mean in English S.H.

in Portuguese is C.H.
which always stands for the same sound.
Let me think of an example.
Oh, like this is a verb.
To think.
I think that’s… So it’s C.H.

Always.
No exception.

Lindsay:

Okay, and there’s only one way for that to sound?

Pedro:

Yeah, always shh.
There’s no other alternative.

Lindsay:
Okay.

Pedro:
Whenever you see CH, it’s just one sound there.
So yeah, you put them all in green.
So H can be L-H-U-N-H-N-U-C-H-shh and then again H at the beginning, standalone, no sound.
And then if just to finish the diagrams we have double R and double R is similar to a double S so if I have these two words so the first one is caru The second one is Caru.

And these are the two R sounds we have in Portuguese.
So the first one… Could you say that one more time?
Yeah, the first one is Caru.
This is expensive in Portuguese.
Caru.
And this is, it’s called the flip R because your tongue just, or the tap R, it flips once.
Caru, ru, re, re.

In American English, not in British English, in American English words like saddle or subtle, you have kind of that flip.

It’s the same sound, yeah.

But then we also have this throaty R.
It’s more here in the back.

It’s hard individually, that sound, but in the word.

This will be easy for the French.

Lindsay:

Okay.

Pedro:

They have this sound too.
Yeah, but you see, so R at the beginning is also the same sound.
So the word Ricardo, the name Ricardo, so R at the beginning will also be this like throaty R Ricardo.

So one single R at the start of a word pronounced the same as a double R. As a double R in between vowels.

So double R always in between vowels will be R at the start, R the same.
And you see like the Spanish for example, Spaniards, they don’t have this R, they have the trill R. Ricardo.
We don’t have the trill, we either have like a single flip the tap power as in caro, expensive, or the second r in Ricardo Ricardo.

Lindsay:

Can we put these into a sentence?
Because I see it.
Can we say Ricardo buys an expensive car?

Pedro:

Yes, un Ricardo.
That’s a good one.
Compre un carro carro. Aha.

Lindsay:
Okay.
I’m going to give it a go.
Let’s put it here.
Stretch my little box.

There’s a lot of Rs here.

Pedro:
Yeah.
That’s a very good example.

Lindsay:

Alright, let’s see.
Okay, so I want to highlight everything before we begin.
Do I know what to look out for?
Never mind, that’s not going to work.

Pedro:

Okay.

Exactly.
So you see, you have oo, g, ee, cardo, so g, ee, and then r, ee, cardo.

Lindsay:

Can you say that again with the o?

Pedro:

Ugricardo, compra, ri, tap R in compra, uncajo, caro.
Exactly.

They’re the same.

Lindsay:

Those are the same.

Pedro:

This one, this one and this one.

Lindsay:

Right.
So, urgicardo compra un carro carro.
Yeah.

I’m doing the right thing!

Pedro:

I mean, you are doing very, very well done.
Yes.
And, um, and I see that you have, you are very, you have experience with, with Romance languages.
For instance, when you pronounce these O’s, you know, for, for English native English speakers, it’s very, Tempting to say the O, right?
O Ricardo.

The classic when they learn Ricardo.

And it just, you know, that little, you know, thing just makes a huge difference.
Just, you know, I get used to make short sounds.
In this case it’s O sound, O Ricardo.
It will make a huge difference.

Lindsay:

Right.

Pedro:

And so again, pronunciation, it’s very worth to invest some time in pronunciation because then it will pay off big time.

Lindsay:

Definitely.
I feel like I’ve learned a lot.
in this one this one uh episode I’ve also noticed something else about this sentence we’ve got two m’s am I right in thinking this one is going to be nasal this one I’m going to do a different type of line is going to be a normal m

Pedro:

No, they are both nice also, so M to be M is either at the start of a word as in mine, this is mother in Portuguese.
Oh my God, where is the, that’s here, I’m shifting between keyboards here.

Lindsay:

I’m always endlessly impressed when people can shift between keyboards like that, so no worries.

Pedro:

Okay.
Well, let’s go to with another example, meu.
So, em at the start, so meu is my or mine.
So either at the start, meu or in between vowels as in a menge.
So amenga is tomorrow, you see, ama, ama.
And then you have the normal m sounds, right?

And also in that word we’ve got a lot going on because we’ve got an NH, which is also the nasal sound, also nasal, then we’ve got the A, yeah, also nasal.

It’s quite a nasal word.

Lindsay:

All up here.

Pedro:

Amenion.
And the other M that you pointed out before is like M, you know, compra, that M is followed by a consonant.
Whenever M is being followed by a consonant, it will be an ING kind of sound.
So that OM, it will be an O, the nasal vowel sound.
When would we see M not being nasal?
M regardless of if it is M is a nasal sound but it’s just it’s a different nasal sound.
You close your lips and then you just release it as in but this is a nasal sound.

But the other M’s, they are, this is a consonant nasal sound.
The others are considered a vowel nasal sound.
And if I was followed by M and then the M is followed by a T or by a consonant, sorry, or M at the end, then it will be a vowel nasal sounds.
Yeah.

Lindsay:

Cool.

Pedro:

Yeah.
It’s a lot of information here.
I mean, this is great.

Lindsay:

You don’t know how many times I’m going to rewatch this for myself.
So I’m sure this will be really useful for loads of people watching this as well.
Cause yeah, there’s just so much is there.
I mean, we could go on for hours, like really getting in, but is there anything else major that we’ve missed that we need to cover?

I think we covered all the nasal sounds and diphthongs.

I should say that I would like maybe just give as an advice for European Portuguese pronunciation, just try to… We haven’t talked about word stress.
Word stress is important, I don’t know if you want to talk a little bit, but try to understand the word stress patterns of European Portuguese and just keep in mind that we, for the most part, our vowel sounds are closed.
Like in Spanish, they are only five vowel sounds and all vowels are very clear and loud.
And in Portuguese, it doesn’t work that way.
We have many more vowel sounds and they tend to be always on the closed side of things.
We only open our vowel sounds on stressed syllables.
That’s why it’s important to understand word stress patterns.

In Portuguese, because that’s when you have open vowel sounds.
For the rest, you want to close more with a kind of closed mouth position.
You want to be very relaxed in your jaw.
And so I think it’s very important to keep that in mind if you want to get good at European Portuguese pronunciation you’ll have to say a lot of this sounds relaxed jaw and not so much those are the Spanish right There won’t be so much a, e, i, o, u in Portuguese.
There will be a lot of i, u, a, u. Okay?
And when the syllable is stressed, then you want to say a or e, but otherwise it’s more u. Yeah, so yeah, that’s important.
But again, you know, Yeah, it’s also important to take it easy and there’s much to explore when it comes to pronunciation and it will take some time to integrate and to assimilate all these patterns.

You need a lot of exposure, you need to rationally understand as we went through all these spellings and sounds and rules.
That’s one part.
But then you can’t expect overnight that you will just reproduce all those patterns like automatically, right?
You have to give yourself some time, you have to practice.
We are going back to the basic key mindset of learning a language, right?
Continuity, you know, try to integrate language practice, language learning in your daily routines, try to do it every day.
Try to expose yourself to the language, listening is important.

Just turn on the radio, even if you don’t understand, if you are a beginner.
Turn on the radio, just listen to the sounds, try to reproduce the sounds.
Whenever a sound is alien to you, is tricky, You know, notice that and try to play around with your mouth, try to get closer to that sound, try to understand what you need to do with your tongue, with your teeth, whatever.
And yeah, it’s just you have to keep at it and to be curious and a little bit nerd, I would say.
Yeah.

Lindsay:

That should be my like Instagram bio.
Curious and a little bit nerd.

Pedro:
Yeah.

Lindsay:
Thank you so much.
This has been highly useful, educational, and I’m sure lots of people will have just had the same little moments that I have over the past time that we’ve been together.
If people want to learn more with you, how can they do that?

Pedro:

Well, they definitely should visit my website, my platform and that’s Portuguesepedia.com.
And then I’m also, I have a YouTube channel, I’m on Instagram and again, you just search Portuguesepedia and you will find me.

Lindsay:

Brilliant.
And as I said at the start, it’s a wonderfully huge resource that you’ve created.
So yeah, go check it out.
Thank you very much.

Pedro:

Well, thank you so much.
And thank you for having me on.
It was pleasure.

Lindsay:

No problem.