![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 |
The introduction needs some work. The criticism of foreign misinterpretation of the vowel distinction needs to be toned down quite a bit. Peter Isotalo 11:51, Mar 18, 2005 (UTC)
Hi, I was working the article rodizio and I was thinking it might be nice to put it in IPA. Unfortunately, I don't speak Portuguese. The article says the pronunciation is "ro-DEE-zhyoo". This seems to conflict with the note in the orthography section here that "z" between vowels is pronounced [z]. Any advice? Lesgles ( talk) 05:41, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
I've made some considerable changes to the paragraphs on oral and nasal diphthongs:
i've never seen a circunflex accent on a. only on e and o. can anyone give examples? -- itaj 11:26, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
The examples that Joaopais gave are written the same way in BP and EP. Are you sure you haven't seen the word câmara before? FilipeS 17:58, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
P.S. Or how about Bethânia? :) FilipeS
The word câmara (city hall) is quite common. (I'm not sure the same term is used in Brazil, though.) The others are indeed uncommon, and the two last ones that Joaopais wrote are proper nouns. For the origin of tâmara, see here. All words with orthographic â are proparoxytones, and since Portuguese words are usually stressed on their last syllable, or on the one before the last, it's not surprising that you haven't noticed them yet.
On another note, I took a peak at your website, and I think here's a little incorrection in it. I would rather say página de capoeira. ;-) Regards. FilipeS 20:17, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
Why would you want to say "the Capoeira"? Isn't the site devoted to capoeira in general? FilipeS 21:51, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
all â examples given above are nasal vowels (come before m or n). does â exist as oral vowel (non-nasal)? examples? -- itaj 15:45, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
what is only in EP (as far as you know)? which of the following are true:
-- itaj 02:05, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
thanks much for your help. you mean what's written after the table in the section of nasal monophthongs? i've seen it but could not derive that â never comes without a following n or m. also because â is listed with the oral monophthongs with no special comment. -- itaj 18:00, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
exactly that i understood. but i was curious to know about the always part because then i can think of â as the nasal allophone of á. so they're much like the regular tonic oral/nasal a which differ in pronunciation about the same way. though as writing now i realise that i actually also need to know that á never comes before m or n. -- itaj 22:41, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
I'm going to rephrase the article, and ask for a citation for the statement that the plosives [b], [k], [g] have the fricative allophones [β], [ð], and [ɣ], respectively, in European Portuguese. The reasons are as follows:
sometimes unstressed e is pronounced /i/ (i think). like berimbau, tesoura. in tesoura it also palatalizes t like usualy i does, for being pronounced /i/.
is that correct? are there rules to know by the spelling of the word when e pronounced like that? -- itaj 10:46, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
A user changed the comparison of this phenomenon of Brazilian Portuguese with the very similar one in Quebec French into an analogy with Japanese, claiming that Japanese is a better analogy. I would like to know why, before accepting the change. FilipeS 21:19, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
Both comparisons are indeed interesting, although neither of them coincides completely with the palatalization seen in Brazilian Portuguese: Japanese palatalizes all consonants before /i/, not just /t/ and /d/; and while Quebec French palatalizes only the consonants /t/ and /d/, it does so not just before /i/, but also before /y/ and /u/.
In any event, there's already a reference to Japanese at Brazilian Portuguese. FilipeS 12:18, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
I reverted changes made by Ciacchi, asserting that idade, sorte, etc. are palatalized rather than affricated; this is simply wrong. It is contrary to numerous sources (e.g. Routledge's "The Romance Languages") and is contrary to what my ears tell me. Benwing 07:13, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
someone recently added a section on "phonotactics". i see little point in the section as-is -- there is really no purpose in all the examples, and the basic idea could be summarized in a couple of sentences, but even then i don't see what is gained by the section. a real section on the phonotactics of portuguese would not try to reduce its phonotactics down to CCVC and such but would describe the actual restrictions. i.e. yes you can say "frustrar" but not "rfusrtar", nor "ftustrar", nor (in BP) "frustrac". also, EP and BP differ -- EP allows "advogado" but BP wants "ad/i/vogado". descriptions in terms of CCVC and such only work for languages like arabic, where the phonotactics actually work based on number rather than type of consonants. Benwing 07:24, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
Discussed at Talk: Portuguese Language.
The following has recently been added to the article.
Most speakers nowadays pronounce the digraph ou as a monophthong [o] when there's no possibility of confusion, although in some regions of Brazil and northern Portugal it is still pronounced as the falling diphthong [ou̯].
It's not clear to me what this "danger of confusion" might be. There are a few minimal pairs for the diphthong versus the monophthong, true, but most people in Portugal get along fine pronouncing both the same way. Context clears any doubts. Moreover, this pronunciation "to avoid danger of confusion" seems to be only done in Brazil (perhaps out of linguistic purism). Unless this is clarified, I am going to remove the remark from the article. FilipeS 14:44, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
This is not a big deal, but just for the record the reason why I had moved the Diphthongs section down was that they are not phonemes. I thought it was neater to discuss all phonemes first, and then list the diphthongs (which have a very straightforward correspondence with spelling, anyway, so they could just as well be listed at Portuguese orthography). FilipeS 15:25, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
What is the author, title, etc., of the newly added reference? FilipeS 19:20, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
I suspected as much, but didn't have the time to check. Thanks. FilipeS 12:41, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
Before this escalates anymore, and since User:AnPrionsaBeag seems to be a newcomer to Wikipedia, I should perhaps give my reasons for reverting his edits, which were the following:
Palatal lateral approximant. In some Brazilian dialects, this phoneme is realized as palatal approximant [j], but this is not as widespread as yeísmo in Spanish. It came to Portuguese through Occitan in 1047, just like nh [1] [1]. See also this and that.
[...] See lh for origin.
This edit is nonsensical. It's true that the digraphs "lh" and "nh" were adopted from Occitan, and that fact is mentioned at the Portuguese alphabet article, but this article is about phonology, not orthography. The phonemes /ʎ/ and /ɲ/ were not "borrowed" from any language; they developed in parallel in several Romance languages. User:AnPrionsaBeag has confused phonology and orthography completely, as I have already pointed out in one of my edit summaries.
With as much respect as I can muster, I have to say that it's particularly grating to be allegedly "corrected" and accused of "vandalism" by someone who is so clearly and utterly misguided. FilipeS 20:34, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
To user FilipeS, I am an American female college student. If I ever learn Portuguese, it will be my second language. Should I rely on Wikipedia to get started? Which version will I be learning? I want to learn both European and Brazilian Portuguese if I can so I can be most effectively understood throughout the Portuguese-speaking world. I listen to bbcbrasil.com and bbcparaafrica.com, which are both media in Portuguese. I want to be a radio journalist.
Should this article be expanded further? I wouldn't know what to say 'cause I'm not a native speaker like you. Do you speak EP or BP or both? Does it help to know both versions to be understood in the Portuguese-speaking world?
learnportuguese 20:47, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
Portuguese phonology#Sibilants says:
But it isn't mentioned anywhere above!-- Imz 00:08, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
<!-- hidden comment-->
for that. Thank you for your reaction!--
Imz
17:57, 23 October 2007 (UTC)Several sources state that a recent sound change in European Portuguese as lenition for b, d, and g similar to what occurs in Spanish. Yet, there is no mention of this in the article. Anyone want to chime in? Azalea pomp 01:57, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
The table at "unstressed vowels is a total mess, some things are right but some others are false (either in portuguese portuguese or in brazilian portuguese). A correction would be welcome. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.242.251.79 ( talk) 16:24, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
This article simply ignores the phonology of Northeastern Brazillians, regarding the Southern accent as "Brazillian Portuguese". They are very similar, I know, but Northeasterns don't say "pegar" with a high /e/ but with a low /ɛ/, and there is no palatalization. Considering that 28,9 % of the Brazillian population lives in the Northeast, added with the great number of Northeastern immigrants in other regions, I think Northeastern accent should be considered for this article. 189.70.55.139 ( talk) 02:54, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
[...] there is some dialectal variation in the unstressed sounds: the northern accents of BP have low vowels in unstressed syllables, /ɛ, ɔ/, instead of the high vowels /e, o/.
Not true that there is no palatalization in the Northeast. It's universal in Salvador (and is presumably spreading northward). Benwing ( talk) 07:29, 1 September 2008 (UTC)
According to the article, one would think that the Rio-area pronunciation of "de" (as in "Rio de Janeiro") would be [dʒi], yet I hear it as [d̪i]. What is the correct pronunciation here, and should it be mentioned in the article? (Disclaimer: I am only just learning Portuguese!) Thanks! Grover cleveland ( talk) 18:48, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
The current article says that /n/ never occurs at the end of a syllable, "except in rare learned words, for some speakers". However, Thomas, Grammar of Spoken Brazilian Porguguese, p. 8 says that "in final position in the word [the written letter 'n'] may be pronounced as a consonant or it may merely nasalize the preceding vowel" (with no restriction to "rare learned words"). He also says that in participles such as "falando" the "n" is realized as [n]. Could this be a EP vs. BP thing? Grover cleveland ( talk) 07:50, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
Nhoque ("gnocchi") is one example. Grover cleveland ( talk) 01:48, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
Wait a minute, Aeusoes, before going on in an edition war, let’s talk a little.
What do you mean by “dental and velarized”?!? You have cited me a source claiming that the Brazilian /l/ is alveolar and the (European) Portuguese /l/ is dental, I respect that source, but I don’t believe it’s true! We, Africans, alltogether with Brazilians, pronounce the /l/ in Portuguese as dental, very differentely than the Portuguese that pronounce the /l/ as alveolar. Besides, dental /l/ means not velarized, while the alveolar /l/ is velarized!!!
I don’t know if it is you who made the changes about the phonemes /l/ and /n/ at the end of syllables, but that’s not quite so. The letter <n> does appear at the end of words, but it is pronounced differentely: in European Portuguese words like gérmen or cólon are pronounced ['ʒɛɾmɛn] and ['kɔɫɔn] while in Brazilian Portuguese they are pronounced ['ʒɛʁmẽj] and ['kɔlõ]. With “laterals” I think the author meant the phoneme /ʎ/ and not the phoneme /l/. It is so frequent at the end of syllables that I won’t even give examples... :-)
About the phoneme /ʁ/, I think that it is not quite so neither. By my own observations, the Africans don’t pronounce it uniformally (there is a widespread myth about something called “African Portuguese”). Cape Verdeans pronounce it like the Portuguese, i.e., [r], [ʀ], or [ʁ], in a free variation according to the speaker. I think that it also hapens with São Tomean. Some speakers of Guinea Bissau pronounce it as [ɾ] (emphasis on some, I do not have accurate data). But Angolans and Mozambicans only pronounce it as [r] (and I think that also the Timorese). That may have an substratum explanation: in Bantu languages (as far as I know) there is no [ʀ] or [ʁ] sounds. However, everything that I have said in this paragraph are due to my personal observations through many years, so do not cite me as a source, please...
Ten Islands ( talk) 04:14, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
May I ask, Aeusoes1, why you're converting the tables into text? Is there a Wikipedia directive about this? FilipeS ( talk) 23:35, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
Nasalized quadphthongs? Dubious? I'll have to see what you've been doing with that.
In my opinion, the information was more user-friendly when it was placed in tables. For example, I much preferred the table version of Spanish phonology. FilipeS ( talk) 21:24, 10 February 2008 (UTC)
Because the reduced vowels are higher than the unreduced ones. Like in Portuguese. FilipeS ( talk) 22:48, 10 February 2008 (UTC)
Here we meet again Aeusoes, for the third time... Since I’ve seen that you make serious contributions, you deserve an explanation for my edits.
The sounds /ɪ/ and /ʊ/ do not exist in Portuguese, what exist in Portuguese are the closed vowels /i/ and /u/ (at least phonologically, I don’t know if there is an obscure guy in a remote area that pronounces /i/ and /u/ as /ɪ/ and /ʊ/... :-) ). But most important, I haven’t seen any author claiming that the sounds /ɪ/ and /ʊ/ exist.
Portuguese (I mean Portuguese language) phonologists represent the semivowels either with /i̯/ /u̯/ or with /j/ /w/. What I’ve done was simply put the inverted breve mark below the symbols where they were missing. Not putting it will cause confusion with hiatuses (for instance, BP pais /pai̯s/ (parents) versus país /pais/ (country).
I am very sceptical about a difference between /ɐ/ in Brazil and /ɐ/ in Portugal. The French word de /də/ (of) and the (European) Portuguese da /dɐ/ (of the) sound different.
The text was not clear to say that the sound /ɐ/ is the most common occurance in unstressed syllables in EP. In BP it only appears before nasal consonants.
The word dá is not a compound word. The text is making confusion when (in EP) there is an etymological crasis of two /ɐ/ (for instance caveira /ka'vejɾɐ/, in medieval Portuguese caaveira */kɐɐ'vejɾɐ/) or when there is an /ɐ/ at the end of a word and another at the begining of the next word (minha /'miɲɐ/, amiga /ɐ'miɡɐ/ but minha amiga /ˌmiɲaˈmiɡɐ/).
The EP unstressed “e” is a central vowel, not a back vowel.
The words ao and aos are pronounced /au̯/ and /au̯ʃ/ in EP. I am not aware of any circumstance where the diphthong /ɐu̯/ exists.
At last “Central Portugal” can be a bit confusing. Coimbra, for example, is also considered Central Portugal, but dialectically it is a different area than Lisbon and surroundings.
I am not reverting anything by know, I would be glad if you could explain why you once claimed that /i̯/ /u̯/ is incorrect.
See you. Ten Islands ( talk) 07:11, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
I disagree with several things that both of you have said.
Ten Islands:
Aeusoes1, in addition to seconding all the staments made by Ten Islands which I did not contradict above, I would like to say that, like him, I do not like the use of the symbols ɪ and ʊ in an article on the phonology of Portuguese, for two main reasons:
I'd be curious to see, though, a few words where the author claims these phones are used by Brazilians. Best regards. FilipeS ( talk) 20:03, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
TenIslands, first of all you are not the only native speaker here. I am one too.
Later. FilipeS ( talk) 21:16, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
Sorry for this week of absence but I’ve been busy. I believe that by now we are able to join our efforts to improve this page.
At first I intended to give a feedback about each question that was approached in this discussion, stating my point of view. But then I remembered one of the rules of Wikipedia about the verifiability and instead I am suggesting now some changes in this page (and other related pages) in accordance of what is verifiable or not. Here we go:
Ten Islands ( talk) 10:08, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
Aeusoes1, do Barbosa & Albano give any examples of words where Brazilian unstressed /i/ and /u/ are pronounced as [ɪ] and [ʊ]? FilipeS ( talk) 17:07, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
The following quote is from Chapter 2, page 11, footnote 2 of the 2000 edition of the book.
As a matter of fact, in northern and central EP dialects, voiced stops may be realized as the correspondent non-strident fricatives [β], [δ], [γ], except in phrase-initial position and after an homorganic non-continuant.
(Emphasis mine.)
When they describe these allophones as "fricatives", I suspect that they're being misled by the ambiguity of IPA. Most likely, in my opinion, they are approximants, not true fricatives. If anyone still has any doubts, I can even show you several speakers who never pronounce the voiced plosives as anything other than true plosives.
The authors who claim otherwise are either ignorant foreigners who assumed wrongly that Portuguese is "pretty much like Spanish", or purist natives who find the approximant pronunciation more chic, and therefore fail to notice that many (perhaps most) speakers do not talk that way naturally. FilipeS ( talk) 14:20, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
They actually use the Greek letter delta in the book. Sometimes that's done when the proper IPA symbol is unavailable. FilipeS ( talk) 16:25, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
The article says: "There are very few minimal pairs for /oi/ and /ɔi/, all of which in oxytone words." There is at least "apóio" (verb) vs "apoio" (noun), so not all are oxytone. There are probably other words that follow the same pattern, but I can't remember any right now. 189.95.48.244 ( talk) 02:11, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 |
The introduction needs some work. The criticism of foreign misinterpretation of the vowel distinction needs to be toned down quite a bit. Peter Isotalo 11:51, Mar 18, 2005 (UTC)
Hi, I was working the article rodizio and I was thinking it might be nice to put it in IPA. Unfortunately, I don't speak Portuguese. The article says the pronunciation is "ro-DEE-zhyoo". This seems to conflict with the note in the orthography section here that "z" between vowels is pronounced [z]. Any advice? Lesgles ( talk) 05:41, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
I've made some considerable changes to the paragraphs on oral and nasal diphthongs:
i've never seen a circunflex accent on a. only on e and o. can anyone give examples? -- itaj 11:26, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
The examples that Joaopais gave are written the same way in BP and EP. Are you sure you haven't seen the word câmara before? FilipeS 17:58, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
P.S. Or how about Bethânia? :) FilipeS
The word câmara (city hall) is quite common. (I'm not sure the same term is used in Brazil, though.) The others are indeed uncommon, and the two last ones that Joaopais wrote are proper nouns. For the origin of tâmara, see here. All words with orthographic â are proparoxytones, and since Portuguese words are usually stressed on their last syllable, or on the one before the last, it's not surprising that you haven't noticed them yet.
On another note, I took a peak at your website, and I think here's a little incorrection in it. I would rather say página de capoeira. ;-) Regards. FilipeS 20:17, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
Why would you want to say "the Capoeira"? Isn't the site devoted to capoeira in general? FilipeS 21:51, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
all â examples given above are nasal vowels (come before m or n). does â exist as oral vowel (non-nasal)? examples? -- itaj 15:45, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
what is only in EP (as far as you know)? which of the following are true:
-- itaj 02:05, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
thanks much for your help. you mean what's written after the table in the section of nasal monophthongs? i've seen it but could not derive that â never comes without a following n or m. also because â is listed with the oral monophthongs with no special comment. -- itaj 18:00, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
exactly that i understood. but i was curious to know about the always part because then i can think of â as the nasal allophone of á. so they're much like the regular tonic oral/nasal a which differ in pronunciation about the same way. though as writing now i realise that i actually also need to know that á never comes before m or n. -- itaj 22:41, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
I'm going to rephrase the article, and ask for a citation for the statement that the plosives [b], [k], [g] have the fricative allophones [β], [ð], and [ɣ], respectively, in European Portuguese. The reasons are as follows:
sometimes unstressed e is pronounced /i/ (i think). like berimbau, tesoura. in tesoura it also palatalizes t like usualy i does, for being pronounced /i/.
is that correct? are there rules to know by the spelling of the word when e pronounced like that? -- itaj 10:46, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
A user changed the comparison of this phenomenon of Brazilian Portuguese with the very similar one in Quebec French into an analogy with Japanese, claiming that Japanese is a better analogy. I would like to know why, before accepting the change. FilipeS 21:19, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
Both comparisons are indeed interesting, although neither of them coincides completely with the palatalization seen in Brazilian Portuguese: Japanese palatalizes all consonants before /i/, not just /t/ and /d/; and while Quebec French palatalizes only the consonants /t/ and /d/, it does so not just before /i/, but also before /y/ and /u/.
In any event, there's already a reference to Japanese at Brazilian Portuguese. FilipeS 12:18, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
I reverted changes made by Ciacchi, asserting that idade, sorte, etc. are palatalized rather than affricated; this is simply wrong. It is contrary to numerous sources (e.g. Routledge's "The Romance Languages") and is contrary to what my ears tell me. Benwing 07:13, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
someone recently added a section on "phonotactics". i see little point in the section as-is -- there is really no purpose in all the examples, and the basic idea could be summarized in a couple of sentences, but even then i don't see what is gained by the section. a real section on the phonotactics of portuguese would not try to reduce its phonotactics down to CCVC and such but would describe the actual restrictions. i.e. yes you can say "frustrar" but not "rfusrtar", nor "ftustrar", nor (in BP) "frustrac". also, EP and BP differ -- EP allows "advogado" but BP wants "ad/i/vogado". descriptions in terms of CCVC and such only work for languages like arabic, where the phonotactics actually work based on number rather than type of consonants. Benwing 07:24, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
Discussed at Talk: Portuguese Language.
The following has recently been added to the article.
Most speakers nowadays pronounce the digraph ou as a monophthong [o] when there's no possibility of confusion, although in some regions of Brazil and northern Portugal it is still pronounced as the falling diphthong [ou̯].
It's not clear to me what this "danger of confusion" might be. There are a few minimal pairs for the diphthong versus the monophthong, true, but most people in Portugal get along fine pronouncing both the same way. Context clears any doubts. Moreover, this pronunciation "to avoid danger of confusion" seems to be only done in Brazil (perhaps out of linguistic purism). Unless this is clarified, I am going to remove the remark from the article. FilipeS 14:44, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
This is not a big deal, but just for the record the reason why I had moved the Diphthongs section down was that they are not phonemes. I thought it was neater to discuss all phonemes first, and then list the diphthongs (which have a very straightforward correspondence with spelling, anyway, so they could just as well be listed at Portuguese orthography). FilipeS 15:25, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
What is the author, title, etc., of the newly added reference? FilipeS 19:20, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
I suspected as much, but didn't have the time to check. Thanks. FilipeS 12:41, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
Before this escalates anymore, and since User:AnPrionsaBeag seems to be a newcomer to Wikipedia, I should perhaps give my reasons for reverting his edits, which were the following:
Palatal lateral approximant. In some Brazilian dialects, this phoneme is realized as palatal approximant [j], but this is not as widespread as yeísmo in Spanish. It came to Portuguese through Occitan in 1047, just like nh [1] [1]. See also this and that.
[...] See lh for origin.
This edit is nonsensical. It's true that the digraphs "lh" and "nh" were adopted from Occitan, and that fact is mentioned at the Portuguese alphabet article, but this article is about phonology, not orthography. The phonemes /ʎ/ and /ɲ/ were not "borrowed" from any language; they developed in parallel in several Romance languages. User:AnPrionsaBeag has confused phonology and orthography completely, as I have already pointed out in one of my edit summaries.
With as much respect as I can muster, I have to say that it's particularly grating to be allegedly "corrected" and accused of "vandalism" by someone who is so clearly and utterly misguided. FilipeS 20:34, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
To user FilipeS, I am an American female college student. If I ever learn Portuguese, it will be my second language. Should I rely on Wikipedia to get started? Which version will I be learning? I want to learn both European and Brazilian Portuguese if I can so I can be most effectively understood throughout the Portuguese-speaking world. I listen to bbcbrasil.com and bbcparaafrica.com, which are both media in Portuguese. I want to be a radio journalist.
Should this article be expanded further? I wouldn't know what to say 'cause I'm not a native speaker like you. Do you speak EP or BP or both? Does it help to know both versions to be understood in the Portuguese-speaking world?
learnportuguese 20:47, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
Portuguese phonology#Sibilants says:
But it isn't mentioned anywhere above!-- Imz 00:08, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
<!-- hidden comment-->
for that. Thank you for your reaction!--
Imz
17:57, 23 October 2007 (UTC)Several sources state that a recent sound change in European Portuguese as lenition for b, d, and g similar to what occurs in Spanish. Yet, there is no mention of this in the article. Anyone want to chime in? Azalea pomp 01:57, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
The table at "unstressed vowels is a total mess, some things are right but some others are false (either in portuguese portuguese or in brazilian portuguese). A correction would be welcome. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.242.251.79 ( talk) 16:24, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
This article simply ignores the phonology of Northeastern Brazillians, regarding the Southern accent as "Brazillian Portuguese". They are very similar, I know, but Northeasterns don't say "pegar" with a high /e/ but with a low /ɛ/, and there is no palatalization. Considering that 28,9 % of the Brazillian population lives in the Northeast, added with the great number of Northeastern immigrants in other regions, I think Northeastern accent should be considered for this article. 189.70.55.139 ( talk) 02:54, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
[...] there is some dialectal variation in the unstressed sounds: the northern accents of BP have low vowels in unstressed syllables, /ɛ, ɔ/, instead of the high vowels /e, o/.
Not true that there is no palatalization in the Northeast. It's universal in Salvador (and is presumably spreading northward). Benwing ( talk) 07:29, 1 September 2008 (UTC)
According to the article, one would think that the Rio-area pronunciation of "de" (as in "Rio de Janeiro") would be [dʒi], yet I hear it as [d̪i]. What is the correct pronunciation here, and should it be mentioned in the article? (Disclaimer: I am only just learning Portuguese!) Thanks! Grover cleveland ( talk) 18:48, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
The current article says that /n/ never occurs at the end of a syllable, "except in rare learned words, for some speakers". However, Thomas, Grammar of Spoken Brazilian Porguguese, p. 8 says that "in final position in the word [the written letter 'n'] may be pronounced as a consonant or it may merely nasalize the preceding vowel" (with no restriction to "rare learned words"). He also says that in participles such as "falando" the "n" is realized as [n]. Could this be a EP vs. BP thing? Grover cleveland ( talk) 07:50, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
Nhoque ("gnocchi") is one example. Grover cleveland ( talk) 01:48, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
Wait a minute, Aeusoes, before going on in an edition war, let’s talk a little.
What do you mean by “dental and velarized”?!? You have cited me a source claiming that the Brazilian /l/ is alveolar and the (European) Portuguese /l/ is dental, I respect that source, but I don’t believe it’s true! We, Africans, alltogether with Brazilians, pronounce the /l/ in Portuguese as dental, very differentely than the Portuguese that pronounce the /l/ as alveolar. Besides, dental /l/ means not velarized, while the alveolar /l/ is velarized!!!
I don’t know if it is you who made the changes about the phonemes /l/ and /n/ at the end of syllables, but that’s not quite so. The letter <n> does appear at the end of words, but it is pronounced differentely: in European Portuguese words like gérmen or cólon are pronounced ['ʒɛɾmɛn] and ['kɔɫɔn] while in Brazilian Portuguese they are pronounced ['ʒɛʁmẽj] and ['kɔlõ]. With “laterals” I think the author meant the phoneme /ʎ/ and not the phoneme /l/. It is so frequent at the end of syllables that I won’t even give examples... :-)
About the phoneme /ʁ/, I think that it is not quite so neither. By my own observations, the Africans don’t pronounce it uniformally (there is a widespread myth about something called “African Portuguese”). Cape Verdeans pronounce it like the Portuguese, i.e., [r], [ʀ], or [ʁ], in a free variation according to the speaker. I think that it also hapens with São Tomean. Some speakers of Guinea Bissau pronounce it as [ɾ] (emphasis on some, I do not have accurate data). But Angolans and Mozambicans only pronounce it as [r] (and I think that also the Timorese). That may have an substratum explanation: in Bantu languages (as far as I know) there is no [ʀ] or [ʁ] sounds. However, everything that I have said in this paragraph are due to my personal observations through many years, so do not cite me as a source, please...
Ten Islands ( talk) 04:14, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
May I ask, Aeusoes1, why you're converting the tables into text? Is there a Wikipedia directive about this? FilipeS ( talk) 23:35, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
Nasalized quadphthongs? Dubious? I'll have to see what you've been doing with that.
In my opinion, the information was more user-friendly when it was placed in tables. For example, I much preferred the table version of Spanish phonology. FilipeS ( talk) 21:24, 10 February 2008 (UTC)
Because the reduced vowels are higher than the unreduced ones. Like in Portuguese. FilipeS ( talk) 22:48, 10 February 2008 (UTC)
Here we meet again Aeusoes, for the third time... Since I’ve seen that you make serious contributions, you deserve an explanation for my edits.
The sounds /ɪ/ and /ʊ/ do not exist in Portuguese, what exist in Portuguese are the closed vowels /i/ and /u/ (at least phonologically, I don’t know if there is an obscure guy in a remote area that pronounces /i/ and /u/ as /ɪ/ and /ʊ/... :-) ). But most important, I haven’t seen any author claiming that the sounds /ɪ/ and /ʊ/ exist.
Portuguese (I mean Portuguese language) phonologists represent the semivowels either with /i̯/ /u̯/ or with /j/ /w/. What I’ve done was simply put the inverted breve mark below the symbols where they were missing. Not putting it will cause confusion with hiatuses (for instance, BP pais /pai̯s/ (parents) versus país /pais/ (country).
I am very sceptical about a difference between /ɐ/ in Brazil and /ɐ/ in Portugal. The French word de /də/ (of) and the (European) Portuguese da /dɐ/ (of the) sound different.
The text was not clear to say that the sound /ɐ/ is the most common occurance in unstressed syllables in EP. In BP it only appears before nasal consonants.
The word dá is not a compound word. The text is making confusion when (in EP) there is an etymological crasis of two /ɐ/ (for instance caveira /ka'vejɾɐ/, in medieval Portuguese caaveira */kɐɐ'vejɾɐ/) or when there is an /ɐ/ at the end of a word and another at the begining of the next word (minha /'miɲɐ/, amiga /ɐ'miɡɐ/ but minha amiga /ˌmiɲaˈmiɡɐ/).
The EP unstressed “e” is a central vowel, not a back vowel.
The words ao and aos are pronounced /au̯/ and /au̯ʃ/ in EP. I am not aware of any circumstance where the diphthong /ɐu̯/ exists.
At last “Central Portugal” can be a bit confusing. Coimbra, for example, is also considered Central Portugal, but dialectically it is a different area than Lisbon and surroundings.
I am not reverting anything by know, I would be glad if you could explain why you once claimed that /i̯/ /u̯/ is incorrect.
See you. Ten Islands ( talk) 07:11, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
I disagree with several things that both of you have said.
Ten Islands:
Aeusoes1, in addition to seconding all the staments made by Ten Islands which I did not contradict above, I would like to say that, like him, I do not like the use of the symbols ɪ and ʊ in an article on the phonology of Portuguese, for two main reasons:
I'd be curious to see, though, a few words where the author claims these phones are used by Brazilians. Best regards. FilipeS ( talk) 20:03, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
TenIslands, first of all you are not the only native speaker here. I am one too.
Later. FilipeS ( talk) 21:16, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
Sorry for this week of absence but I’ve been busy. I believe that by now we are able to join our efforts to improve this page.
At first I intended to give a feedback about each question that was approached in this discussion, stating my point of view. But then I remembered one of the rules of Wikipedia about the verifiability and instead I am suggesting now some changes in this page (and other related pages) in accordance of what is verifiable or not. Here we go:
Ten Islands ( talk) 10:08, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
Aeusoes1, do Barbosa & Albano give any examples of words where Brazilian unstressed /i/ and /u/ are pronounced as [ɪ] and [ʊ]? FilipeS ( talk) 17:07, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
The following quote is from Chapter 2, page 11, footnote 2 of the 2000 edition of the book.
As a matter of fact, in northern and central EP dialects, voiced stops may be realized as the correspondent non-strident fricatives [β], [δ], [γ], except in phrase-initial position and after an homorganic non-continuant.
(Emphasis mine.)
When they describe these allophones as "fricatives", I suspect that they're being misled by the ambiguity of IPA. Most likely, in my opinion, they are approximants, not true fricatives. If anyone still has any doubts, I can even show you several speakers who never pronounce the voiced plosives as anything other than true plosives.
The authors who claim otherwise are either ignorant foreigners who assumed wrongly that Portuguese is "pretty much like Spanish", or purist natives who find the approximant pronunciation more chic, and therefore fail to notice that many (perhaps most) speakers do not talk that way naturally. FilipeS ( talk) 14:20, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
They actually use the Greek letter delta in the book. Sometimes that's done when the proper IPA symbol is unavailable. FilipeS ( talk) 16:25, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
The article says: "There are very few minimal pairs for /oi/ and /ɔi/, all of which in oxytone words." There is at least "apóio" (verb) vs "apoio" (noun), so not all are oxytone. There are probably other words that follow the same pattern, but I can't remember any right now. 189.95.48.244 ( talk) 02:11, 12 November 2008 (UTC)