My youtube debut in Portuguese!

Paul   Sat Jan 23, 2010 10:59 am GMT
Convidado   Sat Jan 23, 2010 12:35 pm GMT
Your Portuguese is very, very good. While the accent is still clearly foreign, If you hadn't said you're an American, I wouldn't have guessed it. Also, don't worry about calling yourself 'americano', I don't think I've ever heard, and only rarely read 'estadunidense' here. If you want, later I can comment on the little stuff you might have gotten wrong on your accent and grammar. For instance, you seem to sometimes palatalize your ti's and di's and sometimes not, while in Brazil either they are always palatalized or they are never palatalized, depending on the region.
MILTON   Sat Jan 23, 2010 3:16 pm GMT
You seem to opt for Brazilian Portuguese.
1. in standard Brazilian Portuguese, t/d+i are palatalized like CHina, Jesus
2. you don't pronounce the stressed vowels in a correct way, you pronounced escrevo with an open vowel, it should have the closed vowel: escrêvo and not escrévo.
3. ''Está na hora de eu tentar falar.'' not ''para tentar''
3. aprendizagem is less common than aprendizado in Brazilian Portuguese, it sounds like autumn in the US, fall is preferred (in this case aprendizagem is more Continental Portuguese, aprendizado is more Brazilian)
4. gósto vs gôsto: eu gósto (open vowel); o gôsto (closed vowel), pelo gôsto [you pronounced it ''pelo gósto])
5. you pronounced: meus érros, the correct form: meus êrros:
eu érro (I commit a mistake), but um êrro (an error)
Portuguese has 2 o vowels (an open one and a closed one), and 2 e vowels (an open one, and a closed one), they are not interchangeable, and they are extremely important in Portuguese, onlike in Italian when most people don't care how to pronounce it, it is the most important thing that will give a person speaking Portuguese away, sounding as a foreigner.

Get books by Mario Perini MODERN PORTUGUESE and TALKING BRAZILIAN, these are really good (in English, by Yale University Press, available from Amazon). TALKING BRAZILIAN is all about the accent reduction, how not to sound foreign.

You're accent is good for a foreigner, but
pay attention to open and closed vowels in Portuguese, also the rhythm is a bit off, the words are not as connected as their should be, intonation is more Californian than Brazilian :(
Paul   Sat Jan 23, 2010 7:33 pm GMT
Thank you for the detailed comment, and suggestions! This helps a lot.
K.   Sat Jan 23, 2010 7:39 pm GMT
That was very good advice. Paul, thank-you for being brave enough to post a video. I would love to get the kind of honest feedback you just got.
Vanessa   Sun Jan 24, 2010 5:35 am GMT
You are way cute.
Você é mó fofo.
Penetra   Tue Jan 26, 2010 2:08 pm GMT
Paul/William,

I have very little to add to Convidado's and Milton's excellent comments. "Como vocês vão?" sounds a little more quaint than the common "como vocês estão?", at least to my ears. The correct translation for "introduce myself" is "me apresentar": "introduzir" means "to insert [something] [into something]". "No particular reason" is better translated as "nenhuma razão específica", "particular" being more used in the sense of "private" in Brazil.
And, of course, "estadunidense" is only used by radical leftists here.

HTH, hand.
Paul   Tue Jan 26, 2010 7:47 pm GMT
<<The correct translation for "introduce myself" is "me apresentar": "introduzir" means "to insert [something] [into something]".>>

LOLOL. Thanks for letting me know...definitely won't say that again.


All of this advice is invaluable. Thanks a lot.