Do you like Brazilian Portuguese?
Brazilian Portuguese is one of the newest Latin-based (or Roman) languages. It is spoken by 180,000,000 people which means it is the 2nd most spoken Roman language.
It is a language of extreme phonetic beauty. Mix 15th century Continental Portuguese with Native American and African language and spice it with influences from Italian, Spanish and English.
Do you like it? How does it sound to you?
It is very vocal-friendly. Brazilians cannot really pronounce many consonants together so they insert an I (read it as ''ee''in English), which makes it more vocalic, and less consonantal: advogado [ahgeevohGAHdoo] lawyer; ritmo [HEEtcheemoo] rhythm; conectar [kohnehkeeTA] connect.
Please visit this site to hear Brazilian Portuguese:
http://www.fonetiks.org/sou7po.html
Do you like it?
Many thanks
beijos [BEHzhoos]
Yes, we like it but it is not a new language. Although pronounced differently, it is still Portuguese.
I put my post in there, knowing it would revive the every 3 months' or so battle for Brazilians to say " but we can't understand portuguese".
It was meant as a helping hand to see if sometime we could come beyond and have a truly interesting discussion.
"Trust me, Donna, it's still Portuguese. All arguments to prove otherwise always end up being very unconvincing. "
It's just the same when people say Scots isn't English, when all Scots is is Scottish English.
It's still Portuguese in the same way Spaniard Spanish and Mexican Spanish have differences but they are still Spanish.
My father's family is mostly Azorean, but his grandmother was from Sao Paolo, and I remember watching Brazilian soap operas in Massachusetts (big Portuguese population there) with his mother. So apparently they can be understood by the general population there, regardless of origin. My dad said that Brazilian was different, but certainly not unintelligible to other Portuguese speakers -- just a dialect.
<<It's still Portuguese in the same way Spaniard Spanish and Mexican Spanish have differences but they are still Spanish.>>
For what it's worth the differences between spoken Brazilian and spoken Continental Portuguese are actually greater than the difference between Mexican and Continental Spanish.
I'm not sure how much we're supposed to understand before counting the language as intelligible. I would assume that formal written Portuguese -- whether Brazilian or not -- would be mostly intelligible even to readers of Spanish. Except for skimming through some grammars many years ago, I've never really studied Portuguese, but I count it as a language that I can read (and have read, though mostly just short texts -- never a complete book, that I can recall). Spoken Brazilian Portuguese, of course, would be much more difficult, so I don't know whether to label it 'intelligible'.
I used to listen to shortwave radio broadcasts from both Portugal and Brazil, though, and understand the gist of what was being said. I'm out of practice now, but I tried going to the page with the sound links. Seeing that transcriptions and English translations were supplied, I stopped reading them, and went to the bottom of the page, where there were sentences I hadn't read. Then, as a test, I played some of the sound links without looking at either the transcription or the English translation. Here are my results:
"Legal! (Great!)" -- I didn't understand that one, and though the transcription says 'legal', it sounded like 'legaõ' to me.
I did completely understand the next one up -- "Pelo menos me escuta quando eu falo! (You [subject pronoun omitted] could at least listen when I'm talking to you!)" "Pelo menos" is like Spanish 'por lo menos' (at least). If I recall correctly, Old Spanish used 'per' for 'for' sometimes too. Though 'menos' was slurred to only a remnant, the remaining sounds and the intonation reminded me of 'por lo menos'. 'Me escuta' -- the syntax is different from a Spanish affirmative command, but 'me' is obviously 'me' in Spanish, and 'escuta' is very close to 'escucha' (listen). 'Quando' is like Spanish 'cuando' (when). 'Eu' -- I heard no 'eu', but subject pronouns are omitted in Spanish too, and the -o ending of the following verb shows that the subject is 'I'. 'Falo' -- I wouldn't have recognized the Spanish 'hablo' (I speak) from that, but 'falo' happened to be one of the Portuguese words that I'd learned, and besides 'escuta' (listen) prepared me for it. So I definitely count that sentence as being intelligible.
"Nossa, como (vo)cê (es)ta lindo! (Wow, you look great!)" I didn't understand 'Nossa'. 'Como' is like 'como' (how) in Spanish. "(vo)cê" -- is like Spanish 'vos' (you). From just the 'cê' I didn't understand it as it was being said, but by the time the statement had ended, I had the feeling that 'you' was the subject. "(es)ta" -- is like Spanish 'está'. The transcription implies that the 's' wasn't pronounced, but I believe I heard it. Anyway I interpreted that word as Spanish 'está' (is). 'lindo' -- once again no problem. It's just like Spanish 'lindo' (handsome, pretty), so I realized that somebody was being complimented.
So was the Brazilian Portuguese intelligible? Not completely, but to a considerable degree.
Do I "like Brazilian Portuguese"? Yes, I suppose I do. As far as the sounds go, I would consider it one of the more pleasing languages. Of course, just as with other languages, it varies greatly in the impression that it creates, depending on the individual speakers and whether they're trying to create a pleasing esthetic effect.
Compared with Spanish and Italian, Portuguese has many nasal sounds, which usually I don't like. Oddly enough, though, they rarely bother me in Portuguese. I especially like Portuguese when it's spoken in a relaxed way (for instance, to the sounds of a mellow bossa nova). Some of the announcers on Brazilian pop radio stations are a bit too frantic, sometimes almost screaming into the microphone. When they do that, the language loses much of its euphony.
Like it or not, it's everywhere!
Gjones2, in regards to your comment:
"Legal! (Great!)" -- I didn't understand that one, and though the transcription says 'legal', it sounded like 'legaõ' to me.
Speakers of Brazilian Portuguese do not vocalize any "L" at the end of words.
<<Speakers of Brazilian Portuguese do not vocalize any "L" at the end of words.>>
Right (and also before consonants even if it's not the end of the word). Here are some examples as typically pronounced in Brazilian Portuguese:
"saudável" [saw"davew]
"naturalmente" [natu4aw"mej~tSi]
"sol" [sOu]
"Brasil" [b4a"ziw]
"sal" [saw]
"marginal" [mahdZi"naw]
Sorry, above "marginal" should have [Z], not [dZ].