Introduction - pronunciation

Introduction

Pronunciation:

To be able to speak, we need to be able to know how to pronounce words.
Well to start with, it is a good idea to learn the vowels. They have a slightly different
sound to the English. I always call it, ‘Baby talk’. Like the way we teach infants the
vowels in English.

So here they are:

a	e	i	o	u
(ah)	(eh)	(ee)	(oh)	(oo)
‘ah’ as in ‘tap’	‘eh’       as in ‘egg’	‘ee’ as in ‘bee’	‘oh’ as in ‘pot’	‘oo’ as in ‘boo’’

 ;

You should learn these by heart, and don’t forget ‘e’ is ‘eh’ NOT ‘ee’ *, and ‘I’ is ‘ee’.

This will make a big difference to pronunciation. (these sounds will vary depending on
where they fall in a word) The consonants sound pretty much the same as they do in
English. With a few exceptions which we will address as we come to them.

I will be using my own phonetics to help with pronunciation.
These will be read as if you were reading english. Eg:

Obrigada = Oh-bree-gah-deh (note that this is only an approximate pronunciation,
but it is close enough. As we continue we will ‘refine’ it.)

‘Bom dia’ translates literally as good day, (very Ausie), but in English we would translate
it as ‘Good morning’. If we learn the words for afternoon, evening and night, we get
ourselves a few more phrases. See table.

Português	Inglês	Fonética
Boa tarde Boa noite	good afternoon good evening good night	bo-eh tar-deh Bo-eh noy-teh

The ‘e’ at the end of a word is very subtle in the continental Portuguese and is
pronounce as an ‘exaggeration’, if you were of the last letter spoken. We can use
‘boa tarde’ right up until nightfall, then we use ‘boa noite’. It doesn’t matter what the time is,
just if it is light or dark. It then translates as ‘evening’

So now practice substituting the ‘bom dia’ for ‘boa tarde’ etc.

eg:

Jane: Boa tarde!

Mário: Boa tarde, Jane. Como está?
Jane: Estou bem, obrigada Mário. E você?
Mário: Estou muito bem, obrigado.

Jane: Desculpa, mas tenho de ir. Até logo!

Mario: Até logo!

This is what I call, ‘picking and mixing’. Now try substituting the names above for
names of people you know and ‘boa noite’.