Portuguese phonology
Template:Short description Template:Hatnote Template:WikiIPA The phonology of Portuguese varies among dialects, in extreme cases leading to some difficulties in mutual intelligibility. This article on phonology focuses on the pronunciations that are generally regarded as standard. Since Portuguese is a pluricentric language, and differences between European Portuguese (EP), Brazilian Portuguese (BP), and Angolan Portuguese (AP) can be considerable, varieties are distinguished whenever necessary.
Consonants
The consonant inventory of Portuguese is fairly conservative.Template:Citation needed The medieval Galician-Portuguese system of seven sibilants (Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA, and apicoalveolar Template:IPA) is still distinguished in spelling (intervocalic c/ç z, x g/j, ch, ss -s- respectively), but is reduced to the four fricatives Template:IPA by the merger of Template:IPA into Template:IPA and apicoalveolar Template:IPA into either Template:IPA or Template:IPA (depending on dialect and syllable position), except in parts of northern Portugal (most notably in the Trás-os-Montes region). These changes are known as deaffrication. Other than this, there have been no other significant changes to the consonant phonemes since Old Portuguese. However, several consonant phonemes have special allophones at syllable boundaries (often varying quite significantly between European and Brazilian Portuguese), and a few also undergo allophonic changes at word boundaries.
| Labial | Dental/ Alveolar |
Palatal | Velar/Uvular | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Template:Small | Template:Small | |||||
| Nasal | Template:IPA link | Template:IPA link | Template:IPA link | |||
| Plosive | Template:Small | Template:IPA link | Template:IPA link | Template:IPA link | (Template:IPA link) | |
| Template:Small | Template:IPA link | Template:IPA link | Template:IPA link | (Template:IPA link) | ||
| Fricative | Template:Small | Template:IPA link | Template:IPA link | Template:IPA link | ||
| Template:Small | Template:IPA link | Template:IPA link | Template:IPA link | |||
| Approximant | Template:IPA link | Template:IPA link | ||||
| Liquid | Template:Small | Template:IPA link | Template:IPA link | |||
| Template:Small | Template:IPA link | Template:IPA link | ||||
Phonetic notes
- Semivowels contrast with unstressed high vowels in verbal conjugation, as in (eu) rio Template:IPA 'I laugh' and (ele) riu Template:IPA 'he (has) laughed.'<ref>Template:Harvcoltxt</ref> Phonologists debate whether their nature is vocalic or consonantal.<ref>Template:Harvcoltxt</ref> In intervocalic position semivowels are ambisyllabic, they are associated to both the previous syllable and the following syllable onset.<ref>Template:Harvcoltxt</ref>
- In Brazil and Angola, the consonant hereafter denoted as Template:IPA is realized as a nasal palatal approximant Template:IPAblink, which nasalizes the vowel that precedes it: ninho (Template:IPA in Brazil, Template:IPA in Angola) 'nest'.<ref>Template:Harvcoltxt</ref><ref>Template:Harvcoltxt</ref>
- Template:IPA is often the pronunciation of a sequence of Template:IPA followed by Template:IPA in a rising diphthong in Brazil, forming a minimal pair between sonha Template:IPA and Sônia Template:IPA; menina, "girl" Template:IPA.<ref name="J. L. Leite">Template:Cite journal</ref>
- Template:IPA is often the pronunciation of a sequence of Template:IPA followed by Template:IPA in a rising diphthong in Brazil; e.g. limão, "lemon" Template:IPA; sandália, "sandal" Template:IPA.<ref name="J. L. Leite" />
- The consonant Template:IPA is velarized Template:IPAblink in all positions in European Portuguese, even before front vowels. In Portugal, the unvelarized lateral appears only in non-standard dialects.<ref>Template:Harvcoltxt</ref>
- The consonant hereafter denoted as Template:IPA has a variety of realizations depending on dialect. In Europe, it is typically a voiced uvular fricative Template:IPA. There is also a realization as a voiceless uvular fricative Template:IPA, and the original pronunciation as an alveolar trill Template:IPA also remains very common in various dialects.<ref>Template:Harvcoltxt</ref> A common realization of the word-initial Template:IPA in the Lisbon accent is a voiced uvular fricative trill Template:IPAblink.<ref name="gr157">Template:Harvcoltxt</ref> In Africa and Asia, the classical alveolar trill is still mostly dominant, due to separate development from European Portuguese. In Brazil, Template:IPA can be velar, uvular, or glottal and may be voiceless unless between voiced sounds;<ref>Template:Harvcoltxt</ref> it is usually pronounced as a voiceless velar fricative Template:IPA, a voiceless glottal fricative Template:IPA or voiceless uvular fricative Template:IPA. See also Guttural R in Portuguese. All those variants are transcribed with Template:Angbr IPA in this article.
- Template:IPA and Template:IPA are normally Template:Lcons, as in English. However, a number of dialects in northern Portugal pronounce Template:IPA and Template:IPA as apico-alveolar sibilants Template:IPA which are exactly the same as the ones found in Catalan and Northern European Spanish. Those apico-alveolars sound like duller versions of Template:IPA and Template:IPA, but they are kept apart from Template:IPA (written ch/x and j/g) which are laminal postalveolar. A small number of northeastern Portugal dialects still retain the medieval distinction between apical and laminal sibilants (written s/ss and c/ç/z, respectively), a distinction also found in Mirandese and analogous to the distinción of European Spanish.
- As phonemes, Template:IPA and Template:IPA occur only in assimilated (e.g. tchau "goodbye" Template:IPA) or unassimilated loanwords (e.g. dee jay "DJ" Template:IPA), with a tendency for speakers to substitute into fricatives in Portugal. However, in most Brazilian dialects t and d are pronounced as Template:IPA and Template:IPA before Template:IPA, Template:IPA, consonants and at the end of words (e.g. tio, pedinte, atmosfera, round).
- In northern and central Portugal, the voiced stops Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA are usually lenited to fricatives Template:IPA, Template:IPA, and Template:IPA respectively, except at the beginning of words, or after nasal vowels;<ref name="Cruz-Ferreira92">Template:Harvcoltxt</ref><ref>Template:Harvcoltxt</ref> a similar process occurs in Spanish.
- In large parts of northern Portugal, e.g. Trás-os-Montes, and also in East Timor and the islands of Flores, Template:IPA and Template:IPA are merged, both pronounced Template:IPA, as in Spanish.
- Template:IPA and Template:IPA are realized as Template:IPA and Template:IPA in all positions by a considerable quantity of dialects, especially before Template:IPA and Template:IPA.<ref>Template:Harvcoltxt</ref><ref>Template:Harvcoltxt</ref><ref>Template:Harvcoltxt</ref> Because of this, it is mostly agreed upon that the alveolo-palatal fricatives are also valid descriptions of the Template:IPA and Template:IPA phonemes.
Rhotics
The occurrence of the two rhotic phonemes Template:IPA and Template:IPA is mostly predictable by context, with dialectal variations in realization.
The rhotic is predicted to be hard in the following circumstances:
- Syllable-initially when not following an oral vowel (e.g., rosa 'rose', guelra 'gill')
- Following a nasal vowel (e.g., honrar 'to honor')
- Syllable-finally, in most Brazilian and some African dialects
The rhotic is predicted to be "soft" (i.e., Template:IPA) when it occurs in syllable onset clusters (e.g., atributo) or, in some dialects, syllable-finally.<ref>Template:Harvcoltxt</ref>
The rhotic phonemes Template:IPA and Template:IPA contrast only between an oral vowel and a vowel, similar to Spanish.<ref>Template:Harvcoltxt</ref> In this context, they are spelled "rr" and "r", respectively.
This restricted variation has prompted several authors to postulate a single rhotic phoneme. Template:Harvcoltxt and Template:Harvcoltxt see the soft as the unmarked realization and that instances of intervocalic Template:IPA result from gemination and a subsequent deletion rule (i.e., carro Template:IPA > Template:IPA > Template:IPA). Conversely, Template:Harvcoltxt argue that the hard is the unmarked realization.
Brazilian rhotics
In addition to the phonemic variation between Template:IPA and Template:IPA between vowels, up to four allophones of the "merged" phoneme /R/ are found in other positions:
- A "soft" allophone Template:IPA in syllable-onset clusters, as described above;
- A default "hard" allophone in most other circumstances;
- In some dialects, a special allophone syllable-finally (i.e., preceded but not followed by a vowel);
- Commonly in all dialects, deletion of the rhotic word-finally.
The default hard allophone is some sort of voiceless fricative in most dialects, e.g., Template:IPA, although other variants are also found. For example, an alveolar trill Template:IPA is found in certain conservative dialects down São Paulo, of Italian-speaking, Spanish-speaking, Arabic-speaking, or Slavic-speaking influence. A uvular trill Template:IPA is found in areas of German-speaking, French-speaking, and Portuguese-descended influence throughout coastal Brazil down Espírito Santo, most prominently Rio de Janeiro.
The syllable-final allophone shows the greatest variation:
- Many dialects (mainly in Brasília, Minas Gerais and Brazilian North and Northeast) use the same voiceless fricative as in the default allophone. This may become voiced before a voiced consonant, esp. in its weaker variants (e.g., dormir Template:IPA 'to sleep').
- The soft Template:IPA occurs for many speakers in Southern Brazil and São Paulo city.
- An English-like approximant Template:IPA or vowel (R-colored vowel) occurs elsewhere in São Paulo as well as Mato Grosso do Sul, southern Goiás, central and southern Mato Grosso and bordering regions of Minas Gerais, as well as in the urban areas in the Sinos river valley. This pronunciation is stereotypically associated with the rural "caipira" dialect.
Throughout Brazil, deletion of the word-final rhotic is common, regardless of the "normal" pronunciation of the syllable-final allophone. This pronunciation is particularly common in lower registers, although found in most registers in some areas, e.g., Northeast Brazil, and in the more formal and standard sociolect. It occurs especially in verbs, which always end in R in their infinitive form; in words other than verbs, the deletion is rarer<ref>Template:Cite thesis</ref> and seems not to occur in monosyllabic non-verb words, such as mar.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Evidence of this allophone is often encountered in writing that attempts to approximate the speech of communities with this pronunciation, e.g., the rhymes in the popular poetry (cordel literature) of the Northeast and phonetic spellings (e.g., amá, sofrê in place of amar, sofrer) in Jorge Amado's novels (set in the Northeast) and Gianfrancesco Guarnieri's play Eles não usam black tie (about favela dwellers in Rio de Janeiro).<ref>Template:Harvcoltxt citing Template:Harvcoltxt</ref><ref>Template:Harvcoltxt</ref>
The soft realization is often maintained across word boundaries in close syntactic contexts (e.g., mar azul Template:IPA 'blue sea').<ref>Template:Harvcoltxt</ref>
Consonant phonotactics
Syllables have the maximal structure of CCVVCC.<ref name=syllablestruct>Template:Harvcoltxt</ref> The majority of syllables are open (end in a vowel), with CV syllables found to compose 60% of a corpus of Portuguese, followed by CVC (15%) and V (8%).<ref name=syllablestruct/> Syllables ending in a consonant generally end in one of the single consonants Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA<ref name=syllablestruct/> (where "Template:IPA" represents an unspecified coda sibilant, "Template:IPA" an unspecified coda rhotic, and "Template:IPA" represents nasalization, which can be phonologically analyzed as a postvocalic segment despite being phonetically realized by nasalizing the vowel): European Portuguese allows coda Template:IPA, Template:IPA and Template:IPA, and Brazilian Portuguese allows coda Template:IPA and Template:IPA (or in a minority of dialects, Template:IPA).Template:Citation needed Syllables ending in two consonants are very rare, and involve a sibilant preceded by another consonant; examples include the first syllables of Template:Lang and Template:Lang.<ref name=syllablestruct/>
Phonotactic rules concerning onset consonants:
- The native Portuguese consonant clusters, where there is not epenthesis, are sequences of a non-sibilant oral consonant followed by the liquids Template:IPA or Template:IPA,<ref name="epenthesis" /> and the complex consonants Template:IPA.<ref name="epenthesis2" /> Some examples: flagrante Template:IPA, complexo Template:IPA, fixo Template:IPA (but not ficção Template:IPA), latex Template:IPA, quatro Template:IPA, guaxinim Template:IPA, Template:IPA
- The consonants Template:IPAslink and Template:IPAslink occur word-initially only in a few borrowed words and in forms of the clitic pronoun Template:Lang.<ref name="Cruz-Ferreira92" /> They are almost always found in the middle of a word between vowels, and are rare before Template:IPA.
- The semivowels Template:IPA and Template:IPA do not occur before Template:IPA and Template:IPA respectively.
- Regarding Brazilian Portuguese, Template:Harvcoltxt analyzes the phonetic clusters at the start of words like qual and guardar as separate phonemes, Template:IPA and Template:IPA, rather than as Template:IPA or Template:IPA followed by Template:IPA in phonemic sequence.<ref name="labialized velar - Bisol" /> This is because when Template:IPA or Template:IPA is combined with a different approximant or when Template:IPA is combined with a different initial consonant, the relevant approximant can always be alternatively realized as a full vowel in Brazilian Portuguese: quiabo Template:IPA, guiar Template:IPA, suar Template:IPA. However, this alternation can never apply to the phonetic clusters Template:IPA and Template:IPA: qual and guardar in Brazilian Portuguese are always Template:IPA and Template:IPA, never *Template:IPA or *Template:IPA.
Phonotactic rules concerning coda consonants:
- Although nasal consonants do not normally occur at the end of syllables, syllable-final Template:IPA may be present in rare learned words, such as abdómen (Template:IPA 'abdomen'). In Brazilian varieties, these words have a nasal diphthong (Template:IPA, spelled as abdômen).<ref>Template:Harvcoltxt</ref>
- While the sibilant consonants (Template:IPA) contrast word-initially and intervocalically, they appear in complementary distribution in the syllable coda. For many dialects (i.e., those of Portugal and of Rio de Janeiro and the northeast of Brazil and certain other areas in Brazil), the sibilant is a postalveolar in coda position (e.g., pasto Template:IPA 'pasture'; futurismo Template:IPA 'futurism'; paz Template:IPA 'peace'). In many other dialects of Brazil (e.g., some of the Southeast, Northeast, and North), the postalveolar variant occurs in some or all cases when directly preceding a consonant, including across word boundaries, but not word-finally (e.g., Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA). In a number of Brazilian dialects, this "palatalization" is absent entirely (e.g., Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA).<ref name="Barbosa 2004 229">Template:Harvcoltxt</ref><ref>Template:Harvcoltxt</ref> Voicing contrast is also neutralized, with Template:IPA or Template:IPA occurring before voiced consonants and Template:IPA or Template:IPA appearing before voiceless consonants and before a pause (e.g., pasta Template:IPA or Template:IPA, 'paste'; Islão (or Islã) Template:IPA or Template:IPA, 'Islam'). In the vast majority of dialects, however, word-final "s" and "z" are pronounced /z/ before vowels (e.g. os ovos Template:IPA, "the eggs", temos hoje Template:IPA, "we have today", faz isso Template:IPA, "do that"). In European dialects, the postalveolar fricatives are only weakly fricated in the syllable coda.<ref name="Cruz-Ferreira92" />
- In most Brazilian dialects, Template:IPA is vocalized to Template:IPA at the end of syllables,<ref name="Barbosa 2004 229" /> but in the dialects of the extreme south, mainly along the frontiers with other countries (especially Uruguay), it has the full pronunciation or the velarized pronunciation.Template:Clarify<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In some caipira registers, there is a rhotacism of coda Template:IPA to retroflex Template:IPAblink. In casual BP, unstressed il can be realized as Template:IPA, as in fácil Template:IPA ('easy').<ref>Template:Harvcoltxt</ref>
- For speakers who realize Template:IPA as an alveolar trill Template:IPAblink, the sequence Template:IPA (as in e.g., os rins) can coalesce into a voiced alveolar fricative trill Template:IPAblink.<ref name="gr157" />
- The semivowels Template:IPA and Template:IPA only contrast in some diphthongs like in pai Template:IPA versus pau Template:IPA. Otherwise they are the non-syllabic allophones of Template:IPA and Template:IPA in unstressed syllables.Template:Clarify
Epenthesis
In BP, an epenthetic vowel Template:IPA is sometimes inserted between consonants, to break up consonant clusters that are not native to Portuguese, in learned words and in borrowings.<ref name="epenthesis">Template:Cite journal</ref><ref name="epenthesis2">Template:Cite conference</ref> This also happens at the ends of words after consonants that cannot occur word-finally (e.g., Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA). For example, psicologia ('psychology') may be pronounced Template:IPA; adverso ('adverse') may be pronounced Template:IPA; McDonald's may be pronounced Template:IPA. In northern Portugal, an epenthetic Template:IPA may be used instead, Template:IPA, Template:IPA, but in southern Portugal there is often no epenthesis, Template:IPA, Template:IPA. Epenthesis at the end of a word does not normally occur in Portugal.
Epenthetic vowels are traditionally unstressed in BP, but some verbs have alternative pronunciations that display innovative stress on an originally epenthetic vowel: for example, Template:Lang "I adapt" and Template:Lang "I opt" can be pronounced in BP either as Template:IPA, Template:IPA (traditional stress pattern) or as Template:IPA, Template:IPA (innovative stress pattern).<ref name="epenthesis2" />
Consonant elision
There is a variation in the pronunciation of the first consonant of certain clusters, most commonly C or P in cç, ct, pç and pt. These consonants may be variably elided or conserved. For some words, this variation may exist inside a country, sometimes in all of them; for others, the variation is dialectal, with the consonant being always pronounced in one country and always elided in the other. This variation affects 0.5% of the language's vocabulary, or 575 words out of 110,000.<ref>according to the "Nota Explicativa do Acordo Ortográfico da Língua Portuguesa", written by the Academia Brasileira de Letras and by the Academia de Ciências de Lisboa</ref> In most cases, Brazilians variably conserve the consonant while speakers elsewhere have invariably ceased to pronounce it (for example, detector in Brazil versus detetor in Portugal). The inverse situation is rarer, occurring in words such as fa(c)to and conta(c)to (consonants never pronounced in Brazil, pronounced elsewhere). Until 2009, this reality could not be apprehended from the spelling: while Brazilians did not write consonants that were no longer pronounced, the spelling of the other countries retained them in many words as silent letters, usually when there was still a vestige of their presence in the pronunciation of the preceding vowel. This could give the false impression that European Portuguese was phonologically more conservative in this aspect, when in fact it was Brazilian Portuguese that retained more consonants in pronunciation.
| Example | Gloss | |
|---|---|---|
| fa(c)to | Template:IPA | 'fact' |
| pacto | Template:IPA | 'pact' |
| ta(c)to | Template:IPA | 'tact' |
Unlike its neighbor and relative Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese lacks a tendency to elide any stop, including those that may become a continuant by lenition (Template:IPA > Template:IPA, Template:IPA > Template:IPA, Template:IPA > Template:IPA), but Template:Incomprehensible span
Vowels
Portuguese has one of the richest vowel phonologies of all Romance languages, having both oral and nasal vowels, diphthongs, and triphthongs. A phonemic distinction is made between close-mid vowels Template:IPA and the open-mid vowels Template:IPA, as in Catalan, French and Italian, although there is a certain amount of vowel alternation. European Portuguese also has two central vowels, one of which tends to be elided like the e caduc in French.
The central closed vowel Template:IPA only occurs in European Portuguese when e is unstressed, e.g. presidente Template:IPA, as well as in Angola; where unlike Portugal, it only occurs in final syllables, e.g. presidente Template:IPA. However, Template:IPA does not exist in Brazil, e.g. presidente Template:IPA.
In Angola, Template:IPA and Template:IPA merge to Template:IPA, and Template:IPA appears only in final syllables rama Template:IPA. The nasal Template:IPA becomes open Template:IPA.Template:Sfnp
Vowel classification
In some cases, Portuguese uses vowel height to contrast stressed syllables with unstressed syllables:
- In Portugal, unstressed Template:IPA tend to be raised to Template:IPA, whereas Template:IPA remain unchanged. In final syllables, only Template:IPA appear.
- In the Southern, Central-West and Southeast regions of Brazil, unstressed Template:IPA are raised to Template:IPA, whereas in Northern and Northeast regions, they remain open. However, stressed Template:IPA remain unchanged throughout the whole territory. In final syllables, only Template:IPA appear.
- In Angola, unstressed Template:IPA remain unchanged. In final syllables, only Template:IPA appear.
See below for details. The dialects of Portugal are characterized by reducing vowels to a greater extent than others. Falling diphthongs are composed of a vowel followed by one of the high vowels Template:IPA or Template:IPA; although rising diphthongs occur in the language as well, they can be interpreted as hiatuses.
European Portuguese possesses quite a wide range of vowel allophones:
- All vowels are lowered and retracted before Template:IPA: Template:IPA.<ref name="Cruz-Ferreira92"/>
- All vowels are raised and advanced before alveolar, palato-alveolar and palatal consonants: Template:IPA. Those are the vowels shown on the chart. The diphthong Template:IPA is an exception to that as it is often pronounced Template:IPA in Lisbon, with a back onset.<ref name="Cruz-Ferreira92"/>
Furthermore, Cruz-Ferreira gives voiceless allophones of Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA in the unstressed word-final position.<ref name="Cruz-Ferreira92"/>
The exact realization of the Template:IPA varies somewhat amongst dialects. In Brazil, the vowel can be as high as Template:IPAblink in any environment. It is typically closer in stressed syllables before intervocalic nasals Template:IPA than word-finally, reaching as open a position as Template:IPAblink in the latter case, and open-mid Template:IPAblink before nasals,<ref>Template:Citation</ref> where Template:IPA can be nasalized. In European Portuguese, the general situation is similar, except that in some regions the two vowels form minimal pairs in some European dialects.<ref>Template:Harvcoltxt</ref> In central European Portuguese this contrast occurs in a limited morphological context, namely in verb conjugation between the first person plural present and past perfect indicative forms of verbs such as pensamos ('we think') and pensámos ('we thought'; spelled Template:Angbr in Brazil). Spahr<ref>Template:Harvcoltxt</ref> proposes that it is a kind of crasis rather than phonemic distinction of Template:IPA and Template:IPA. It means that in falamos 'we speak' there is the expected prenasal Template:IPA-raising: Template:IPA, while in falámos 'we spoke' there are phonologically two Template:IPA in crasis: Template:IPA (however, in Brazil both merge, falamos Template:IPA. In Angola, on the other hand, both merge as well, but spelling keeps differentiated: falamos/falámos Template:IPA). Close-mid vowels and open-mid vowels (Template:IPA and Template:IPA) contrast only when they are stressed.<ref name=Major7>Template:Harvcoltxt</ref> In unstressed syllables, they occur in complementary distribution. In Brazilian Portuguese, they are raised to close Template:IPA after a stressed syllable,<ref name=Major7/> or in some accents and in general casual speech, also before it.
According to Mateus and d'Andrade (2000:19),<ref>Template:Harvcoltxt</ref> in European Portuguese, the stressed Template:IPA only occurs in the following three contexts:
- Before a palatal consonant (such as telha Template:IPA)
- Before the palatal front glide (such as lei Template:IPA)
- Before a nasal consonant (such as cama Template:IPA)
English loanwords containing stressed Template:IPA or Template:IPA are usually associated with pre-nasal Template:Angbr as in rush,<ref>rush in Aulete dictionary</ref><ref>rush in Priberam dictionary</ref> or are influenced by orthography as in clube (club),<ref>clube in Aulete dictionary</ref><ref>clube in Priberam dictionary</ref> or both, as in surf/surfe.<ref>surf and surfe in Priberam dictionary</ref>Template:Synthesis inline
European Portuguese "e caduc"
European Portuguese possesses a near-close near-back unrounded vowel, transcribed Template:IPA in this article. It occurs in unstressed syllables such as in pegar Template:IPA ('to grip').<ref name="ReferenceA"/>
- Traditionally, all instances of Template:IPA are pronounced; e.g. verdade Template:IPA, perigo Template:IPA, estado Template:IPA.
- In modern European Portuguese, the initial Template:IPA is fronted to Template:IPAblink; e.g. energia Template:IPA → Template:IPA.
- In traditional EP, Template:IPA was never retracted to Template:IPAblink. In modern EP, it happens when it is surrounded by Template:IPA, so that ministro Template:IPA, príncipe Template:IPA and artilhar Template:IPA are usually pronounced Template:IPA, Template:IPA and Template:IPA.
- When "e" is surrounded by another vowel, it becomes Template:IPA; e.g. real Template:IPA.
- However, when the e caduc is preceded by a semi-vowel, it may be given the unreduced pronunciation of the letter Template:Angbr, that is Template:IPAblink or Template:IPAblink: poesia Template:IPA, quietude Template:IPA.
- Regardless of the underlying phoneme, a phonetic Template:IPAblink can be elided, affecting syllabification and sometimes even producing a syllabic consonant; e.g. verdade Template:IPA → Template:IPA, perigo Template:IPA → Template:IPA, estado Template:IPA → Template:IPA, energia Template:IPA → Template:IPA, ministro Template:IPA → Template:IPA, príncipe Template:IPA → Template:IPA, artilhar Template:IPA → Template:IPA, caminhar Template:IPA → Template:IPA, pistola Template:IPA → Template:IPA (here, Template:Angbr IPA stands for a syllabic alveolar trill with one contact, the syllabic counterpart of Template:IPAblink). This can result in complex syllable onsets that are typical of Slavic languages.
- Whenever Template:IPAblink is elided, obstruents in the resulting consonant cluster often agree in voicing, so that the most reduced form of desistiu Template:IPA '(he) gave up' surfaces as Template:IPA. Template:IPA, a phonological sonorant, behaves like an obstruent in this case and can also be devoiced in voiceless clusters, as in reconhecer Template:IPA 'to recognize' (phonemically Template:IPA).Template:Sfnp
There are very few minimal pairs for this sound, including pregar Template:IPA ('to nail') vs. pregar Template:IPA ('to preach'; the latter stemming from earlier preegar < Latin praedicāre)<ref>Template:Citation</ref> as well as jure Template:IPA ('I swear', subjunctive) vs. júri Template:IPA ('jury').
Oral diphthongs
Diphthongs are not considered independent phonemes in Portuguese, but knowing them can help with spelling and pronunciation.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
| Diphthong | Usual spelling | Example | Meaning | Notes and variants |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Template:IPA | ai, ái | pai náiade |
'father' 'naiad' |
In Brazil, it may be realized as Template:IPA before a post-alveolar fricative Template:IPA,<ref name=Major14>Template:Harvcoltxt</ref> making baixo realized as Template:IPA. |
| Template:IPA | ai | plaina | 'jointer' | In several Brazilian dialects; it occurs before nasal consonants and can be nasalised, as in plaina Template:IPA. |
| ei, éi, êi | leite anéis contêiner |
'milk' 'rings' 'container' |
In Greater Lisbon (except by Setúbal) Template:IPA can be centralized to Template:IPAblink before palatals Template:IPA.; e.g. roupeiro Template:IPA, brenha Template:IPA, texto Template:IPA, vejo Template:IPA, coelho Template:IPA, anéis Template:IPA. Before Template:IPA, it is often a back vowel Template:IPAblink: Template:IPA etc.<ref name="Cruz-Ferreira92" /> | |
| Template:IPA | ei, êi | rei Plêiades |
'king' 'Pleiades' |
In several vernacular dialects (most of Portugal, Brazil and Lusophone Africa), "ei" may be realized essentially as Template:IPA in unstressed syllables.<ref name=Major14/> Words ending on either -eiro or -eira (like roupeiro Template:IPA, bandeira Template:IPA, brasileiro Template:IPA, brasileira Template:IPA, etc.), when ei precedes a palatal sound (like queijo Template:IPA, deixa Template:IPA, etc.), or when ei precedes a consonant in general (like manteiga Template:IPA, beiço Template:IPA) are optionally monophthongized, depending on the speaker and region (comparable to Spanish ropero, bandera, brasilero, brasilera, queso, deja, manteca, bezo).
However, notice that when ei makes up part of a Greco-Latin loanword (like diarreico, anarreico, etc.), as well as nouns ending on -ei (like rei Template:IPA, lei Template:IPA) and seis, reino keep their palatal sound Template:IPA (Template:IPA, in case of -eico ending nouns and adjectives). In most stressed syllables, the pronunciation is Template:IPA. There are very few minimal pairs for Template:IPA and Template:IPA, all of which occur in oxytonic words. In Greater Lisbon, however, it is always pronounced Template:IPA. |
| Template:IPA | ei, éi | geleia papéis |
'jelly' 'papers' |
It only occurs in -el plurals like anéis (plural of anel 'ring').
In Greater Lisbon, however, it is always pronounced Template:IPA. |
| Template:IPA | oi, ôi | dois escôiparo |
'two' 'scoiparo' |
|
| Template:IPA | oi, ói | heroico destrói |
'heroic' 'destroys' |
Pronounced as Template:IPA mostly on -oi ending words like herói 'hero', as well as some verbal conjugations. |
| Template:IPA | ui | fui | 'I went' | Usually stressed. |
| Template:IPA | au, áu | mau áurea |
'bad' 'aurea' |
|
| Template:IPA | au | saudade trauma |
'to miss' 'trauma' |
In EP, when unstressed. In several Brazilian dialects; it occurs before nasal consonants and can be nasalised, as in trauma Template:IPA. |
| Template:IPA | eu, êu | seu terapêutico |
'your'/'yours' 'therapeutic' |
There are very few minimal pairs for Template:IPA and Template:IPA, all occurring in oxytonic words. |
| Template:IPA | éu<ref>Template:IPA is never represented by an unaccented ⟨eu⟩, unlike other open diphthongs.</ref> | céu | 'sky' | |
| Template:IPA | iu | viu | 'he saw' | Usually stressed. |
| Template:IPA | ou | ouro | 'gold' | Merges optionally with Template:IPA in most of modern Portuguese dialects, excluding some regions in northern Portugal.<ref name=Major14/><ref>From the 1911 Orthographic Formulary: "No centro de Portugal o digrama ou, quando tónico, confunde-se na pronunciação com ô, fechado. A diferença entre os dois símbolos, ô, ou, é de rigor que se mantenha, não só porque, histórica e tradicionalmente, êles sempre foram e continuam a ser diferençados na escrita, mas tambêm porque a distinção de valor se observa em grande parte do país, do Mondego para norte." Available in http://www.portaldalinguaportuguesa.org/acordo.php?action=acordo&version=1911</ref> |
There are also some words with two vowels occurring next to each other like in iate and sábio may be pronounced both as rising diphthongs or hiatus.<ref>Template:Cite thesis – The unique kind of diphthong which does not swap with hiatus is that preceded by velar stops such as that in quando and água.</ref><ref>The syllabic separation given by the dictionaries of Portuguese indicates these vowels in Template:Cite web and Template:Cite web can be pronounced both as diphthong or hiatus.</ref> In these and other cases, other diphthongs, diphthong-hiatus or hiatus-diphthong combinations might exist depending on speaker, such as Template:IPA or even Template:IPA for suo ('I sweat'), and in BP Template:IPA or even Template:IPA for fatie ('slice it').
Template:IPA and Template:IPA are non-syllabic counterparts of the vowels Template:IPA and Template:IPA, respectively. At least in European Portuguese, the diphthongs Template:IPA tend to have more central second elements Template:IPA (as stated above, the starting point of Template:IPA is typically back) – note that Template:IPA is also more weakly rounded than the Template:IPA monophthong.<ref name="Cruz-Ferreira92"/>
Nasal vowels
| Nasal vowel | Usual spelling | Example | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| Template:IPA | ã, am, an | rã, canto | 'frog', 'I sing' or 'corner' |
| Template:IPA | em, en | entro | 'I enter' |
| Template:IPA | im, in | vim | 'I came' |
| Template:IPA | õ, om, on | sombra | 'shadow' |
| Template:IPA | um, un | mundo | 'world' |
Portuguese also has a series of nasalized vowels. Template:Harvcoltxt analyzes European Portuguese with five monophthongs and five diphthongs, all phonemic: Template:IPA. Nasal diphthongs occur mostly at the end of words (or followed by a final sibilant), and in a few compounds.
As in French, the nasal consonants represented by the letters ⟨m n⟩ are deleted in coda position, and in that case the preceding vowel becomes phonemically nasal, e.g. in genro Template:IPA ('son-in-law'). But a nasal consonant subsists when it is followed by a plosive, e.g. in cantar Template:IPA ('to sing').<ref>Template:Harvcoltxt</ref> Vowel nasalization has also been observed non-phonemically as result of coarticulation, before heterosyllabic nasal consonants, e.g. in soma Template:IPA ('sum').<ref name="Barbosa 2004 229"/> Hence, there is a difference between phonemic nasal vowels and those that are allophonically nasalized. Additionally, a nasal monophthong Template:IPA written ⟨ã⟩ exists independently of these processes, e.g. in romã Template:IPA ('pomegranate'). Brazilian Portuguese is seen as being more nasal than European Portuguese due to the presence of these nasalized vowels. Some linguistsTemplate:Who consider them to be a result of external influences, including the common language spoken at Brazil's coast at time of the European arrival, Tupi.Template:Citation needed
The Template:IPA and Template:IPA distinction does not exist for nasal vowels; ⟨em om⟩ are pronounced as close-mid. In BP, the vowel Template:IPA (which the letter ⟨a⟩ otherwise represents) is sometimes phonemically raised to Template:IPA when it is nasal, and also in stressed syllables before heterosyllabic nasal consonants (even if the speaker does not nasalize vowels in this position):<ref>Template:Harvcoltxt</ref> compare for instance dama sã Template:IPA (PT) or Template:IPA (BR) ('healthy lady') and dá maçã Template:IPA (PT) or Template:IPA (BR) ('it gives apples'). Template:IPA may also be raised slightly in word-final unstressed syllables.
Nasalization and height increase noticeably with time during the production of a single nasal vowel in BP in those cases that are written with nasal consonants ⟨m n⟩, so that Template:IPA may be realized as Template:IPA or Template:IPA.<ref>Template:Harvcoltxt</ref> This creates a significant difference between the realizations of ⟨am⟩ and ⟨ã⟩ for some speakers: compare for instance ranço real Template:IPA (PT) or Template:IPA (BR) ('royal rancidness') and rã surreal Template:IPA (PT) or Template:IPA (BR) ('surreal frog'). (Here Template:IPA means a velar nasal approximant.) At the end of a word ⟨em⟩ is always pronounced Template:IPA with a clear nasal palatal approximant (see below). Whenever a nasal vowel is pronounced with a nasal coda (approximant or occlusive) the (phonetic) nasalization of the vowel itself is optional.<ref>Template:Harvcoltxt</ref>
The following examples exhaustively demonstrate the general situation for BP.
- romã ('pomegranate') : Template:IPA : final vowel is (phonemically) "nasal" and nasal approximants may not be pronounced.
- genro ('son-in-law') : Template:IPA or Template:IPA or Template:IPA : nasal consonant deleted; preceding vowel is (phonemically) "nasal" and nasal approximants may be pronounced.
- cem ('a hundred') : Template:IPA : nasal approximant must be pronounced.
- cantar ('to sing') : Template:IPA: nasal consonant remains because of the following plosive; preceding vowel is raised and nasalized non-phonemically. (This is traditionally considered a "nasal" vowel by textbooks.)
- cano ('pipe') : Template:IPA or Template:IPA : first vowel is necessarily raised, and may be nasalized non-phonemically.
- tomo ('I take') : Template:IPA or Template:IPA : first vowel may be nasalized non-phonemically.
It follows from these observations that the vowels of BP can be described simply in the following way.
- BP has eight monophthongs—Template:IPA—whose phonetic realizations may be affected by a nasal archiphoneme Template:IPA.<ref>Template:Harvcoltxt</ref><ref>Template:Harvcoltxt</ref> The vowel Template:IPA is typically nasalized (in every position), but this is not phonemic.
- All eight vowels are differentiated in stressed and unstressed positions. But in word-final unstressed position and not followed by Template:IPA, they reduce to three vowels—Template:IPA—in most dialects. In this position, Template:IPA has a free variation Template:IPA and this fatally impairs Template:IPA distinction. (For instance: the word ímã ('magnet') is effectively pronounced as either ima or ímam, depending on speaker.)
- Like the ん of Japanese, the archiphoneme Template:IPA is a nasal archiphoneme of syllabic codas and its actual place of articulation is determined by the following sound:
- Template:IPA=Template:IPA;
- Template:IPA=Template:IPA;
- Template:IPA=Template:IPA;
- otherwise it becomes a nasal approximant Template:IPA (as in Japanese kan'i Template:Wikt-lang [かんい], etc.). After the vowels Template:IPA this approximant may also be pronounced as Template:IPA; and after Template:IPA as Template:IPA (free variations).
- The system of eight monophthongs reduces to five—Template:IPA—before Template:IPA and also in stressed syllables before heterosyllabic nasal consonants. The grapheme ⟨a⟩ stands for Template:IPA in these cases.
- Template:IPA is not allowed at word-final position because ⟨em⟩ stands for Template:IPA in this case. (Here Template:IPA means the same phoneme that ⟨nh⟩ represents; and Template:IPA may be nasalized non-phonemically.) This is the only case of Template:IPA in coda-position.Template:Clarify
With this description, the examples from before are simply Template:IPA. Note that the aforementioned description may only apply to Southern-Southeastern dialects of Brazilian Portuguese. But there is no commonly accepted transcription for Brazilian Portuguese phonology.
Vowel nasalization in some dialects of Brazilian Portuguese is very different from that of French, for example. In French, the nasalization extends uniformly through the entire vowel, whereas in the Southern-Southeastern dialects of Brazilian Portuguese, the nasalization begins almost imperceptibly and then becomes stronger toward the end of the vowel. In this respect it is more similar to the nasalization of Hindi-Urdu (see Anusvara). In some cases, the nasal archiphoneme even entails the insertion of a nasal consonant such as Template:IPA (compare Template:Slink), as in the following examples:
- banco Template:IPA
- tempo Template:IPA
- pinta Template:IPA
- sombra Template:IPA
- mundo Template:IPA
- fã Template:IPA
- falam Template:IPA
- bem Template:IPA
- vim Template:IPA
- bom Template:IPA
- um Template:IPA
- mãe Template:IPA
- pão Template:IPA
- põe Template:IPA
- muito Template:IPA
Nasal diphthongs
| Nasal diphthong | Usual spelling | Example | Meaning | Notes and variants |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Template:IPA | am, ão | falam mão |
'they speak' 'hand' |
The spelling am is used in unstressed syllables (falaram Template:IPA, 'they spoke'), whereas ão is for stressed syllables (falarão Template:IPA, 'they will speak') |
| Template:IPA | ãe, ãi | mãe cãibra |
'mom' 'cramp' |
|
| Template:IPA | em | bem | 'well' | In Central Portugal, it merges to Template:IPA, which means mãe and bem rhyme. |
| Template:IPA<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> | om | bom | 'good' | The diphthongization of such nasal vowel is controversial. |
| Template:IPA | õe | põe | '(he/she) puts' | |
| Template:IPA | ui | muito | 'very' 'much' |
Only nasalized in words derived from muito (including mui). |
Most times nasal diphthongs occur at the end of the word. They are:
- -ãe Template:IPA. It occurs in mãe(s) ('mother[s]') and in the plural of some words ending in -ão, e.g., cães ('dogs'), pães ('breads'); and exceptionally non-finally in cãibra ('cramp'). In Central European Portuguese, it occurs also in all words ending in -em, like tem ('he/she/it has'), bem ('well', 'good', as a noun), mentem (they lie), etc.
- -em Template:IPA. It occurs, both stressed and unstressed, in Brazilian Portuguese and in European Portuguese (both northern and southern) in word-final syllables ending in -em or -ém, like bem, sem, and além, as well as in verbs ending in -em (the 3rd person plural present indicative of verbs whose infinitives end in -er or -ir).Template:Citation needed In Greater Lisbon, Template:IPA has merged with Template:IPA; and it occurs duplicated in têm Template:IPATemplate:Citation needed or Template:IPA (3rd person plural present indicative of ter, originally tẽem), which in Brazilian is homophonous with tem (the 3rd person singular).
- -õe Template:IPA. It occurs:
- in the present indicative of pôr and its derivatives; in the 2nd person singular (pões Template:IPA, opões, compões, pressupões), in the 3rd person singular (põe Template:IPA, opõe etc.), and non-finally in the 3rd person plural (põem Template:IPA, opõem etc.).
- in the plural of many words ending in-ão, e.g., limões ('lemons'), anões ('dwarfs'), espiões ('spies'), iões ('ions'), catiões ('cations'), aniões ('anions'), eletrões ('electrons'), neutrões ('neutrons'), protões ('protons'), fotões ('photons'), positrões ('positrons') and the plurals of all words with the suffix -ção (compare English -tion, like in communication), like comunicações ('communications'), provocações ('provocations').
- -uim or -uin Template:IPA Example: pinguim ('penguin').
- ui Template:IPA occurs only in the words muito Template:IPA and the uncommon mui Template:IPA. The nasalisation here may be interpreted as allophonic, bleeding over from the previous m (compare mãe with the same bleeding of nasality).
- -ão or -am. Template:IPA. Examples: pão ('bread'), cão ('dog'), estão ('they are'), vão ('they go'), limão ('lemon'), órgão ('organ'), Estêvão ('Steven'). When in the -am form (unstressed) they are always the 3rd person of the plural of a verb, like estavam ('they were'), contam ('they account'), escreveram ('they wrote'), partiram ('they left').
- -om Template:IPA. It occurs in word-final syllables ending in -om like bom and som. However, it may be also monophthongized to Template:IPA.
Template:IPA and Template:IPA are nasalized, non-syllabic counterparts of the vowels Template:IPA and Template:IPA, respectively. In European Portuguese, they are normally not fully close, being closer to Template:IPA. As with the oral Template:IPA, the nasal Template:IPA is not only more central but also more weakly rounded than the Template:IPAblink monophthong. This is not transcribed in this article.<ref name="Cruz-Ferreira92"/>
Vowel alternation
The stressed relatively open vowels Template:IPA contrast with the stressed relatively close vowels Template:IPA in several kinds of grammatically meaningful alternation:
- Between the base form of a noun or adjective and its inflected forms: ovo Template:IPA ('egg'), ovos Template:IPA ('eggs'); novo Template:IPA, nova Template:IPA, novos Template:IPA, novas Template:IPA ('new': masculine singular, feminine singular, masculine plural, feminine plural);
- Between some nouns or adjectives and related verb forms: adj. seco Template:IPA ('dry'), v. seco Template:IPA ('I dry'); n. gosto Template:IPA ('taste'), v. gosto Template:IPA ('I like'); n. governo Template:IPA ('government') v. governo Template:IPA ('I govern');
- Between different forms of some verbs: pôde Template:IPA ('he could'), pode Template:IPA ('he can');
- Between some pairs of related words: avô Template:IPA ('grandfather'), avó Template:IPA ('grandmother');
- In regular verbs, the stressed vowel is normally low Template:IPA, but high Template:IPA before the nasal consonants Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA (the high vowels are also nasalized, in BP);
- Some stem-changing verbs alternate stressed high vowels with stressed low vowels in the present tense, according to a regular pattern: cedo, cedes, cede, cedem Template:IPA; movo, moves, move, movem Template:IPA (present indicative); ceda, cedas, ceda, cedam Template:IPA; mova, movas, mova, movam Template:IPA (present subjunctive). (There is another class of stem-changing verbs which alternate Template:IPA with Template:IPA according to the same scheme);
- In central Portugal, the 1st. person plural of verbs of the 1st. conjugation (with infinitives in -ar) has the stressed vowel Template:IPA in the present indicative, but Template:IPA in the preterite, cf. pensamos ('we think') with pensámos ('we thought'). In BP, the stressed vowel is Template:IPA in both, so they are written without accent mark.
There are also pairs of unrelated words that differ in the height of these vowels, such as besta Template:IPA ('beast') and besta Template:IPA ('crossbow'); mexo Template:IPA ('I move') and mecho Template:IPA ('I highlight [hair]'); molho Template:IPA ('sauce') and molho Template:IPA ('bunch'); corte Template:IPA ('cut') and corte Template:IPA ('court'); meta Template:IPA ('I put' subjunctive) and meta Template:IPA ('goal'); and (especially in Portugal) para Template:IPA ('for') and para Template:IPA ('he stops'); forma Template:IPA ('mold') and forma Template:IPA ('shape').
There are several minimal pairs in which a clitic containing the vowel Template:IPA contrasts with a monosyllabic stressed word containing Template:IPA: da vs. dá, mas vs. más, a vs. à Template:IPA, etc. In BP, however, these words may be pronounced with Template:IPA in some environments.
Unstressed vowels
Some isolated vowels (meaning those that are neither nasal nor part of a diphthong) tend to change quality in a fairly predictable way when they become unstressed. In the examples below, the stressed syllable of each word is in boldface. The term "final" should be interpreted here as at the end of a word or before word-final -s.
| Spelling | Stressed | Unstressed, not final | Unstressed and final | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| a | Template:IPA or Template:IPA (BR, EP) Template:IPA (AP) |
parto Template:IPA pensamos Template:IPA (BR, EP); Template:IPA (AP) |
Template:IPA or Template:IPA (EP) Template:IPA (AP, BP) |
partir Template:IPA (BR, AP); Template:IPA (EP) ação Template:IPA |
Template:IPA | pensa Template:IPA |
| ai | Template:IPA or Template:IPA (BR) Template:IPA (EP, AP) |
pai Template:IPA plaina Template:IPA (BR); Template:IPA (EP, AP) |
Template:IPA (BR, AP) Template:IPA (EP) |
apaixonar Template:IPA (BR, AP); Template:IPA (EP) | – | – |
| au | Template:IPA or Template:IPA (BR) Template:IPA (EP, AP) |
pau Template:IPA fauna Template:IPA (BR); Template:IPA (EP, AP) |
Template:IPA (BR, AP) Template:IPA (EP) |
saudade Template:IPA (BR, AP); Template:IPA (EP) | – | – |
| e | Template:IPA or Template:IPA | mover Template:IPA pega Template:IPA |
Template:IPA (BR) Template:IPA or Template:IPA (EP) Template:IPA or Template:IPA (AP) |
pregar Template:IPA (BP, AP); Template:IPA (EP) (to nail) pregar Template:IPA (BP); Template:IPA (EP, AP) (to preach, to advocate) |
Template:IPA (BR) Template:IPA (EP, AP) |
move Template:IPA (BP); Template:IPA (EP, AP) |
| ei | Template:IPA or Template:IPA Template:IPA (Lisbon) |
peixe Template:IPA; Template:IPA (Lisbon) anéis Template:IPA; Template:IPA (Lisbon) |
Template:IPA Template:IPA (Lisbon) |
eleição Template:IPA; Template:IPA (Lisbon) | Template:IPA Template:IPA (Lisbon) |
possíveis Template:IPA; Template:IPA (Lisbon) |
| eu | Template:IPA or Template:IPA | meu Template:IPA céu Template:IPA |
Template:IPA | europeu Template:IPA | – | – |
| o | Template:IPA or Template:IPA | pôde Template:IPA pode Template:IPA |
Template:IPA (BP) Template:IPA or Template:IPA (EP) Template:IPA or Template:IPA (AP) |
poder Template:IPA (BP, AP); Template:IPA (EP) você Template:IPA (BP); Template:IPA (EP, AP) |
Template:IPA | pato Template:IPA |
| oi | Template:IPA or Template:IPA | coisa Template:IPA dói Template:IPA |
Template:IPA | oitavo Template:IPA | – | – |
| ou | Template:IPA | ouro Template:IPA | Template:IPA | dourado Template:IPA | – | – |
With a few exceptions mentioned in the previous sections, the vowels Template:IPA and Template:IPA occur in complementary distribution when stressed, the latter before nasal consonants followed by a vowel, and the former elsewhere.
In Brazilian Portuguese, the general pattern in the southern and western accents is that the stressed vowels Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA neutralize to Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA, respectively, in unstressed syllables, as is common in Romance languages. In final unstressed syllables, however, they are raised to Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA. In casual BP (as well as in the fluminense dialect), unstressed Template:IPA and Template:IPA may be raised to Template:IPA, Template:IPA on any unstressed syllable,<ref>Template:Harvcoltxt</ref> as long as it has no coda. However, in the dialects of Northeastern Brazilian (as spoken in the states of Bahia and Pernambuco), non-final unstressed vowels are often open-mid Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA, independent of vowel harmony with surrounding lower vowels.
European Portuguese has taken this process one step further, raising Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA to Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA in almost all unstressed syllables. The vowels Template:IPA and Template:IPA are also more centralized than their Brazilian counterparts. The three unstressed vowels Template:IPA are reduced and often voiceless or elided in fast speech.
However, Angolan Portuguese has been more conservative, raising Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA to Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA in unstressed syllables; and to Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA in final unstressed syllables. Which makes it almost similar to Brazilian Portuguese (except by final Template:IPA, which is inherited from European Portuguese).
There are some exceptions to the rules above. For example, Template:IPA occurs instead of unstressed Template:IPA or Template:IPA, word-initially or before another vowel in hiatus (teatro, reúne, peão). Template:IPA is often deleted entirely word-initially in the combination Template:IPA becoming Template:IPA. Also, Template:IPA, Template:IPA or Template:IPA appear in some unstressed syllables in EP, being marked in the lexicon, like espetáculo (spectacle) Template:IPA; these occur from deletion of the final consonant in a closed syllable and from crasis. And there is some dialectal variation in the unstressed sounds: the northern and eastern accents of BP have low vowels in unstressed syllables, Template:IPA, instead of the high vowels Template:IPA. However, the Brazilian media tends to prefer the southern pronunciation. In any event, the general paradigm is a useful guide for pronunciation and spelling.
Nasal vowels, vowels that belong to falling diphthongs, and the high vowels Template:IPA and Template:IPA are not affected by this process, nor is the vowel Template:IPA when written as the digraph Template:Angbr (pronounced Template:IPA in conservative EP).
Further notes on the oral vowels
- Some words with Template:IPA in EP have Template:IPA in BP. This happens when those vowels are stressed before the nasal consonants Template:IPA, Template:IPA, followed by another vowel, in which case both types may occur in European Portuguese, but Brazilian Portuguese for the most part allows only mid or close-mid vowels. This can affect spelling: cf. EP tónico, BP tônico "tonic".
- In most BP, stressed vowels have nasal allophones, Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA, etc. (see below) before one of the nasal consonants Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA, followed by another vowel. In São Paulo, Southern Brazil,<ref>Template:Citation.</ref> and EP, nasalization is nearly absent in this environment, other than in compounds such as connosco, comummente (spelled conosco, comumente in BP).
- Most BP speakers also diphthongize stressed vowels in oxytones to Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA, etc. (sometimes Template:IPA), before a sibilant coda (written s or z). For instance, Jesus Template:IPA ('Jesus'), faz Template:IPA ('he does'), dez Template:IPA ('ten'). This has led to the use of meia (from meia dúzia 'half a dozen") instead of seis Template:IPA ('six') when making enumerations, to avoid any confusion with três Template:IPA ('three') on the telephone.<ref>Dicionário Houaiss da Língua Portuguesa, p. 1882</ref>
- In Greater Lisbon, Template:IPA is pronounced Template:IPA when it comes before a palatal consonant Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA or a palato-alveolar Template:IPA, Template:IPA, followed by another vowel; also, Template:IPA is pronounced Template:IPA.
Sandhi
Template:Unreferenced section When two words belonging to the same phrase are pronounced together, or two morphemes are joined in a word, the last sound in the first may be affected by the first sound of the next (sandhi), either coalescing with it, or becoming shorter (a semivowel), or being deleted. This affects especially the sibilant consonants Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA, and the unstressed final vowels Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA.
Consonant sandhi
As was mentioned above, the dialects of Portuguese can be divided into two groups, according to whether syllable-final sibilants are pronounced as postalveolar consonants Template:IPA, Template:IPA or as alveolar Template:IPA, Template:IPA. At the end of words, the default pronunciation for a sibilant is voiceless, Template:IPA, but in connected speech the sibilant is treated as though it were within a word (assimilation):
- If the next word begins with a voiceless consonant, the final sibilant remains voiceless Template:IPA; bons tempos Template:IPA or Template:IPA ('good times').
- If the next word begins with a voiced consonant, the final sibilant becomes voiced as well Template:IPA; bons dias Template:IPA or Template:IPA ('good days').
- If the next word begins with a vowel, the final sibilant is treated as intervocalic, and pronounced Template:IPA; bons amigos Template:IPA or Template:IPA ('good friends').
When two identical sibilants appear in sequence within a word, they reduce to a single consonant. For example, nascer, desço, excesso, exsudar are pronounced with Template:IPA by speakers who use alveolar sibilants at the end of syllables, and disjuntor is pronounced with Template:IPA by speakers who use postalveolars. But if the two sibilants are different they may be pronounced separately, depending on the dialect. Thus, the former speakers will pronounce the last example with Template:IPA, whereas the latter speakers will pronounce the first examples with Template:IPA if they are from Brazil or Template:IPA if from Portugal (although in relaxed pronunciation one of the siblants may be dropped). This applies also to words that are pronounced together in connected speech:
- sibilant + Template:IPA, e.g., as sopas: either Template:IPA (most of Brazil); Template:IPA (Portugal, standard)
- sibilant + Template:IPA, e.g., as zonas: either Template:IPA (mostly in Brazil); Template:IPA (Portugal, standard)
- sibilant + Template:IPA, e.g., as chaves: always Template:IPA;
- sibilant + Template:IPA, e.g., os genes: always Template:IPA.
Vowel sandhi
Normally, only the three vowels Template:IPA, Template:IPA (in BP) or Template:IPA (in EP), and Template:IPA occur in unstressed final position. If the next word begins with a similar vowel, they merge with it in connected speech, producing a single vowel, possibly long (crasis). Here, "similar" means that nasalization can be disregarded, and that the two central vowels Template:IPA can be identified with each other. Thus,
- Template:IPA → Template:IPA (henceforth transcribed Template:IPA); toda a noite Template:IPA or Template:IPA ('all night'), nessa altura Template:IPA or Template:IPA ('at that point').
- Template:IPA → Template:IPA) (henceforth transcribed Template:IPA); a antiga ('the ancient one') and à antiga ('in the ancient way'), both pronounced Template:IPA or Template:IPA. The open nasalized Template:IPA appears only in this environment.
- Template:IPA → Template:IPA (henceforth transcribed Template:IPA); de idade Template:IPA or Template:IPA ('aged').
- Template:IPA → Template:IPA; fila de espera Template:IPA ('waiting line') (EP only).
- Template:IPA → Template:IPA (henceforth transcribed Template:IPA); todo o dia Template:IPA or Template:IPA ('all day').
If the next word begins with a dissimilar vowel, then Template:IPA and Template:IPA become approximants in Brazilian Portuguese (synaeresis):
- Template:IPA + V → Template:IPA; durante o curso Template:IPA ('during the course'), mais que um Template:IPA ('more than one').
- Template:IPA + V → Template:IPA; todo este tempo Template:IPA ('all this time') do objeto Template:IPA ('of the object').
In careful speech and in with certain function words, or in some phrase stress conditions (see Mateus and d'Andrade, for details), European Portuguese has a similar process:
- Template:IPA + V → Template:IPA; se a vires Template:IPA ('if you see her'), mais que um Template:IPA ('more than one').
- Template:IPA + V → Template:IPA; todo este tempo Template:IPA ('all this time'), do objeto Template:IPA ('of the object').
But in other prosodic conditions, and in relaxed pronunciation, EP simply drops final unstressed Template:IPA and Template:IPA (elision), though this is subject to significant dialectal variation:
- durante o curso Template:IPA ('during the course'), este inquilino Template:IPA ('this tenant').
- todo este tempo Template:IPA ('all this time'), disto há muito Template:IPA ('there's a lot of this').
Aside from historical set contractions formed by prepositions plus determiners or pronouns, like à/dà, ao/do, nesse, dele, etc., on one hand and combined clitic pronouns such as mo/ma/mos/mas (it/him/her/them to/for me), and so on, on the other, Portuguese spelling does not reflect vowel sandhi. In poetry, however, an apostrophe may be used to show elision such as in d'água.
Stress
Primary stress may fall on any of the three final syllables of a word, but most commonly on the last two, as antepenultimate stress is relatively less frequent in the language. There is a partial correlation between the position of the stress and the final vowel; for example, the final syllable is usually stressed when it contains a nasal phoneme, a diphthong, or a close vowel—this is especially relevant given the influence of Indigenous languages in Brazil, as indigenous words often have final stress: urubu 'vulture', açaí 'açai', both of which originate from Tupi and have final stress. The orthography of Portuguese takes advantage of this correlation to minimize the number of diacritics, but orthographic rules vary in different regions (e.g., Brazil and Portugal), and should not be used as a reliable guide to stress, despite the existing correlations found in the grapheme-phoneme conversion of Portuguese data.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
As in English, stress in verbs and non-verbs is computed differently.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref name=":0">Template:Citation</ref> For verbs, stress is deterministic, as different morphemes determine the location of stress in a given word based on tense, mood, person and number. For this reason, the few examples one can find of minimal pairs of lexical stress involve either different verb forms for a given stem, such as ruíram /ʁuˈiɾɐ̃w̃/ 'they collapsed' vs. ruirão /ʁuiˈɾɐ̃w̃/ 'they will collapse', or a noun-verb pair, such as dúvida /ˈduvidɐ/ 'doubt' vs. duvida /duˈvidɐ/ 's/he doubts'. For example, regardless of which verb one considers, stress is always final for the first person singular in the future simple tense (indicative): (eu) falarei 'I will speak'. For nouns and adjectives (i.e., non-verbs), stress is mostly affected by phonological factors such as syllable weight,<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> although morphology also plays a role, as different suffixes may affect the location of stress in a given word. In simple terms, the algorithm for stress in non-verbs is similar to that of English and Latin (modulo the extrametricality of the final syllable, which is absent in Portuguese): stress is final if the final syllable is heavy and penultimate otherwise. A heavy syllable contains a diphthong or a coda consonant. All other patterns are considered to be irregular in most approaches in the literature, even though subregularities have been determined and discussed in recent studies.<ref name=":0" /> Finally, syllable weight has also been shown to affect the position of secondary stress in the language, whose location can vary in words with an odd number of pre-tonic syllables. In such words, there's some experimental evidence showing that the presence of a given syllable containing a coda leads to a preference for secondary stress in said syllable.<ref name=":0" />
Prosody
Template:Expand section Tone is not lexically significant in Portuguese, but phrase- and sentence-level tones are important. As in most Romance languages, interrogation on yes–no questions is expressed mainly by sharply raising the tone at the end of the sentence. An exception to this is the word oi that is subject to meaning changes: an exclamation tone means 'hi/hello', and in an interrogative tone it means 'I didn't understand'.
As for prosodic domains, the presence of metrical feet in Portuguese has been called into question in a recent study, which argues that no strong evidence exists in the language that supports this particular domain (at least Brazilian Portuguese)—despite the presence of stress and secondary stress, both of which are typically (albeit not always) associated with feet.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
See also
- Differences between Spanish and Portuguese
- History of Portuguese
- Portuguese orthography
- Portuguese dialects
References
Bibliography
- Template:Citation
- Template:Citation
- Template:Citation
- Template:Citation
- Template:Citation
- Template:Citation
- Template:Citation
- Template:Cite book
- Template:Citation
- Template:Citation
- Template:Citation
- Template:Citation
- Template:Citation
- Template:Citation
- Template:Citation
- Template:Citation
- Template:Citation
- Template:Citation
- Template:Citation
- Template:Citation
- Template:Citation
- Template:Citation
- Template:Citation
- Template:Citation
External links
- The Portuguese Stress Lexicon contains a comprehensive list of nouns and adjectives coded for numerous phonological variables.
- The Fonology package for R provides a wide range of functions to work with written data, especially in Portuguese.
- Omniglot's page on Portuguese includes a recording of the phonemes and diphthongs (Brazilian Portuguese).
- The pronunciation of the Portuguese of Portugal
- Phoneme summary, with samples
- The pronunciation of each vowel and consonant letter in European Portuguese