Today’s lesson is totally different. Instead of listening to a dialog and comparing the sounds to Spanish, our team discusses a number of audio clips that illustrate Brazilian Portuguese intonation patterns. Do not worry about understanding what they clips are saying.
The objective of today’s lesson is to listen to the music, rhythm, and pitch of Brazilian Portuguese. And yes, Brazilians do think of Halls Mentho-Lyptus as candy!
PODCAST LINK: Lesson 24
Let’s see if we have this right? Michelle’s family gave her the nickname “witch” because of how moody she became when under stress at school, right? Wow, that’s a mean nickname, at least from a North American point of view.
This lesson is a bit different in that we don’t look at pronunciation directly, but we do look at the little extra words that people add to their speech, like, you know, umm, well, like, whatever, you know?
PODCAST LINK: Lesson 23
Epenthe … what? Epenthetic Vowels. We know, it sounds like a tropical disease, but it’s really the linguistic feature that produces such great Brazilian words as “piquenique” for picnic.
Valdo isn’t sure he can bring himself to say “hoti doggie” for “hot dog,” but he has no problem with “fasti foodi.”
PODCAST LINK: Lesson 22
If you would like to say the name of their country correctly, Michelle and Valdo are here to show us how to say “Brasil,” which really comes out more like “Braziw.”
That is the trick in lesson 21. They also share their experience at self-service digital photo machines.
PODCAST LINK: Lesson 21
The “mulher molhada trabalhava” is rendered in Spanish as “mujer mojada tabajaba.” That’s our basic rule: words spelled with “j” in Spanish are often spelled with “lh” in Portuguese. However, you’ve got to hear the podcast to find out how they are pronounced.
Culturally, Valdo and Michelle admire the number of automatic sprinklers that are found in residential areas in the United States.
PODCAST LINK: Lesson 20
Valdo and Michelle still can’t get used to the idea of taking their clothes to a laundromat and using the coin-operated machines. Sure enough, in Brazil you either wash clothes at home or pay someone else to do the laundry.
As they talk of laundromats, we’ll hear the pronunciation of many words that are spelled with “nh,” similar to the Spanish “ñ.”
PODCAST LINK: Lesson 19