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| Carlous | Sunday 28th of November 2004 09:30:15 PM |
| Help - I have a few questions about vowels and accents and other good grammatical rules. Firstly, do vowels really sound different at the end of words: O sounds like an U, E sounds like an I, and is E silent at the end of feminine words. What difference does the circumflex (^) make--I thought that it stopped vowels, in combinations with M and N, from becoming nasal, but I looked up a word in the dictionary and it was still nasal even though it had that wretched circumflex!!! Obrigado! | |
| Lyddi | Monday 29th of November 2004 05:25:20 AM |
| Alphabet and accents - Yes, vowels really sound different at the end of the word. It depends on the next word in the sentence, ie. depends on the first letter of the next word. The Portuguese have an irrepressible tendency to link the sound of a terminal vowel with the beginning of the next word. I don't know if it sounds different to native speakers, but it sounds different to me! :) Portuguese alphabet has 23 letters, but there are more vowels: a, e, i, o, u - mute, short vowels à, á, é, í, ó, ú - open vowels, emphasizing a stressed syllable â, ê, î, ô, û - mute vowels, emphasizing a stressed syllable ã, õ - nasal vowels There are four accents in Portuguese: The acute [b]´[/b] The grave [b]`[/b] The tilde [b]~[/b] The circumflex [b]^[/b] | |
| lcsr | Tuesday 30th of November 2004 09:04:48 AM |
| - Vowels do sound different, but it's not because they're at the end of a word. They sound different when they're unstressed. As the majority of words in Portuguese has the stress on the 2nd syllable counting from the end, you might get the impression that it has something to do with it being at the end of a word, when in fact it doesn't :) Many words have stressed vowels at the end: pé, vê, lê, comité, pá, má, será, pó, dó, champô, etc. The Portuguese accentuation system might look a bit intimidating at first, but once you actually learn how it works, it'll help you so much in writing and reading words properly. Unfortunately it seems this is not always taught and many foreigners learn Portuguese for years and still don't have a clue on why something is written with an accent or which one to choose. The main stress in Portuguese in on the 2nd syllable counting from the end. About 60% of all words have the stress here. So, whenever a word has the stress on this syllable you don't use any accentuation. For instance: GATO LAGO PATA META etc. Besides this, stress can also fall on the last syllable or on the 3rd syllabe counting from the end. So you need to accentuate these words: Last syllable SERÁ COMITÉ CHAMPÔ 3rd syllable from the end SÍLABA FARMÁCIA HISTóRIA etc. Of course, can you imagine how boring would it be to accentuate 40% of all words? :) So, the Portuguese invented a minimalist accentuation system. This means they analyzed the words, and discovered that, for instance, 90% of all the words ending in -R have the stress on the last syllable. According to the main rule, you'd have to accentuate these words. That means you'd have to put an accent on the verbs, for instance... comêr, falár, cantár, pedír, sorrír, etc. Not very practical, is it? :) So they say that in this case (when a word ends in -R), you don't accentuate the word if the stress is on the last syllabe (cause that's what's normal 90% of the time), but the opposite. So we write CANTAR, SORRIR, FALAR, etc. but MÁRTIR. Why is that, as MÁRTIR has the stress on the 2nd syllable from the end? Because of this R rule. Like this one, you have other exceptions... words ending in L also always take the stress, words ending in I and U (That's why we write AQUI and not AQUÍ, CRU and NOT CRÚ) and many other cases. I suggest that you check it in a good grammar book, because I can't remember all the cases and it'd be too complicated to put them here. You'll eventually learn these "little exceptions" automatically that allow you to use a LOT less accentuation. Pfff... still reading by now? :) Well, when a vowel is in an unstressed syllable (that is, all except the stressed one), its sound changes like this: A (ah like in father) -> A (uh like mud) E (closed or open) -> E (like French 'je') or i (like in see) O (closed or open) -> U (like in moo) I and U always sound the same, no matter where they are. So, let's analyze some words: GATO Still remember where the stress is? On the GA. That means the O on TO has to be unstressed and thus the whole thing will sound like GATU The same with SERÁ. Remember where the stress is? On the RA. So the E on SE needs to be unstressed. And so on... Once again, practice makes perfect :) As for the accents, there are 4. But only ´ (acute) and ^ (circumflex) actually indicate where the stress is. As you might know Portuguese has open and closed vowels (this means 2 versions of the E and 2 of the O). The rule is as simple as this. You use ´ to mark an OPEN STRESSED VOWEL and ^ to mark a CLOSED STRESSED VOWEL. I AND U always take ´ cause they only have one version. Nasal vowels in Portuguese are always closed, so you always used ^ before M and N, that's why. ~ indicates nasality and ` marks crasis, which is the mixing of 2 vowels together. For instance a (to) + a (the, feminine) = à Gee, I think this was a bit too much. I'm not sure of how familiar you are with phonetics. I tried not to become too technical, but if you want, I can explain the whole thing also using the IPA or another phonetic alphabet ;) I hope it helped! :) | |
| Carlous | Tuesday 30th of November 2004 04:40:11 PM |
| - Yes, that helped!!! Thank you; I'll review some more, and if I have any questions; I'll ask you. Obrigado | |
