Ambiciosa

I've seen a lot of posts for European Portuguese, but none for Brazilian, so here we are! All resources are available for free (or at least have free trials.)

The items highlighted in yellow are what I, personally, use and recommend.

The items with asterisks are closer to intermediate level.

I will continue to update with new resources as I discover them. If you have any suggestions, comment or reblog!

She also talks about it in a YouTube video if you prefer oral explanations.

Hi Language Enthusiasts,

Do you want to learn Portuguese but don’t know where to start? Then I’ve got the perfect resource list for you and you can find its links below. Let me know if you have any suggestions to improve it. I hope everyone can enjoy it and if anyone notices any mistakes or has any questions you are free to PM me.

Here is what the resource list contains;

Handmade resources on certain grammar concepts for easy understanding.

Resources on learning pronunciation.

Websites to practice reading.

Documents to enhance your vocabulary.

Notes on Colloquial Language.

Music playlists

List of podcasts/audiobooks And a compiled + organized list of websites you can use to get hold of grammar!

In these videos, Liz from Talk the Streets explains how to order food and order a cocktail in European Portuguese. The videos start primarily English, except when Liz explains common words and phrases in Portuguese. The Portuguese words and phrases are included in the video when the speakers say them. There are also subtitles in British English and European Portuguese. Each video has a short dialogue in European Portuguese at the end, so you can test your knowledge!

week one, august 23, 2021

estourar - to burst

o charuto - cigar

a gaveta - drawer

acender - to light, to ignite

a manchete - headline

embriagado - drunk, intoxicated

a baforada - puff (of smoke)

comprovar - to prove, to check

empalidecer - to turn pale

assobiar - to whistle

arreganhar - to show (teeth), to open a little

enrugar - to shrivel, to crinkle

rosnar - to snarl, to growl

grã-fino - posh

o armazém - grocery store, warehouse

a quitanda - grocery

bolorento - moldy

o fubá - cornmeal

o datilógrafo - typist

a groselha - gooseberry, currant

o ensopado - stew

a pensão - pension

a mocidade - youth, youthfullness

a incumbência - task, charge, mission

gargalhar - to guffaw

rouco - hoarse, croaky

a carroça - cart

cravejado - studded

se arrebentar - to burst open

week one, august 23, 2021

estourar - to burst

o charuto - cigar

a gaveta - drawer

acender - to light, to ignite

a manchete - headline

embriagado - drunk, intoxicated

a baforada - puff (of smoke)

comprovar - to prove, to check

empalidecer - to turn pale

assobiar - to whistle

arreganhar - to show (teeth), to open a little

enrugar - to shrivel, to crinkle

rosnar - to snarl, to growl

grã-fino - posh

o armazém - grocery store, warehouse

a quitanda - grocery

bolorento - moldy

o fubá - cornmeal

o datilógrafo - typist

a groselha - gooseberry, currant

o ensopado - stew

a pensão - pension

a mocidade - youth, youthfullness

a incumbência - task, charge, mission

gargalhar - to guffaw

rouco - hoarse, croaky

a carroça - cart

cravejado - studded

se arrebentar - to burst open

European Portuguese YouTube Channel: Master European Portuguese with André

Really, y’all shouldn’t have to be taught this. 

But the amount of disregard I’ve seen monolingual Anglophone people show to accents over the years since learning English clearly shows that people don’t seem to grasp the concept of “accents serve a utilitarian purpose and are not just there to make the writing look cool”.

So here we go.

1. Accents show which syllable to emphasize.

You know how English is a hard language to learn? That’s partly due to the fact that y’all don’t bother to differentiate between words like lead and lead or read and read.

Were English a sensible language it would have some sort of symbol above or below the letter E for either the verb or the noun so that you could differentiate the words.

In many languages, the number of syllables determines where the emphasis in the word should be, so sometimes accents are used to indicate that the word`s emphasis does not follow the usual rules. If you take away the accent, people will place the emphasis in the wrong syllable, and thus mispronounce the word.

2. Accents tell you which sound you’re supposed to use.

In French (and Portuguese), for example, C has a /k/ sound, like the C in car. Ç, on the other hand, has an /s/ sound.

So the little wiggle below the C means the pronunciation of the word is completely different.

This means that if you remove the accent from someone’s name you’re no longer writing their name.

If you spell the name François without the proper accent you’re calling the person “frank-wa”, not “frans-wa”. That’s not their name, yo.

3. Accents can completely change the meaning of a word.

Remember the C vs Ç thing from the previous point? Well, here’s how the accent changes a word:

In Portuguese forca (f’oh-r-kah) means gallows. As in the place where someone gets executed by hanging.

Força (f’oh-r-sah) means strength or power.

Here’s an example that might hit closer to home:

You know the song Feliz Navidad? Well, when you write the lyrics as prospero ano y felicidad instead of prospero año y felicidad you are wishing someone a “prosperous anus and happiness”.

Here are some examples of other words that change meaning and/or pronunciation based on accent use:

Portuguese

E - And É - Is

Avó - Grandmother Avô - Grandfather

Manga - Mango or shirt sleeve depending on the context Mangá - Manga, Japanese-style comics

Coco - Coconut Cocô - Poop Cocó - Onomatopeia for the sound chickens make/toddler word for “bird”

Sábia - Wise woman Sabia - Past participle of saber (to know) Sabiá - A kind of bird

French

Âge - age Âgé - (adjective) old

Mais - (conjunction) but Maïs - corn

A - third person singular of avoir (to have) À - (preposition) to, at, in

Aie - first person singular subjunctive and second person singular imperative of avoir Aïe - (interjection) ouch

Congres - eels Congrès - conference, congress

Cote - quotation, quoted value, rating Coté - highly thought of/rated (past participle of côter) Côte - rib, slope, coastline Côté - side

De - (preposition) of, from Dé - thimble, die

Ferme - farm Fermé - past participle of fermer (to close)

Gène - gene Gêne - trouble, bother, embarrassment Gêné - (adjective) short of, embarrassed; past participle of gêner (to bother)

Jeune - (adjective) young Jeûne - fasting

Castilian Spanish

Aun - even Aún - yet

Dé - give De - of

Te - you Té - tea

Él - he El - the

Más - more Mas - but

Tu- your Tú - you

Partly because we know when leaving the accent off is culturally acceptable and when it isn’t as well as know the proper ways to indicate “there should be an accent here but I’m feeling lazy af and/or I can’t switch the keyboard language on this computer” (for example, in Portuguese we indicate a missing acute accent on the E by adding an H after it and a missing tilde over the A by adding a U and an M after it).

When I’m emailing my mom or she’s emailing me we’ll often leave out accents because switching the keyboard settings back and forth can be a pain. It’s not okay, however, for a school to remove the accent in a student’s name in documentation or when listing them as the winner of an award (which  I’ve seen done too many times to count), or when a movie company misspells the name of an actress/actor (e.g. Zoe Saldaña vs Zoe Saldana, Alexander Skarsgård vs Alexander Skarsgard, etc).

The other part of it is that it’s kinda how you can call your friends names and insult them til you’re blue in the face but god help anyone who tries to do the same.

If your language doesn’t use accents you damn well better respect every umlaut, breve, tilde, and caron religiously, but if you know a language that uses accents it’s like 

Her favourite is to purposefully write lava-loucas instead of lava-louças; loucas = the plural female form of “crazy”, louças = the plural form of China (the material dishes are made of, not the country). 

Tatiana Trilho and Hilário Fernandes talk about regional accents in Portugal. They feature native speakers from the Açores, Madeira, Braga, Aveiro, and Alentejo. I didn’t catch the all the village names, but I’m happy to update the post if someone else hears it properly and sends me a correction.

happy friday! the theme of today’s post is portuguese and why it’s so nasal! a recent tag on one of my nheengatu posts hypothesized that contact with it explains why portuguese has nasal sounds, since they’re are so prevalent in nheengatu as well. this is a good guess, but not quite the answer, so i wanted to talk about why today!

the answer lies within sound changes as it evolved from latin - two major ones. the first is a nasalization of vowels that come after m and n. let’s take a look a look at some words from latin (i won’t be marking short or long vowels because it’s not as important here):

lana - wool

mattiana - apple (this is from vulgar latin, but important for the point haha, through other sound changes it becomes mazana)

christianus - christian (but remember, romance nouns tend to come from the accusative forms of latin, so christianum, which will become cristiano)

so what happens here, is that the letters before n will become nasal. so we have lãna, mazãna, and cristiãno.

then, the next change that happens is a deletion of that n between vowels. this is how we get today’s lã, maçã, and cristão - this is pretty systematic across the language. if you speak spanish, you can compare it with lana, manzana, and cristiano.