LESSON 02 - ADVANCED
Here you have a more detailed explanation about the occurrence of some
vowels:
ã –
the “ã” sound always occurs when the
“a” has a ~ (tilde, in Portuguese til), as in não.
–
it always occurs when the “a”
is followed by “m” or “n”, as in canta, ambos (this rule
is extended for all nasal vowels)
–
when at the end of a word,
it’s added a “w” sounds to pronunciation, then the sound is more or less like
the “ão”, except that it doesn’t take the stress of the word. It can be clearly
noticed in verbal forms: cantaram (they
sang) and cantarão
(they will sing). The stress falls in the second syllable in “cantaram”
and in the last syllable in “cantarão”.
–
sometimes, the “ã” sound
occurs when there’s an “a” followed by “m” or “n” but not at the end of the
syllable: in camisa
and Ana, the first “a” is nasal, but in amor it’s not. Some
words can have both pronunciations: animal or animal. The
pronunciation has to be learned in these cases, but say the oral vowel if
you’re not sure. Anyway, mistakes about it may not cause misunderstanding.
–
the accent marks (acute and
circumflex), when placed on the “a” vowel, don’t change its pronunciation, just
marks the stressed syllable when necessary: the acute accent is used for the
open “a”, as in átomo,
and the circumflex, for the nasal “a”, as in câmera.
é, ê –
the accent mark is used in the
letter “e” not only to mark the stress but, in special cases, also to change
its pronunciation. Example: the word seu is pronounced
with closed “e”, but the word céu is pronounced
with open “e”. The accent is necessary in this case because in “eu” diphtongs
the “e” is pronounced closed, so the acute accent makes it open.
~e –
the nasal “e” at the end of a word
adds an “i” to its pronunciation: vem is pronounced v~ei.
It’s more or less what happens to the “a”: cantam is
pronounced kãTArãu. The diphtongisation of some vowels will be explained
in Lesson 04.
ambos – both of them (masculine) átomo
– atom céu –
sky
camisa – shirt seu
– your, yours