Carolina Part 2 Introduction
In a typical lesson, you learn an average of 16 syllables (two segments of 8 syllables on average). In this lesson, however, you will focus exclusively on the 10 syllables of line 3. I created a separate bonus lesson for this line because it is a bit more challenging than the previous ones. What makes it challenging is the presence of sound combinations that are particularly awkward for an English speaker to make. We're going to study these sound combinations in a little more detail here and use this line as a case study to incorporate these combos into your Portuguese flow.
The Third Set of Vowels: /ɪ/ and /ʊ/
As you learned in the Sound Primer, the third set of vowels contains two vowels sounds that are very similar to /i/ and /u/. As such, most people (Portuguese learners and native speakers alike) are unaware of the existence of these distinct sounds. Let's review them below.
The two main reasons that no one knows these two vowels exist are:
(a) they do not have their own letter, and
(b) they only occur in natural, "unmonitored" speech.
What I mean by (b) is that, if you hear a native Portuguese speaker make this sound and ask him to repeat the word you heard it in, there's a good chance he won't say it again. For example, the word for beautiful - "bonito" - is actually pronounced "bʊ...niɪ...tʊ". When enunciated slowly, however, it's pronounced exactly how it's spelled: "bo...ni...to".
If you already have a very sensitive ear to speech sound, you might have been able to pick up on this difference on your own, but there's a very good chance that you would never quite get the difference, which is why I am pointing it out here. This will especially trip you up if you have a Spanish background, since /ʊ/ and /ɪ/ do not exist at all in Spanish. For example, the word is in fact pronounced this way in Spanish "bo...ni...to". Therefore, the only difference between a Spanish "beautiful" and Portuguese "beautiful" is the Flow.
(a) they do not have their own letter, and
(b) they only occur in natural, "unmonitored" speech.
What I mean by (b) is that, if you hear a native Portuguese speaker make this sound and ask him to repeat the word you heard it in, there's a good chance he won't say it again. For example, the word for beautiful - "bonito" - is actually pronounced "bʊ...niɪ...tʊ". When enunciated slowly, however, it's pronounced exactly how it's spelled: "bo...ni...to".
If you already have a very sensitive ear to speech sound, you might have been able to pick up on this difference on your own, but there's a very good chance that you would never quite get the difference, which is why I am pointing it out here. This will especially trip you up if you have a Spanish background, since /ʊ/ and /ɪ/ do not exist at all in Spanish. For example, the word is in fact pronounced this way in Spanish "bo...ni...to". Therefore, the only difference between a Spanish "beautiful" and Portuguese "beautiful" is the Flow.
L-Y Combo
The "l-y" combination is a common one in Portuguese and often a source of difficulty for English speakers. The following step-by-step drill will help you with this sound.
Step 1: Place the the tip of your tongue against the roof of your mouth, just beyond your alveolar ridge. The real /l/ sound is made at the alveolar ridge, but this sound is just beyond it (post-alveolar), so it should sound about the same. Blow out voiced air for several seconds before finally releasing your tongue downwards.
Step 1: Place the the tip of your tongue against the roof of your mouth, just beyond your alveolar ridge. The real /l/ sound is made at the alveolar ridge, but this sound is just beyond it (post-alveolar), so it should sound about the same. Blow out voiced air for several seconds before finally releasing your tongue downwards.
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Step 2: Say the sound "ya"
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Step 3: Place the back of your tongue against your teeth again as in step 1 and sustain the post-alveolar l sound, but instead of releasing with a normal /a/ sound, release with the "ya" sound from step 2.
lya by The Mimic Method on hearthis.at
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Step 4: Place an unstressed /o/ at the beginning and /x/ at the end and you have the Portuguese word "eye".
In Line 3 of Carolina, you will see a real world example of these phenomena. Be sure to listen closely to the audio aids and try to mimic mine and Seu's pronunciation exactly.
Once you have finished with this page, you may move on to the Line 3 Lesson Page.
Introduction | Line 3 | Submission Page
