Vowel Awareness | Oral Vowel Tuning | Consonants | Nasal Vowels | Phonetic Notation Key | Submission Page
Portuguese Vowel Tuning
Compared to other Latin languages such as Spanish or Italian, Portuguese has a relatively rich menu of vowel sounds. These vowel sounds are the same for the most part across all dialects of Portuguese. What actually differs between dialects is the organization of these sounds, and these organizational changes are few. In other words, you can easily acclimate your ear to different dialects of Portuguese by really knowing the sound menu and simply figuring out what the changes are.
I am familiar with all the major European, Latin American and African dialects of Portuguese, but I have the most experience with Brazilian Portuguese. As such, this course will focus primarily on Brazilian music, and the primer below discusses the 10 Portuguese oral vowels from the Brazilian context.
Portuguese has both oral and nasal vowels. We will go over the nasal vowels in a later section of this primer. For now, it suffices to know that the vowel sounds you are used to as an English speaker are all oral. To aid your understanding of these Portuguese oral vowels, I have divided them into three sets. The first set uses vowel letters you are familiar with, and the second and third sets introduce new symbols.
I am familiar with all the major European, Latin American and African dialects of Portuguese, but I have the most experience with Brazilian Portuguese. As such, this course will focus primarily on Brazilian music, and the primer below discusses the 10 Portuguese oral vowels from the Brazilian context.
Portuguese has both oral and nasal vowels. We will go over the nasal vowels in a later section of this primer. For now, it suffices to know that the vowel sounds you are used to as an English speaker are all oral. To aid your understanding of these Portuguese oral vowels, I have divided them into three sets. The first set uses vowel letters you are familiar with, and the second and third sets introduce new symbols.
The First Set
As a literate adult, you will strongly associate certain letters with certain sounds. Many of these same letters, however, represent completely different sounds in Portuguese. For this reason, you will have a strong tendency to mispronounce Portuguese words simply because you learned them through writing.
To prevent this from happening, The Flow of Portuguese relies very little on writing. When it does, a given letter will always represent one sound. A given vowel letter below will ALWAYS represent the same vowel sound.
To prevent this from happening, The Flow of Portuguese relies very little on writing. When it does, a given letter will always represent one sound. A given vowel letter below will ALWAYS represent the same vowel sound.
The vowels occur in the following order: a...i...u...e...o
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Before moving on to the next set of vowels, there are a few things to note about some of the vowels of the basic set:
/a/
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/o/
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/e/
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The Second Set
The second set contains three vowels. All of these vowel sounds exist in English, they just don't have their own specific letter to represent them in English (nor in Portuguese).
If you already have Portuguese experience, you might have developed the habit of conceptualizing these sounds in relationship to vowels from the first set (e.g. /ɔ/ is conventionally taught as "open /o/"). This, however, is just a writing convention and not based on the acoustic reality of the language:
Every vowel sound is unique is its own right and must be thought of uniquely.
If you think of the /ɔ/ as "open o", you're going to have trouble distinguishing between the two. Instead, develop the habit of thinking of
ɔ as one vowel, and /o/ as another, and always associate these symbols with their actual real-life SOUND. This way, when you hear Portuguese speech, you will have an easy time separating the two sounds in your mind.
/ɐ/
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/ɛ/
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/ɔ/
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Third Set
The third set of vowels contain the two vowels that most Portuguese learners and native speakers do not even know about. Both of these vowels exist in English, but you most likely did not know about their existence either. You will not encounter these vowel very often in song, because they generally get fused into their stronger vowel brothers (/i/ and /u/).
When mimicking (and ultimately speaking) Portuguese, however, you will need to recognize these sounds, distinguish them from their big brothers (/i/ and /u/), and consistently create them for an authentic accent. So familiarize yourself with them now and keep an ear out for them the next time you listen to any accent of Portuguese.
When mimicking (and ultimately speaking) Portuguese, however, you will need to recognize these sounds, distinguish them from their big brothers (/i/ and /u/), and consistently create them for an authentic accent. So familiarize yourself with them now and keep an ear out for them the next time you listen to any accent of Portuguese.
/ɪ/
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/ʊ/
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To review, there are ten vowel sounds in Portuguese, with only two of them (/a/ and /o/) being slightly different from those of English. Therefore, the challenge with oral vowels isn't really in their pronunciation; the challenge is in developing your awareness of them. This will get easier as you learn more songs, since you will have a musical context in which to memorize these distinctions.
Once you have finished this page, move on to Consonants.
Vowel Awareness | Oral Vowel Tuning | Consonants | Nasal Vowels | Phonetic Notation Key | Submission Page