"Minha amiga dá me... Me dá...? Me deu...? Minha amiga me deu este livro," I stammered trying to share Harry Potter e a Pedra Filosofal with my Portuguese teacher on a videochat. It felt like I was at show-and-tell holding up this book given to me by a friend. I'm reading pretty well now and feeling more confident about talking in Portuguese. Yet, there is a major obstacle for me: jolly phonics.
"Jolly phonics," as my teacher calls it, is English being a stress-timed language. While some syllables are stressed, others are not and shortened to fit a certain rhythm. As a result of this cadence, English can sound 'jolly' or excited to people who speak syllable-timed languages like Portuguese where all syllables take the same length of time to pronounce. For me, it is difficult breaking from my stress-timed patterns and making that shift to syllable-timed but I'm starting to do so with practice sentences like:
A| ca|sa| do| Jo|ão.
As mentioned previously, I'm learning Portuguese as it is heard in São Paulo where there is a strong Italian influence. The language is soft but it is even softer in southeastern Brazil so I also need to forget hard consonants for proper pronunciation. A great exercise for demonstrating this is "Leite quente da dor no dente" where the Ts each make a "sh" sound. "Lei-she quen-she da dor no den-she." In English, this translates to "hot toothache milk." With that said, I'm really having fun with Portuguese.
If you like this blog post, you might enjoy this previous update!
Opmerkingen