Talk:Portuguese phonology/Archive 1

message: The introduction needs some work. The criticism of foreign misinterpretation of the vowel distinction needs to be toned down quite a bit. Peter Isotalo 11:51, Mar 18, 2005 (UTC)
:Not only that. Phonology, allophones and dialectal differences are all mish-mashed into one big issue of "having many vowels". --Pablo D. Flores 12:50, 2 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Introduction

message: Hi, I was working the article rodizio and I was thinking it might be nice to put it in IPA. Unfortunately, I don't speak Portuguese. The article says the pronunciation is "ro-DEE-zhyoo". This seems to conflict with the note in the orthography section here that "z" between vowels is pronounced []. Any advice? Lesgles (talk) 05:41, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Leave it to me... Ciacchi 16:45, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks! Lesgles (talk) 04:04, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rodizio 

message: someone recently added a section on "phonotactics".  i see little point in the section as-is -- there is really no purpose in all the examples, and the basic idea could be summarized in a couple of sentences, but even then i don't see what is gained by the section.  a real section on the phonotactics of portuguese would not try to reduce its phonotactics down to CCVC and such but would describe the actual restrictions.  i.e. yes you can say "frustrar" but not "rfusrtar", nor "ftustrar", nor (in BP) "frustrac".  also, EP and BP differ -- EP allows "advogado" but BP wants "ad/i/vogado".  descriptions in terms of CCVC and such only work for languages like arabic, where the phonotactics actually work based on number rather than type of consonants. Benwing 07:24, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  delete the section on phonotactics? 

message: The following has recently been added to the article.
Most speakers nowadays pronounce the digraph ou as a monophthong  when there's no possibility of confusion, although in some regions of Brazil and northern Portugal it is still pronounced as the falling diphthong .
It's not clear to me what this "danger of confusion" might be. There are a few minimal pairs for the diphthong versus the monophthong, true, but most people in Portugal get along fine pronouncing both the same way. Context clears any doubts. Moreover, this pronunciation "to avoid danger of confusion" seems to be only done in Brazil (perhaps out of linguistic purism). Unless this is clarified, I am going to remove the remark from the article. FilipeS 14:44, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Pronunciation of "ou"

message: This is not a big deal, but just for the record the reason why I had moved the Diphthongs section down was that they are not phonemes. I thought it was neater to discuss all phonemes first, and then list the diphthongs (which have a very straightforward correspondence with spelling, anyway, so they could just as well be listed at Portuguese orthography). FilipeS 15:25, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Placement of Diphthongs section

message: What is the author, title, etc., of the newly added reference? FilipeS 19:20, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Right, sorry, I should have clarified it. It is an excerpt from The Phonology of Portuguese , Maria Helena Mateus and Ernesto d'Andrade, published by Oxford University press. See it here on Google Books. Macgreco 23:52, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  New reference 

message: Before this escalates anymore, and since User:AnPrionsaBeag seems to be a newcomer to Wikipedia, I should perhaps give my reasons for reverting his edits, which were the following:
Palatal lateral approximant. In some Brazilian dialects, this phoneme is realized as palatal approximant , but this is not as widespread as yeísmo in Spanish. It came to Portuguese through Occitan in 1047, just like nhJean-Pierre JUGE (2001) Petit précis - Chronologie occitane - Histoire & civilisation, p. 25: "Moine à Moissac, Gérald deviendra évêque de Braga, au Portugal et sera à l'origine de la modernisation de l'orthographe portugaise basée sur l'occitan classique (1047)." . See also this and that.
[...] See lh for origin.
This edit is nonsensical. It's true that the digraphs "lh" and "nh" were adopted from Occitan, and that fact is mentioned at the Portuguese alphabet article, but this article is about phonology, not orthography. The phonemes  and  were not "borrowed" from any language; they developed in parallel in several Romance languages. User:AnPrionsaBeag has confused phonology and orthography completely, as I have already pointed out in one of my edit summaries.
With as much respect as I can muster, I have to say that it's particularly grating to be allegedly "corrected" and accused of "vandalism" by someone who is so clearly and utterly misguided. FilipeS 20:34, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Occitan influence 

message: To user FilipeS, I am an American female college student. If I ever learn Portuguese, it will be my second language. Should I rely on Wikipedia to get started? Which version will I be learning? I want to learn both European and Brazilian Portuguese if I can so I can be most effectively understood throughout the Portuguese-speaking world. I listen to bbcbrasil.com and bbcparaafrica.com, which are both media in Portuguese. I want to be a radio journalist.
Should this article be expanded further? I wouldn't know what to say 'cause I'm not a native speaker like you. Do you speak EP or BP or both? Does it help to know both versions to be understood in the Portuguese-speaking world?
learnportuguese 20:47, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Hello. I've replied to you in your UserTalk page. :-) FilipeS 22:23, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Learning Portuguese

message: Several sources state that a recent sound change in European Portuguese as lenition for b, d, and g similar to what occurs in Spanish.  Yet, there is no mention of this in the article.  Anyone want to chime in? Azalea pomp 01:57, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, there is. Read it more carefully. FilipeS 21:27, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lenition of b, d, and g in European Portuguese 

message: The table at "unstressed vowels is a total mess, some things are right but some others are false (either in portuguese portuguese or in brazilian portuguese). A correction would be welcome.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.242.251.79 (talk) 16:24, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Please be more specific on what you believe is incorrect. FilipeS (talk) 19:18, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Unstressed vowels

message: According to the article, one would think that the Rio-area pronunciation of "de" (as in "Rio de Janeiro") would be , yet I hear it as .  What is the correct pronunciation here, and should it be mentioned in the article?  (Disclaimer:  I am only just learning Portuguese!)  Thanks!  Grover cleveland (talk) 18:48, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: By "here" do you mean in Rio? Rio de Janeiro is a big city, it must have people from all over Brazil. It's not surprising that you hear different accents. All of them are correct. However, I hear that the most widespread pronunciation in Brazil is indeed . FilipeS (talk) 22:29, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pronunciation of "de" 

message: Nhoque ("gnocchi") is one example. Grover cleveland (talk) 01:48, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Words beginning with "nh"

message: The following quote is from Chapter 2, page 11, footnote 2 of the 2000 edition of the book.
As a matter of fact, in northern and central EP dialects, voiced stops may be realized as the correspondent non-strident fricatives [β], [δ], [γ], except in phrase-initial position and after an homorganic non-continuant.
(Emphasis mine.)
When they describe these allophones as "fricatives", I suspect that they're being misled by the ambiguity of IPA. Most likely, in my opinion, they are approximants, not true fricatives. If anyone still has any doubts, I can even show you several speakers who never pronounce the voiced plosives as anything other than true plosives. 
The authors who claim otherwise are either ignorant foreigners who assumed wrongly that Portuguese is "pretty much like Spanish", or purist natives who find the approximant pronunciation more chic, and therefore fail to notice that many (perhaps most) speakers do not talk that way naturally. FilipeS (talk) 14:20, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Is [δ] a variant of [ð]?  I've never seen [δ] used in IPA before. Grover cleveland (talk) 16:21, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Nice. I'm concerned though because Cruz-Ferreira (1995) (which is probably identical to Portuguese's HIPA entry) says these are fricatives as well.  I understand your speculation that they could be approximants but we should find sourcing.  I don't understand how speakers who don't exhibit this phenomenon of lenition are proof that these could be approximants--unless you're trying to illustrate that this isn't as common as Cruz-Ferreira state ("normally pronounced"), in which case you've certainly driven the point home quite thoroughly.  — Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 18:17, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

text: Yes, I was trying to show the latter. FilipeS (talk) 19:54, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Mateus and d'Andrade on [β], [δ] and [γ] in Portuguese

message: The article says: "There are very few minimal pairs for /oi/ and /ɔi/, all of which in oxytone words."
There is at least "apóio" (verb) vs "apoio" (noun), so not all are oxytone. There are probably other words that follow the same pattern, but I can't remember any right now. 189.95.48.244 (talk) 02:11, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  /oi/ vs /ɔi/