Portuguese Dialects - Notable Features of Some Dialects - Innovative

Innovative

  • In central and southern Portugal (except the city of Lisbon and its vicinity), the diphthong /ei̯/ is monophthongized to . The nasal diphthong /ẽi̯/ is often monophthongized to in this region as well.
  • In Lisbon and its surroundings, /ei̯/ and /ẽi̯/ are pronounced and, respectively. Furthermore, in this region stressed /e/ is pronounced or before a palato-alveolar or a palatal consonant followed by another vowel.
  • In the dialect of the Beiras (Beira Interior Norte, Cova da Beira and Beira Interior Sul) in central Portugal, the sibilant /ʒ/ occurs at the end of words, before another word which starts with a vowel, instead of /z/.
  • In northern Portugal, the phoneme /m/ has a velar allophone at the end of words.
  • In the dialects of Portalegre, Castelo Branco, Algarve (Barlavento area) and São Miguel Island (Azores), the near-front rounded vowel replaces /u/, in a process similar to the one which originated the French u. The dialect of São Miguel has also the front rounded vowel replacing /o/, as in outra or boi.
  • In northern Portugal, the close vowels /o/ and /e/ may be pronounced as diphthongs, such as in "Porto", pronounced, "quê":, "hoje": or or even
  • Some dialects of southern Portugal have gerund forms that inflect for person and number: em chegandos (when you arrive), em chegândemos (when we arrive), em chegandem (when you/they arrive). These are not used in writing.
  • There are some dialectal differences in how word final is realized. In BP, it is always pronounced. In Portugal, it is usually most audible when at the end of an utterance. In other contexts, it may be not realized, or realized as mere labialization of the preceding consonant. The northern dialects tend to maintain it in most contexts. For instance, a sentence like o meu irmão comprou um carro novo ("my brother bought a new car") would be pronounced as or in these dialects. In the dialect spoken in Lisbon, the two last words would instead be pronounced, or . In southern Portugal, word final and are also affected, so in Alentejo the same sentence would sound (in this dialect, utterance final vowels are also noticeably very prolonged, so a more accurate transcription might be for this example). And in the southernmost region of the country, the Algarve, the vowel is completely lost: .
  • In most of Brazil, syllable-final /l/ is vocalized to /w/. This causes mau "bad" and mal "badly" to become homophones (although Brazil tends to use ruim in place of mau). Similarly, degrau "step" and jornal "journal" rhyme, which results in false plurals such as degrais "steps" (vs. correct degraus), by analogy with correct plural jornais. In the caipira dialect, and in parts of Goiás and Minas Gerais, syllable-final /l/ is instead merged with /ɾ/, pronounced as an alveolar approximant in the Caipira way.
  • The pronunciation of syllable-initial and syllable-final r varies considerably with dialect. See Guttural R in Portuguese, for details. In summary, syllable-initial ⟨r⟩ and doubled ⟨rr⟩ are pronounced as a guttural in most cities in Portugal, but as a traditional trill in rural Portugal. In Brazil, this sound is normally pronounced as an unvoiced guttural (, or ), which is also used for ⟨r⟩ at the end of syllables (except in the caipira dialect, which uses an alveolar approximant ). ⟨r⟩ at the ends of words in Brazil is normally silent or barely pronounced. In Macau (where Portuguese is spoken mostly as a second language), initial and intervocalic "r" is sometimes replaced with a diphthong, and ⟨r⟩ at the end of words (esp. when final-stressed) is sometimes silent.
  • The pronunciation of syllable-final s/x/z also varies with dialect. See Portuguese phonology for details. In summary, Portugal and Rio de Janeiro favor, both before a consonant and finally. Most other parts of Brazil favor, although in the Northeast is often heard before consonants, especially /t/ (but not finally).
  • In the Northeast of Brazil and to an increasing extent in Rio de Janeiro and elsewhere, is inserted before final /s/ in a final-stressed word. This makes mas "but" and mais "more" homonyms, both pronounced or . Other affected examples are faz "he does", dez "ten", nós "we", voz "voice", luz "light", Jesús "Jesus", etc. Related forms like fazem, vozes, nosso are unaffected, since /s/ is no longer final.
  • In most of Brazil, /t/, /d/ are palatalized to, when followed by /i/. Common sources of /i/ are the unstressed ending -e, as in gente "people" and de "of", and the epenthetic /i/ in words such as advogado "lawyer" . The prefixes de-, des- and dez- (e.g. dezoito "eighteen") vary from word to word and speaker to speaker between, //etc. and, //etc..
  • Informal Brazilian Portuguese makes major changes in its use of pronouns:
    • Informal tu is dropped entirely in most regions, along with all second-person singular verbal inflections. When tu survives, it is used with third-person inflections.
    • But clitic te survives as the normal clitic object pronoun corresponding to você.
    • Clitic pronouns almost always precede the verb. Post-verbal clitics are seen only in formal contexts, and mesoclisis (amar-te-ei "I will love you") is practically incomprehensible to most Brazilians.
    • Possessives seu, sua virtually always mean "your". To say "his, her", constructions like o carro dele "his car" or o carro dela "her car" are used.
    • Third-person clitics o, a, os, as and combined clitics like mo, no-lo are virtually never seen in speech. Instead, the clitics are simply omitted, especially when referring to objects; or a subject pronoun is placed after the verb: Eu levo "I'll get it"; Vi ele "I saw him".
    • nós "we" is often replaced by a gente, conjugated with a third-person singular verb.
  • Other Brazilian Portuguese grammatical changes:
    • Preposition a is normally replaced by para in speech. (Note: para a /pra/, para o /pro/.)
    • The future tense is rarely used except for certain verbs with monosyllabic infinitives; otherwise periphrasis, e.g. vou falar "I will speak", is used. (But note that future perfect, future subjunctive and future perfect subjunctive all occur with regularity.)
    • The conditional tense is likewise used rarely. When a true conditional meaning is intended, the imperfect is substituted. When a prospective-in-past meaning is intended, a periphrasis is often substituted, e.g. disse que ia falar comigo "He said he would speak with me".

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