I post this on behalf of a friend who doesn’t have Usenet
access. He’s Mario Eduardo Viaro, vi…@mx300d.ids-mannheim.de, but next year
again in Brasil as maevi…@cat.cce.usp.br. Note that due to an editing
problem, most of the > marked lines in the beginning of the article are his.
========================================================>
> In article <449grj$…@news.ccit.arizona.edu> h…@GAS.UUG.Arizona.EDU (Hung
J >> > Lu) writes:>From: h…@GAS.UUG.Arizona.EDU (Hung J Lu)>> > >Subject: Re:
Brazil v. Portugal>> > >Date: 26 Sep 1995 18:30:11 GMT>> >
- Hide quoted text — Show quoted text -
>> > >John E Koontz (koo…@cam.nist.gov) wrote:
>> > >: Have you run into the Brazilian dialect where they pronounce "r" as /h/?
>> > >I thought most Brazilians do that anyway.
>> It is hard to affirm that. The Cariocas, the Northern and the Northeastern
>> people do it, but the Southern people, the Sao Paulo, the Western and Central
>> areas people do not do so. In Minas, only the Northern half do so.
>> The /h/ can be a voiced or voiceless aspirated laryngeal, an uvular vibrant or
>> a voiceless velar fricativ, indifferently. For me, it is difficult sometimes
>> to distinguish the german Hund from Rund or to pronunciate properly Ahorn,
>> Aachen, Arabisch…
>> > >It’s probably going to be tough to trace the why of the accents, just
>> > >like the American English accent differs from the British accent due
>> > >to a large number of factors… both forms of English evolved. Ah,
>> > >Brazil received a lot of African influence, which may be part of the
>> > >origin of the accents.
>> This theory was abandoned a long time ago. The African and Indian influence
>> is able to be proved only in the vocabulary. The best explication is Seraphim
>> da Silva Neto’s one: people of some parts of Portugal came and a koine get
>> out. So, we can explain why there is not in Brazil the four alveolar fricatives
>> of North Portugal, but only two, as in South Portugal, and at same time some
>> people changes v and b: barrer instead of varrer, like in North Portugal. The
>> African have come from different parts of Africa, they spoke different dialects
>> and languages. Fastly they lost their language (a few exceptions we can find
>> between the Male and Yoruba in Bahia), and in their position of slaves I can
>> not believe they will influence the senhor’s language. For example, I do not
>> believe the German People will become a Turkish accent: there is a lot of
>> words in the vocabulary (like Doener, Kebap…) but the children of the Turks
>> speak already a so good German as the natives. The major differences between
>> Brasil Portuguese and Luso-Portuguese are from XIX century Lisboa’s innovations.
>> Read for it Paul Teyssier’s book. The vocalism of Brasil is really older, as
>> the Joao de Barro’s XVI grammar proves.
>> The only indian influence we can prove is a habit in Northeast (part of Bahia,
>> Ceara and so on), where the people changes intervocalic -v- for /h/. So they
>> do not say eu estava, aber /o’taha/ e cavalo becomes /ka’halu/. This is a
>> sociolinguistical not good form, and the people avoid it.
>> Also in Sao Paulo interior, South Minas, Part of Mato Grosso and North Parana
>> there is the caipira dialect. In it the /r/ at the end of the word or before
>> consonants is retroflex (the same position for the /h/). I do not if that is
>> a Tupi influence. This is too avoided. I am from a city from interior and they
>> do not notice it, but they always say about the Piracicaba’s caipira, a kind
>> of symbol of this dialect, that it is an ugly dialect: they notice the special
>> use of the Piracicaba /r/: also intervocalic!
>> > >Also, within Brazil there is a large number of accents. At least
>> > >there are:
>> > >1) Southern accent of Rio Grande do Sul, which is closer to Spanish
>> > > Including the use of trill <r>.
>> Yes, but originally the caipira dialect also had: we can hear it from older
>> people. The intonation of the Rio Grande do Sul people is hard to imitate,
>> and I would like to know if it is the same of Uruguay’s Spanish. There is
>> a city (Rivera/Santana do Livramento) where the spoken language is Portu~nol!
>> In Florianopolis they speak a kind of the dialect of Azores.
>> > >2) Sao Paulo, with a lot of Italian influence. (Longer value for
>> > > stressed vowels.)
>> O, this is a legend. In the TV there is a series that show that, but it is
>> not true. I live in Sao Paulo since ten years and I have never meet anyone
>> who speaks so. I am grandson of Italians, but my father do not speak a word
>> of Italian. I do not believe in it either.
>> > >3) North East, maybe a bit closer to the continental form than
>> > > the rest of the Brazilian accents?
>> NOPE! The Northeastern accent is the more innovative one! From the same
>> old toneless /e/, that we can hear in the South and caipira accents and
>> that is in the grammar of Joao de Barros, and in North Portugal, there is
>> too directions:
>> – Lisboa and the rest of South Portugal pronounce it as a shwa /@/ or simply
>> syncopate it.
>> – Northeastern accent opens it, like English E in "red".
>> So, a word like "diferentes" is pronounced:
>> /dife’r~etes/ in Rio Grande do Sul and some places of Caipira;
>> /dife’r~eti/ in other places of Caipira (with flap or retroflex r)
>> /dife’r~etSis/ in Minas Gerais, Parana, too in Sao Paulo.
>> /dife’r~etSiS/ in Rio de Janeiro.
>> /dife’r~eitSis/ in Sao Paulo.
>> /difE’r~etSis/ in North Eastern. Also /difE’r~etSiS, difE’r~etiS/
>> /difr~@itS/ in Lisboa.
>> The less sociolinguistical marked form is the third. In the more influent
>> channels of TV and Radio we here a mixted form of the third and the fourth even
>> in Northeastern Brazil. It will surely be the normativ one for the future.
>> /S/ is the sh sound of show.
>> > >4) Carioca: accent of Rio de Janeiro, where <t> is affricated when
>> > > followed by <i> (or ending <e>), <mas> pronounced as <maish>.
>> > > Initial <e> are often silent like in <estou> <esta> pronounced
>> > > as <shta> <shtou>.
>> You are right, the ti as /tSi/ is a carioca innovation. But it is the better
>> form in Sao Paulo, Minas Gerais, Parana and part of Northeastern (Ceara, at
>> least and Bahia?). I try myself to pronounciate so, but it is hard, because
>> in my city only the girls did so "to seem more delicated". I remember that
>> in the gymnasium, a teacher of Bauru (a city in the interior of Sao Paulo,
>> one hour far from mine) has come and he pronounciated this way. In the begin,
>> we though he was effeminate, but he was very young and charmant and he made
>> success between the girls. So, my pals began to pronounciate this way to
>> imitate him and to make the same succes! All that has surely changed today:
>> I can not recognize my city when I go there to visit my parents.
>> A carioca pronounce estou as /iSto/ or – as all Brazilians – /to/. A lisboeta
>> will pronounce it /iSto/, /ISto/- with a ieri: closed central unrounded sound,
>> or /Sto/ (perhaps too /to/). The diphthong is very formal and seldom.
>> > >Some of my Brazilian friends have told me that it’s easier for them
>> > >to understand spoken Spanish than the spoken continental Portuguese
>> > >(Luso Portuguese). I know some people are going to be upset
>> > >about this comment. 
>It is true and false. Where an educated people speaks calmly it is very easy
>to understand. But I remember I saw a film one time and I could not understand
>one word, only there were formal situations! I had an oncle of Azores and he
>died before I understood one single word! But once time I went to Northeast
>in a bus and beside me a man sat down and he spoke the 52 hours of the trip,
>but I didn`t get anything! He was from Sertao da Bahia, and changed not only
>v for h, but also f, j and so one.
>A sentence: vou beber um vinho de jenipapo ja ja turned to:
> /hobE’be ~u’h~i dZi’hEnipap’ha’ha/
>I cannot understand well a Bolivian, but can understand an Argentin or a
>Madrid person. I cannot understand well an Azores people, but I find easy
>the Galician. Enygmas?
>> > >I learned my Portuguese with the Carioca accent. And I have been
>> > >heavily criticized by people from Sao Paulo: I have been told that
>> > >I spoke Carioquese, not Portuguese. My advise is, stick either
>> > >with the Sao Paulo accent or the Northeast accent, they seem to
>> > >be more towards the average.
>Yes, I lived during my highschool times with a Chilene and a carioca.
>Sometimes there was easier to understand the Chilene than the carioca.
>He used to speak too many slang, and the sh-sounds didn’t help! The Sao
>Paulo and Rio de Janeiro people used to ridicularize each other. I do know
>why. Sincerely the best form is the neutre one, the mixture of Sao Paulo
>and Rio variants. I find the Northeastern variant very beautiful, but it
>is not recognized as the best one, at least in the South. You know, ubi
>munera ibi bona. The neutre variant would be:
>- The r not trilled but uvular at the begin of the word, after s,n,l and
> when written rr. In the other situations, a single flap.
>- Not to open toneless vowels,
>- Not to use exagerately the sound sh for s before consonants
>- Not to drop final consonants (except the r of infinitive perhaps)
>- To pronounciate ti as chi and di as dji (affricates)
>- To pronounce final e and o as /i/ or /u/.
>You can see, a new koine is happening, with strong influence of the
>Sao Paulo variant.
>Mario
>> > >– Ekki
