Talk:Portuguese alphabet

Letter sounds as spoken by a northestern brazilian

I've recorded and added to the article the sounds of the Portuguese alphabet as spoken by a northeastern Brazilian. Denisxavier (talk) 00:12, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Pizza

"The "ZZ" digraph is used in only one Portuguese word, pizza, and its derivatives. (Italian words generally had "ZZ" replaced by "SS", "Ç", or "Z" when borrowed into Portuguese; however the change was prevented in this single case due to collision with a preexisting obscene word.)"

This is not completely true, piza exists in Portuguese and (unlike the other two version) is not at all naughty. It is also the only translation of the word commonly found in dictionaries (EDIT: in Portugal, that is). --Goblin ^›talk 08:32, May 24, 2005 (UTC)

Removed the explanation about a "preexisting obscene word". I think this explanation is weird. If it were true, we would not have words such as "falo" ("i speak" or "phallus"). Besides, many obscene words are actually slang (i don't have a good dictionary here, so i cannot confirm which words are actually slang) and would not influence the language this way.--Yuu en 23:58, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

OK, but it is still the only explanation that makes sense to me. The "falo" example is not quite the same thing. Can you imagine inviting your girlfriend to eat a... well, you see what I mean.

As for why "piza" did not catch: it does collide with pisa "I step". Granted this is not as bad as the others.

By the way, can you give me an example of Italian [ts] becoming Portuguese [z]? I can only think of [ts] --> [s]. "ZZ" --> "Z" may seem reasonable when written but phonetically it would not be natural.

All the best, Jorge Stolfi 07:56, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

"Illegal"polygraphs

Give me three examples for each digraph and trigraph: XC ZZ TCH I'm portuguese and never saw such things! Oh, and SC is more like spelling s-sh fast, with a very short s (s from sun and sh from shoe). For example, "nascer" and "lascívia". In fact, many linguistics say it's what derived our most common sound for X (sh), which is better aknowledged if we hear most portuguese people say "nascer", for instance.

Do brazillian people say "seção" the same way they say "sessão"? In Portugal, we have "secção", for which the first C is not mute, and it indicates an accented E, which would be said, for brazillians, "sécssão".

-- I think XC happens relatively often in Portuguese: excelente exceção excesso excêntrico etc.

ZZ and TCH are explained in the article and are not used often.

In Brazil, SC is pronounced as if it were simply C (=SS), not as X (where X corresponds to SH in English). I don't know what linguists have to say about this difference. This is not taught to us in school, so it would be regarded as "wrong pronunciation" by us. To me, it's somewhat funny to hear "pixina" instead of "pissina" for the word PISCINA (swimming pool)...

"Seção" (section) and "sessão" (session) are pronounced the same way in Brazil. Sometimes it's hard to remember which one is the correct spelling. "Accented E" in the word "secção"??? That sounds weird to me, but i must admit i don't hear European Portuguese dialect much. --Yuu en 23:58, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

When I was at school (in Brazil) I did learn that "sce" and "sci" should be pronounced "sse" and "ssi". If they are [ʃe] and [ʃi] in Portugal, we must note that in the article. Jorge Stolfi 07:56, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Nasals

The tilde (til) is used over the vowels "A" and "O" to indicate two additional "nasalized" vowel sounds, which are a characteristic feature of Portuguese among the Romance languages.

I guess it should be saying that the tilded letters are characteristic, no the nasal sounds. Doesn't French have a set of nasals? --Error 01:21, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

-- I tried to correct this, saying that that spelling is a characteristic feature of Portuguese. I (boldly) added that some nasal diphthongs are a characteristic feature of Portuguese. Correct me if other languages have these phonemes. From the article about French phonology on Wikipedia, it seems that the nasal sounds they use are usually different from the Portuguese ones (Portuguese nasal vowels are more closed and doesn't have some rounded vowels), but i don't know much about phonlogy... --Yuu en 22:52, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

French has a four of nasals, but we have none of them in Portuguese. José San Martin 14:15, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Wrong. One of the nasal vowels of French also exists in Portuguese. :-) FilipeS 18:24, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Which one? José San Martin 23:52, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

I was going to say [õ], but looking in the French phonology page it seems I was mistaken. French has [ɔ̃], the nasalized close-mid back unrounded vowel instead. They sound quite similar. My apologies. FilipeS 11:30, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Correction, I meant the open-mid back rounded vowel FilipeS 18:20, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

The alleged complexity of the orthography

"Indeed, much of the orthographic complexity of the language results from the struggle by the national spelling reform authorities to define a single written language for the whole Lusitanic or Lusophone community."

The successive spelling reforms have in fact simplified the spelling, by reducing the number of diacritics and silent consonants, not complicated it. FilipeS 20:46, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

• when a language has more than one million speakers, one starts to see a sizable variation in the speech, maybe the author meant that. Although the tendency is to simplify because of that, as you said. -Pedro 20:12, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Article in need of slimming

This article is far too long and needlessly complicated. Compare it with other articles for language alphabets. It needs to be severely scaled down. FilipeS 19:18, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

The contents of this page remind me of Writing system of Spanish. Perhaps an alternative would be to rename it. FilipeS 23:09, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Cleanup and split

I've made a major cleanup, but the article still seems too large for an alphabet. Sigh. Perhaps "Portuguese orthography" does deserve an article of its own. FilipeS 21:49, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

I've taken the previous content of this article to a new page, Orthography of Portuguese, which seems more appropriate, given that articles about Latin-derived alphabets normally concern characters, rather than pronunciation. FilipeS 17:15, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Why merge?

Portuguese keyboard layout seems to have been merged here. How come? Since the keyboard layout is such a clear, concrete, well-defined topic, it would seem better off as a distinct article, to me. And it doesn't really have much to do with the "alphabet" per se. Stevage 00:07, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Sorry about the lateness of the reply. I don't know. What you say makes some sense, but then I don't see that many independent articles for keyboard layouts at Category:Keyboard layouts... FilipeS 22:25, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Digraphs

Guys, and the portuguese digraphs...? E.g.: ss, rr, sc, qu, gu, lh, nh, etc. The pronunciation of digraphs are similary a independent letters. --201.19.189.38 02:39, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

They are not counted as letters in the Portuguese orthography. Nevertheless, I've brought them back, though I must say I'm still unsure on what to bring here, and what to keep at Portuguese orthography. FilipeS 21:33, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

The Portuguese alphabet consists of the following 26 Latin letters

From January they add three letters. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.86.104.115 (talk) 01:21, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

It isn't official yet. FilipeS (talk) 15:43, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

It is official from 2009! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.0.54.25 (talk) 07:24, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

Wrong, and the article introduction was wrong. I've now corrected it: only 23 letters in Portugal until the 1990 Agreement becomes law, expected sometime in 2009. Someone please check for inconsistencies in the rest of the article. --maf (talk-cont) 11:25, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

In fact, only in Brazil the Portuguese Alphabet has 26 letters, since 1990 Agreement became law (approved in September 2008) in January 1st, 2009. But old 23-letter alphabet (from 1943 Orthographic Statute - valid only in Brazil) remains valid until December 31, 2012. Thenceforth, Brazil will have only a 26-letter alphabet and the other countries will remain with 23-letter one. Fasouzafreitas (talk) 12:18, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

R

At the start of syllables (in all dialects) or at the end of syllables (in some dialects of BP), a single r is pronounced /ʁ/ (see the notes on the Consonants below, for variants of this sound). Elsewhere, it is pronounced /ɾ/. Word final rhotics may also be silent when the last syllables is stressed, in casual speech, especially in Brazil (states of Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro) and some African countries.

I believe there is an error. I thought those single r's are pronounced /ʁ/ in places like portugal. That in Brasil it is pronounced like /χ/, with some pronouncing it even closer to /h/. If I had a reference handy I would cite it and make the change myself. Sorry to push work off like that :) --— robbiemuffin ^{page talk} 11:51, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

If you're talking about word final "r", it's not an error. FilipeS (talk) 16:27, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

It is not in all Brazilian dialects. In Rio de Janeiro the /ʁ/ is clearly gutural rangido, that is, a "trilled guttural". Ask any carioca how he or she would pronounce rindo, raio, rua, roça, rã, horrendo and marrom. The [ɦ] is limited to a few words as mesmo (giggles). I think that this transcription is dominant exactly because fluminense is the standard dialect of Brazilian Portuguese for all phonemes but /s/ and /ɐ/ where we are said to approach Portugal too much. And since it is deemed as the same phoneme of nadar no mar or tirar do armário ([ɦ]/silent, [ɦ], [ʁ] and [χ] here respectively), the transcriptions use the standard /ʁ/. The same happens in Portugal, where the phonemes are not our [x], [ɣ], [χ], [ʁ], [h], [ɦ], etc. but [r], [ʀ], [ʁ] and recently [χ]. That is, in both countries, the guttural rhotic can be pronounced in a wide diversity of ways, so there is a single symbol to represent all those sounds which occupy the same place in the Portuguese language. Lguipontes (talk) 12:02, 10 April 2012 (UTC)