By: CHRIS GRAEME
TRY TO think back to the first time you ever heard Portuguese. Did it sound like a Latin language? Did it, to the ear, seem to have anything in common with Italian, Spanish or French?
I suspect the answer might be no. I remember, the first time I heard the language I was on the London underground and, having studied Russian, I thought it sounded like some obscure, Eastern European Slavonic language!
So just what is it that makes Portuguese sound so different from other Latin languages? Why is it so difficult to learn and where did it come from in the first place?
To find out I asked a woman who has spent her entire adult life teaching Portuguese and has developed her own special method called ‘Pois… Pois.’
Language school
Margarida Alberty started the first Portuguese language school for foreigners in Estoril 27 years ago and knows the language inside out.
For Margarida, there are three aspects that make the language particularly difficult: the pronunciation, the grammar and the elision – the tendency to leave out the sound of a letter or the part of a word.
But first, a brief note on where the language originated from. Modern Portuguese developed from Galico-Portuguese, a dead language whose nearest living relative is Galego, spoken in Galiza (Galicia) in northern Spain.
If you’re wondering why Portuguese is called just that, then it’s because the Roman name for the Porto region was Portus Cale, which, under Castilian dominance, later became Condado Portucalense and finally Portugal with independence in 1143.
This brings us to the period of ‘Old Portuguese’ which developed from the 12th to the 14th century. Of course that’s grossly oversimplifying things if you begin to delve into the influences of Celtic, Carthaginian, Arabic, Visigoth, Suevi and umpteen other languages brought in by invaders over the centuries.
Now the history lesson is over, it’s on with the pronunciation. The sounds ão, ões and ães as seen in cão, mão, pão and simões, limões, previsões, and cães, mães and pães are all particularly difficult nasal sounds to master with the (~) or tilde originally being where the ‘n’ sound in Spanish is today (las manos/as mãos).
Then there comes the problem of the vowel sounds and diphthongs which drive foreigners crazy: a, ãe, ai, ão, au, â, ã, e, ê, é, ei, eu, i, o, ô, ó, õ, oi, ou, u; not to mention the unusual consonants for English speakers such as lh, nh, and sch and the myriad of rules and exceptions.
One only has to think of the difference between zé and vê, or dente (where the ‘e’ goes unpronounced), Mário (with a stressed á), ama (nanny/nurse) and irmã (sister).
Portuguese is guttural with ‘d’ and ‘t’ distinctly pronounced, which is why the Portuguese find it hard not to over stress the ‘ed’ endings of many English words.
Then there’s the pronunciation problems of some Portuguese words beginning with ‘es’ where the ‘es’ is pronounced as sch, such as in Estoril (schtoril).
In Portuguese ‘h’ is hardly pronounced like a ‘ha’ or ‘huh’ as in English but rather more like an ‘o’ or ‘e’ or ‘a’ – try getting the Portuguese to recite that old chestnut: ‘In Hertford, Hereford and Hampshire, hurricanes hardly ever happen.’
Grammar
Next comes the grammar: the Portuguese don’t have the same Present Perfect usage as in English, so they find that ‘I have just been to London’ hard to understand as a concept in English. Many foreigners find it equally hard to master the Portuguese Present Perfect such as ‘tenho trabalhado muito’ ‘I’ve been working a lot’ corresponding to the Present Perfect Continuous in English).
Then just think of the confusion caused by estive, estava, era and fui not to mention the 22 different tenses of which the subjunctive mood is notoriously difficult to learn. For example the fact the Portuguese say: ‘é importante nós sermos amigos’ and NOT, as many a poor foreigner says”é importante que nós somos”, as the correct way of saying is “é importante que nós sejamos” (Use of Present Subjunctive Tense”).
And all this is before we even mention the many forms of ‘him.’ For example – Eles convidam-no, tu vê-lo, eu vejo-o, eu gosto dele, eu falo com ele, eu disse-lhe, etc.
Then the habit, which exists in all languages, of running words together or dropping sounds known as ‘elision.’
Está bem (ok/alright) becomes tá bem (which sounds like também) while espera aí (wait) becomes peraíe and muito obrigado becomes tóbrigad.
An interesting story is why the Portuguese say ‘tou’ (Estou/I am) on the telephone and not olá or some other word.
“That’s because when the first phones came out and the lines were bad people in Portugal used to say ‘tou’ (estou) or in other words ‘I’m still here, can you hear me?’” AND “Tá”says Margarida.
“Basic Portuguese is like advanced English, it’s really hard at the beginning, whereas a Portuguese can pick up a lot of English easily to begin with but has problems later on, especially with prepositions and phrasal verbs,” she concludes.
Margarida’s School is in Avenida Portugal 616C in Estoril. Further information about the school can be found by clicking on the web link on the top right.
