Brazilian Portuguese Pronunciation: The Hardest Sounds Explained (1-Hour Class)

So let's start with, uh, difficult sounds for English speakers.

Um, I think this is most of you.

Most of my students they are-- students they are English speakers, and I know you thought about this, [laughs] the nasal sounds.

This is the most challenging category of sounds that English speakers struggle with.

Uh, and, uh, when you talk about nasal sounds, we are referring to nasal vowels because you have no issues pronouncing the consonants.

The consonants are easy to pronounce, the N and the M, but the vowels, the nasal vowels, they are tricky.

And we have five nasal vowels in Portuguese.

Uh, you see all these vowels here, A, É, I, Ó, U.

Uh, you can pronounce them, uh, in a oral way, like through your mouth only.

They are called oral sounds.

A, É, I, Ó, U, right? Uh, this is not difficult.

You, you got that.

But then all these vowels, they have a nasal pronunciation, and they are considered true nasal vowels, which is different from English and, uh, uh, I don't know, other languages, but they don't require a nasal consonant to be nasal.

Like in English, we do have nasal sounds, right? But only if there is a nasal consonant, like M or N or the NG sound, right? Ng.

But in Portuguese, we don't need the consonant to have nasal vowels.

They are true nasal vowels, and they stand by themselves.

So I'll pronounce these vowels, and I requ-- I ask you to repeat after me.

I know it's challenging, but try to produce the sounds with me.

So all these vowels, they have a nasal sound.

So this one is ã, ã, ê, ê, î, î, õ, õ, um, um.

So five nasal vowels, ã, ê, î, õ, um.

There is no consonant sound, no M or no-- and no N.

But, [laughs] uh, for English speakers, there is a trick that I learned actually from my students, [laughs] um, that if you just add like a, a very subtle N or N at the end, right? The, the mi-- the same sound that we have in the word sing, right? Singing, like sing, that sound N at the end.

You could use that.

That is not exactly what we do in Portuguese.