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From: beesley@xerox.fr (Ken Beesley)
Subject: Re: Brazil v. Portugal
Message-ID: <1995Sep27.111632@xerox.fr>
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References: <3535966107.172780138@troubbs.org> <4496cv$dh9@ss1.cam.nist.gov> <449e73$gjv@ixnews4.ix.netcom.com>
Date: Wed, 27 Sep 1995 10:16:32 GMT
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In article <449e73$gjv@ixnews4.ix.netcom.com>, cpinette@ix.netcom.com (R. C. Pinette) writes:
|> In <4496cv$dh9@ss1.cam.nist.gov> koontz@cam.nist.gov (John E Koontz)
|> writes: 
|> 
|> >I think there are more than two dialects ...  but there are two
|> >national standards, which do differ.
|> >
|> >Have you run into the Brazilian dialect where they pronounce "r" as
|> /h/?
|> >
|> I spoke with someone speaking Portuguese yesterday and she pronounced
|> the r as an h.  I thought it rude to ask her about it.  Which dialect
|> uses that form of pronounciation?
|> 
|> Chris

There are two 'r' phonemes in Portuguese (in both the Continental and
Brazilian varieties).  One, as in "caro" is the alveolar tap.  The other
so-called double r is realized either as an alveolar trill, a
uvular trill, a velar fricative, or even something very like
an English h.  This latter pronunciation is often heard in Rio
de Janeiro and is a variant of the velar fricative.  Orthographically,
this "double r" is written within words as 'rr', e.g. carro.  It
is, however, a single phoneme.

A typical Carioca (resident of Rio) will pronounce these example
words as follows:
	caro		/'karu/
	carro		/'kahu/

Spanish has two parallel phonemes.  In Spanish as well, the "single r"
is pretty reliably pronounced as an alveolar tap, and the "double r"
pronunciation varies among dialects.

The alveolar tap (single r) PHONEME never occurs at the beginning of
words, but the "double r" PHONEME often does.  Orthographically, the
double r phoneme is represented as a single 'r' at the beginning
of words.  Same in Spanish.

So the initial 'r' in a word like "rpido" (the second letter is
an 'a' with an acute accent, in case it doesn't display correctly
on your screen)  is the same phoneme
as in "carro".  In Rio de Janeiro, you will hear

	rpido		/'hapidu/

In a word like "raro" (= English rare), the first orthographical
'r' represents the "double r" phoneme, and the one inside the
word is the alveolar tap.

-- 

*******************************************************************
Kenneth R. Beesley			ken.beesley@xerox.fr
Rank Xerox Research Centre
6, chemin de Maupertuis
38240 MEYLAN, France
