English Pronunciation for Portuguese Speakers

"Bigui" for big. "Hed" for red. A ship that sounds like sheep. If Portuguese is your first language, you have probably heard at least one of these, and if you teach English in São Paulo, Recife or Porto Alegre, you hear all three every week.

None of them is random. Each one is a rule of Portuguese pronunciation applied to an English word, so each one has a fix. David Shepherd, who wrote the chapter on Portuguese speakers in Swan and Smith's Learner English, opens his section on pronunciation with the vowels: "The English and Portuguese vowel systems are quite different." The consonants add a second list, and most of it comes from what Portuguese allows at the end of a syllable.

This guide is written for Brazilian Portuguese speakers first. Shepherd also notes that "the pronunciation of the two varieties is very different", so a short section near the end says what changes if your Portuguese is from Portugal. Teachers will find a section on what to drill first. The facts about Portuguese come from standard descriptions of its sound system, and the substitutions are documented ones (see Sources at the end).

This guide is also available in Brazilian Portuguese as Pronúncia em inglês para brasileiros: erros comuns, and the English to IPA converter has a Portuguese edition with its own Portuguese-language pages.

About the transcriptions. Every table gives a US and a UK form from a pronunciation lexicon IPAtics maintains, printed exactly as it appears there. The US column puts a stress mark before the stressed syllable even in one-syllable words (big is /ˈbɪɡ/) and marks no vowel length. The UK column marks length with ː and often leaves stress out. Both write the English r as /ɹ/.

The extra i: big, book, club

Most Portuguese syllables end in a vowel. In native words, the only consonants that can close one are s, r and l, plus the nasals, and in Brazil the l turns into [w] and the nasals into nasal vowels. An English word that ends in /ɡ/, /k/ or /b/ breaks that rule, and Brazilian Portuguese repairs it the way it repairs borrowed words: it adds an [i]. Descriptions of Brazilian Portuguese give English loans such as pug and love with that final vowel, and a study of thirty Brazilian learners reading English (Bettoni-Techio and Koerich, 2006) describes the same epenthesis in their English.

The extra vowel adds a syllable, and that can change the word. Liked is one syllable, /ˈlaɪkt/; with a vowel after each final consonant, it becomes three.

Two fixes help. First, stop the sound instead of releasing it: close the lips for /p/ or /b/, or press the back of the tongue up for /k/ or /ɡ/, and hold the closure for a moment before you let go, without a vowel. Second, link: when the next word starts with a vowel, move the consonant onto it. Big apple becomes "bi-gapple" and stop it becomes "sto-pit". The consonant then starts a syllable, which Portuguese handles well.

The same rule works at the start of a word. Portuguese never begins a word with s plus a consonant (it writes escola, estudante), so school and student can grow an extra vowel in front. Start with a long hiss, "sssss-kool", and shorten it until the vowel is gone. Our guide for Spanish speakers covers this in more detail, because Spanish has the same rule.

t and d before i: tip and chip

In most of Brazil, t and d before an [i] sound turn into the sounds of English ch and j: tia begins like cheer and dia like jeer. English does not do this, so a Brazilian tip can sound like chip and deep like jeep.

The UK column writes the affricates with a tie bar, /t͡ʃ/ and /d͡ʒ/; they are the same sounds as the US /tʃ/ and /dʒ/.

It also happens at the end of a word, combined with the extra vowel: night can come out as "naitchi". Bettoni-Techio and Koerich studied exactly this, word-final t and d in Brazilian learners' English, and found it tied to the learner's own dialect: speakers whose Portuguese does not palatalize did not do it in English either. If your Portuguese says tia with a plain t, as some regional accents do, this section is not your problem.

The fix is to release the tongue cleanly. Put the tip on the ridge behind the upper teeth, as for ta, and keep it there while you think of the vowel. Say ta, ta, ta, then tip, with the same clean pop and no hiss after it.

r and h: red and head

The Brazilian r of rato and carro is usually made at the back of the mouth or in the throat, as some kind of [h], [x] or [χ]. Used for an English r, it sounds to English ears like /h/, so red turns into head:

Brazilian Portuguese gives you three useful sounds here.

1. The English h is your r. Most Brazilians already say [h] or something close to it in carro. The problem is not the sound but where it goes: use it wherever English writes h, and never for English r. Portuguese never pronounces a written h, so words like hi and holiday need the sound added.
2. The English r may already be in your Portuguese. In the interior of São Paulo state and nearby regions, the r of porta is an English-like approximant: the tongue curls up without touching. If that is your accent, use that r at the start of English words too. If not, say a long "eeeee" and slowly curl the tongue tip up and back without letting it touch.
3. The American t of water is your r of caro. American English often pronounces the t between vowels in city, water and better as a quick tap, [ɾ], the same sound as the single r in caro. The page for the tap has audio.

The page for the English r has more words to practise with.

m, n and ng at the end

Portuguese writes m and n at the end of words like bom, sim and tem, but does not pronounce them as consonants: the vowel becomes nasal and the lips and tongue never close. In English the closure is the word. Sum, sun and sung differ only in where the mouth closes at the end, and with a nasal vowel instead, all three sound alike.

Say each word slowly and finish it with the consonant, held for a moment: close the lips completely for /m/, press the tongue tip to the ridge behind the teeth for /n/, raise the back of the tongue for /ŋ/. Keep the vowel before it a plain English vowel, not a Portuguese nasal vowel. The page for /ŋ/ has audio.

l at the end: milk, feel, people

In most of Brazil, an l at the end of a syllable becomes [w]: Brasil ends in the [w] at the end of how. Carried into English, milk turns into "miuk" and feel into "fiu". English keeps the tongue tip on the ridge behind the teeth, with the back of the tongue raised.

The test is your tongue tip: at the end of feel, it should be touching the ridge, not resting. The last pair has a second trap: cold and called also differ in the vowel, and Brazilian learners can merge them, especially with a British model: British /əʊ/ is harder to hear than American /oʊ/, which is close to the Portuguese diphthong ou said in full.

Vowels: short and long, open and close

Shepherd's point about the vowel systems shows most clearly in two places.

Portuguese i is close to the vowel of sheep, so ship drifts toward it. For /ɪ/, relax the tongue and drop it slightly, halfway toward Portuguese ê, and keep it short. Do the same for /ʊ/, from Portuguese u toward ô.

The second trap is the open front vowels. Brazilian é, as in café, is often pronounced quite open, close to English /æ/, which makes /æ/ and /ɛ/ easy to swap in both directions:

Put a finger on your chin: it should drop clearly further for bad than for bed. Our list of English minimal pairs every learner confuses has more pairs for each contrast.

th

Portuguese has neither English th, and Brazilian speakers fill the gap three ways: with /f/ and /v/, with /t/ and /d/, or with /s/ and /z/. Thick can come out as "fick", "tick" or "sick".

Put the tip of your tongue lightly between your teeth and blow: that is /θ/. Add your voice for /ð/. Our guide to the two th sounds has more pairs and a step-by-step routine.

Stress and the schwa

Portuguese has word stress, as English does, so the idea is familiar. The trouble is cognates: the spelling matches a Portuguese word, and the Portuguese stress comes with it.

The UK entries leave stress unmarked, but it falls on the first syllable of all eight words in both accents. Look at the vowels too: the unstressed ones shrink to the schwa /ə/ or vanish, so chocolate and vegetable each lose a syllable that the spelling still shows. Brazilian Portuguese reduces unstressed vowels much less than English does, and full vowels in place of the schwa are on Pronunciation Studio's list of typical Portuguese-speaker errors. Our guide to the English schwa covers the reduced vowel.

If your Portuguese is from Portugal

European Portuguese changes the list in four places.

• No palatalization. Tia and dia keep a plain t and d, so tip and chip are not a problem.
• Strong vowel reduction. European Portuguese weakens unstressed vowels heavily (presidente is [pɾɨziˈðẽtɨ] in Portugal and [pɾeziˈdẽtʃi] in Brazil), so the idea of English weak syllables is closer to home.
• A different r. The r of rato is usually uvular, [ʁ], rather than an [h]. It is still not an English r, and the same fix applies.
• A dark l. European Portuguese l is velarized in every position, like the English l of feel, and it does not turn into [w], so the milk and feel section mostly does not apply.

The sections on the vowels, final m and n, th, stress and h apply to both varieties.

For teachers: what to drill first

1. Final consonants and the extra vowel. It adds syllables to everyday words, including most regular past tenses. Drill linking (stop it, big apple) alongside the bare word.
2. The vowels: ship and sheep, then bad and bed. Start with listening: students who cannot hear the difference cannot practise it.
3. r and h. Students already have [h]; the task is to move it from r words to h words.
4. Final m and n, with the sum, sun, sung set.
5. Stress and the schwa with every new word, and th and t before i as they come up.

Pair work makes each item a listening game: one student says a word from a pair, the other points to it.

A four-week plan

1. Week 1: endings. Twenty words that end in a consonant; say each one, then link it to a word that starts with a vowel.
2. Week 2: the vowels. The ship table first, then bad and bed with a finger on your chin.
3. Week 3: r, h and final m and n. Hand in front of the mouth for h, tongue off the roof of the mouth for r, lips closed at the end of sum.
4. Week 4: stress and th. Check the stress of every cognate you use, and practise the th pairs.

Record yourself each week and listen back. You cannot hear your own accent while you speak, but you can hear it on a recording.

Trying it yourself

The tables cover the patterns; the words you meet every day are the practice. IPAtics shows the IPA for any text you select, in any app, with one hotkey, and plays the word, so you can check a vowel, an ending or a stress mark the moment you read it. To convert text in the browser without installing anything, paste it into the English to IPA converter and choose US or UK. The interactive IPA chart plays every symbol, and our comparison of American and British IPA helps you choose a model.

Sources

• Shepherd, David. "Portuguese speakers." In Michael Swan and Bernard Smith (eds.), Learner English: A Teacher's Guide to Interference and Other Problems, 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp. 113–128. doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511667121.009. The source of the two quotations.
• Bettoni-Techio, Melissa and Rosana Denise Koerich. "Palatalization in Brazilian Portuguese/English interphonology." Revista Virtual de Estudos da Linguagem (ReVEL) 4(7), 2006. lingbuzz/000503. Thirty Brazilian learners reading English: the added vowel after final consonants, and final t and d palatalized only by speakers whose Portuguese palatalizes.
• Wikipedia, "Non-native pronunciations of English", Portuguese section: ship and sheep, Brazilian é heard as /æ/, the three th substitutes, r heard as h, final nasals, palatalized t and d, and cold and called.
• Pronunciation Studio, "Portuguese Speakers' English Pronunciation Errors": a London pronunciation school's list that adds the dropped h, /d/ turned into /dʒ/, and full vowels in place of the schwa.
• Wikipedia, "Portuguese phonology": which consonants can end a syllable, the added [i] in loans such as pug and love, the realizations of r in Brazil and Portugal, /l/ as [w] in Brazil, palatalized t and d, and the reduced vowels of European Portuguese.