Appendix talk:Portuguese pronunciation

Canonical transcription

@Ungoliant MMDCCLXIV olá! nice to see you editing again, estava com saudades. I'm just learning IPA basics and had a look how our entries are transcribed. Just wondering, what makes a transcription "canonical" (first column)? What are the standard works for Portuguese? – Jberkel 00:10, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

Hey @Jberkel. These transcription standards are canonical only from the perspective of Wiktionary. There are no established phonological transcription systems for Portuguese in the same way that something like Upton’s Scheme exists for English. In fact, not even the use of IPA is as well established, since the alphabet provides the tools to transcribe underlying segments with little ambiguity for a variety of dialects.

When I wrote this page, I wanted to codify existing practices so that transcriptions tagged with {{a|Brazil}} or {{a|Portugal}} would be consistent. The majority of correct European transcriptions at the time had been added by Liuscomaes (talk • contribs), and most Brazilian transcriptions had been added by me.

Both schemes strongly “hug the phonetic ground”. I remember some people complaining about Liuscomaes’ use of ɣ and ð for what are usually considered allophones of /ɡ/ and /d/. My own scheme is not without similar issues; for example, [d] and [d͡ʒ] are often considered allophones, as are [a] and [ɐ]. However, our “every word in every language” policy means that we must include special cases like DJ, azerbaidjano and caminha that can be ignored by people writing short articles or simplified abstract systems.

If you’re interested in reading more about the phonology of Brazilian Portuguese, the names that pop up most often in citations are Leda Bisol and Milton Azevedo. I do not know who the foremost researchers on European Portuguese phonology are.

— Ungoliant ^(falai) 03:02, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

Hi! I am a native speaker of Brazilian Portuguese and have been editing articles of words in the language, so I noticed quirks like this. [d] and [d͡ʒ] are considered allophones, yes, but of /d/ to my understanding. And /d/ is a phoneme separate to /d͡ʒ/, which came from those loanwords that have it. --Gmestanley (talk) 02:46, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

Accent in Portugal's Norte

Like in Galician, in the Portuguese region of Norte, it's customary, to pronounce /v/ as /b/. Should those case be dealt in any way? - Sarilho1 (talk) 22:24, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

The letter R

Should we really be citing every single way of pronouncing the R in every single word? I think it could be simply noted somewhere in this appendix page, and left out of the actual pages. 189.76.49.102 20:12, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

• I mean, we don't note every type of pronunciation in the English IPA transcriptions either, so why should we do that here? 2804:22C:F650:B900:39A3:8B1D:5229:4A98 06:34, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

Intrusive nasal labio-velar/palatal approximants' criteria

There are actually set situations were we add nasal /j/ and /w/ into words. I'll be explaining them informally. So, nasal /e/ and /o/ happen when they come before an N or an M. In that case, the nasals will be added. However, if AFTER the N or M, there is a vowel, then that doesn't happen. So on words like ônibus, Emily, or Jenifer, they don't get added, but they do get added on words like ontem, concorrência, and expoente. 2804:22C:F650:B900:FDEA:65B4:EA00:7609 18:55, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

• By the way, this happens every time said words appear, and some words become unrecognizable if the nasal approximants aren't pronounced.