European Portuguese

European Portuguese (, ), also known as Lusitanian Portuguese () or as the Portuguese (language) of Portugal (), refers to the dialects of the Portuguese language spoken in Portugal. The word "European" was chosen to avoid the clash of "Portuguese Portuguese" ("'") as opposed to Brazilian Portuguese. "Peninsular Portuguese" () and "Iberian Portuguese" () are sometimes used, but they implicitly exclude the varieties of Portuguese spoken in Madeira and the Azores.

Portuguese is a pluricentric language; it is the same language with several interacting codified standard forms in many countries. Portuguese is a Romance language with Celtic, Germanic, Greek, and Arabic influence. It was spoken in the Iberian Peninsula before as Galician-Portuguese. With the formation of Portugal as a country in the 12th century, the language evolved into Portuguese. In the Spanish province of Galicia to the north of Portugal, the native language is Galician. Both Portuguese and Galician are very similar and natives can understand each other as they share the same recent common ancestor. Portuguese and Spanish are different languages, although they share 89% of their lexicon.

Phonology

Vowels

Vowel classification

Portuguese uses vowel height to contrast stressed syllables with unstressed syllables; the vowels tend to be raised to when they are unstressed (see below for details). The dialects of Portugal are characterized by reducing vowels to a greater extent than others. Falling diphthongs are composed of a vowel followed by one of the high vowels or ; although rising diphthongs occur in the language as well, they can be interpreted as hiatuses.

European Portuguese possesses quite a wide range of vowel allophones:
* All vowels are lowered and retracted before .
* All vowels are raised and advanced before alveolar, palato-alveolar and palatal consonants.
* Word-finally, as well as unstressed and are voiceless .

The realization of in this contrast occurs in a limited morphological context, namely in verbal conjugation between the first person plural present and past perfect indicative forms of verbs such as ('we think') and ('we thought'). proposes that it is a kind of crasis rather than phonemic distinction of and . It means that in 'we speak' there is the expected prenasal -raising: , while in 'we spoke' there are phonologically two in crasis: . Close-mid vowels and open-mid vowels ( and ) contrast only when they are stressed. In unstressed syllables, they occur in complementary distribution.

According to Mateus and d'Andrade (2000:19), in European Portuguese, the stressed only occurs in the following three contexts:
* Before a palatal consonant (such as )
* Before the palatal front glide (such as )
* Before a nasal consonant (such as )

In Greater Lisbon (according to NUTS III, which does not include Setúbal) can be centralized before palatal sounds (); e.g. , , , , .

European Portuguese "e caduc"

European Portuguese possesses a near-close near-back unrounded vowel. It occurs in unstressed syllables such as in ('to grip'). There is no standard symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet for this sound. The ''IPA Handbook'' transcribes it as , but in Portuguese studies is traditionally used.

*Traditionally, it is pronounced when "e" is unstressed; e.g. , .
*However, if "e" is initial, then it is pronounced ; e.g. , .
*When "e" is adjacent to another vowel, it becomes ; e.g. .
*However, notice that when the ''e caduc'' is preceded by a semi-vowel, it may become , .
*For the most part, unstressed "i" is not lowered to . However, when it is adjacent to a palatal consonant, , or to in the preceding/following syllable, it usually does become . E.g. , , , , , .
* The Portuguese ''e caduc'' may be elided, becoming in some instances a syllabic consonant; e.g. , , , , , , , , .

There are very few minimal pairs for this sound: some examples include ('to nail') vs. ('to preach'; the latter stemming from earlier < Latin ), ('be!') vs. ('see/cathedral') vs. ('if'), and ('hair') vs. ('I peel off') vs. ('for the'), after orthographic changes, all these three words are now spelled .

Consonants

Geographic variation

European Portuguese is divided into Northern and Southern varieties. The prestige norms are based on two varieties: that of Coimbra and that of Lisbon.

Phonetically, differences emerge within Continental Portuguese. For example, in northern Portugal, the phonemes and are less differentiated than in the rest of the Portuguese speaking world (similar to the other languages of the Iberian peninsula). Also, the original alveolar trill remains common in many northern dialects (especially in rural areas), like Transmontano, Portuense, Minhoto, and much of Beirão. Another regionalism can be found in the south and the islands with the use of the gerund in the present progressive tense rather than the infinitive.

Portuguese is spoken by a significant minority in Andorra and Luxembourg. There are also immigrant communities in France and Germany.

Prominence

The Instituto Camões is a Portuguese international institution dedicated to the worldwide promotion of the Portuguese language, Portuguese culture, and international aid, on behalf of the Government of Portugal.

RTP is the Portuguese public television network and also serves as a vehicle for European-Portuguese-providing media content throughout the world. There is a branch of RTP Internacional named RTP África, which serves Lusophone Africa.

In estimating the size of the speech community for European Portuguese, one must take into account the consequences of the Portuguese diaspora: immigrant communities located throughout the world in the Americas, Australia, Europe and Africa.

See also

* Portuguese language
* Acordo Ortográfico da Língua Portuguesa de 1990
* Macanese Portuguese
* Indian Portuguese
* Malaccan Creole Portuguese
* Galician Portuguese
* Cape Verdean Portuguese

References

Works cited

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External links

Description of the pronunciation rules of European Portuguese



* ttp://european-portuguese.info/ Tables with the pronunciation of each vowel and consonant letter in European Portuguese
Article on variation in European Portuguese

On gerund clauses of Portuguese dialects

{{Romance languages

Portuguese dialects
Stress-timed languages
Articles containing video clips