devoiced R?

[pimlicodude]

I'm watching the dubbed version of the Portuguese series Rabo de Peixe. They pronounce it throughout /χɑb pɛʃ/. I was expecting the R to be /ʁ/. Do you agree the R can be devoiced in Portuguese? Maybe it should be /ʁ̥/ and not /χ/, although there doesn't seem to be much difference.

 

[guihenning]

The voiceless uvular fricative is not uncommon in Portugal. I don’t know the exact distribution, I don’t know whether there is one, but the /χ/ does occur.

P.S did you really hear /pɛʃ/ instead of /pɐjʃ ~ pejʃ/ ?

 

[pimlicodude]

The voiceless uvular fricative is not uncommon in Portugal. I don’t know the exact distribution, I don’t know whether there is one, but the /χ/ does occur.

P.S did you really hear /pɛʃ/ instead of /pɐjʃ ~ pejʃ/ ?

Well, I'm not referring to the original Portuguese-language audio, but rather the audio dubbed into English. I don't know who read the dialogue in English in the dubbed version - were they Portuguese people who speak English, or were they Americans? But it could have been /pejʃ/. It was normally two syllables, Rab Peix, not "Rabo de Peixe". The series is a Netflix series set in the Azores.

 

[Alentugano]

Did you hear something like "ráb-pêsh"? if that's the case that's how locals would pronounce Rabo de Peixe.

 

[pimlicodude]

Did you hear something like "ráb-pêsh"? if that's the case that's how locals would pronounce Rabo de Peixe.

Yes, that was it.

 

[Donn]

I saw a couple episodes in Portuguese, and as best as I can recall, the Rs were big city standard, which to my ear is unvoiced /χ/. Though it varies a lot - it can vary from soft, somewhat Brazilian sounding (especially young people) to a nasty sound like stepping on a crab (TV.) (And I've seen someone on RTP pronounce R three different ways in almost the same sentence - alveolar trill, uvular trill, and that unvoiced crab thing.)

Though perhaps R was similar, no one in the film had the distinctive Azorean accent, they all could have been from Lisbon as far as I noticed. There's at least one island where they sound to me like they have a strong French accent. Maybe just that A is quite long, including "ã".

 

[guihenning]

uvular trill

That's the standard Portuguese variant, but since the language is strongly prone to assimilation, I wouldn't be too surprised if the trill were shifted to /χ/ next to voiceless consonants and so just like /s ~ ʃ/ do...

Well, I'm not referring to the original Portuguese-language audio, but rather the audio dubbed into English. I don't know who read the dialogue in English in the dubbed version - were they Portuguese people who speak English, or were they Americans? But it could have been /pejʃ/. It was normally two syllables, Rab Peix, not "Rabo de Peixe". The series is a Netflix series set in the Azores.

Oh, I see it… maybe the voice actors were trying to mimic the original pronunciation whenever they spoke the name of the series or something like that. I haven't watched it, so I don't know, but Alentugano just gave us a rather interesting clue.

 

[Donn]

That's the standard Portuguese variant, but since the language is strongly prone to assimilation, I wouldn't be too surprised if the trill were shifted to /χ/ next to voiceless consonants and so just like /s ~ ʃ/ do...

What I hear as an uvular trill is fairly rare, anywhere I've been. António Costa, Portuguese Prime Minister, is probably the easiest example to find, though he's not totally reliable, and a few others with political ambitions, making me wonder if some speakers learn to do it somewhat intentionally. The other group is very rural - again, no place I've been, but once in a while they will pop up in TV coverage of some far flung place in Portugal. And to my surprise I recently heard it from a young woman here in Pombal. This is a voiced sound, of course. I find it quite tricky to produce, and I'm curious, if it was indeed ever national standard, when was that? How long does it take for 1) that sound to almost disappear, and 2) for the standard references to become aware?

 

[guihenning]

The alveolar trill /r/ died out in Brazil and Portugal in the 20th Century. Since then, the uvular trill /ʀ/ is the standard in Portugal (well, at least in Lisbon - but the standard pronunciation is the lisboeta, so...) and it's the pronunciation you'll find in dictionaries, in the Dicionário Fonético and so. The Wikipedia page "Portuguese Phonology" says the two realizations in Portugal are /ʀ/ and /χ/ so they're either complementary allophones or one or another occurs in specific phonological environments… It seems /χ/ occurs often at the beginning of words, whereas /ʀ/ usually corresponds to the <rr> in the written language but I must say I'm not a specialist in EUR PT phonology and the Portuguese who were good at it disappeared from these forums…

In this video I hear most often /χ/ ~ /x?/ (see at 1:44 min for instance) but the realization seems to be smoother where the orthography is <rr>… In this other video after 7:35 min I hear the trill more often…
The voice actress speaks a very standard variation and however she speaks probably corresponds pretty good to what is considered standard in Portugal, but a Portuguese can tell better…

 

[Donn]

Paulo Marques - 𝑪𝒂𝒏𝒅𝒊𝒅𝒂𝒕𝒐 𝒅𝒐 𝑷𝑺 à 𝑭𝒓𝒆𝒈𝒖𝒆𝒔𝒊𝒂 𝒅𝒆 𝑪𝒖𝒏𝒉𝒂 𝑩𝒂𝒊𝒙𝒂
That's an uvular trill - ca. 0:15, 0:25. From the Mangualde area of Viseu district, north central Portugal. That's what I'm talking about, that one might hear in some parts of the interior and also possibly as a result of intentional adoption. The most striking example I've heard was a narrator on an old film clip, ca. 1920s? which I wish I could find again.

Your narrator in the flower videos manages to voice an uvular fricative, but the typical urban/TV RR does not come across to me as voiced.

In my area a couple districts to the south - Leiria - I rarely hear anything but alveolar trill. I believe that's true of a large part of the country. Naturally the urban/TV pronunciation has a strong influence everywhere, but these trill pronunciations are still predominant in some areas outside Lisbon or Porto. For a plentiful example, Discurso da Presidente da Câmara Municipal da Marinha Grande, Cidália Ferreira

Note that we're talking about R at the beginning of a word, and RR. Before a consonant, here R is alveolar trill - quite often so short that the tongue barely strikes once, but if enunciated it's a trill. Corda rosa will have an alveolar trill in the first word whether it does in the second or not; where in cor da rosa it's a flap (and in my immediate area, among somewhat more rustic speakers, it will sound like core da rosa. That won't appear in the above video, but the trilled pre-consonant R comes through fairly clearly in verdade 2:17 for example.) I believe that's at least very common in Portugal, but it apparently isn't ubiquitous. The gentleman from Mangualde pronounces his name Mare-ques.

It seems to me there may be an area in the very south of Brazil where, unlike most of the rest of the country, final R is different from initial?

 

[guihenning]

That's an uvular trill - ca. 0:15, 0:25.

I heard his Rs as an alveolar trill, though… But it can be tricky to distinguish and it seems like it's harder to recognize sounds properly in one's own language, so my perception isn't totally reliable.

In my area a couple districts to the south - Leiria - I rarely hear anything but alveolar trill. I believe that's true of a large part of the country. Naturally the urban/TV pronunciation has a strong influence everywhere, but these trill pronunciations are still predominant in some areas outside Lisbon or Porto. For a plentiful example, Discurso da Presidente da Câmara Municipal da Marinha Grande, Cidália Ferreira

Yes, I totally agree. My first sentence in the previous post was misleading. I meant to say that the alveolar trill doesn't occur productively anymore (in Lisbon and throughout Brazil), which's why it's said to no longer be standard. In Brazil, it's becoming rarer and rarer to hear it and you can hear it only among boomers in big cities. Every other realization is more predominant these days.

but the trilled pre-consonant R comes through fairly clearly in verdade 2:17 for example.)

I hear a clear tap there as well

It seems to me there may be an area in the very south of Brazil where, unlike most of the rest of the country, final R is different from initial?

Except for some areas of Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro and in the Northeast, everywhere in the country the final R is different from the initial. In São Paulo, for instance, initial <r> and middle <rr> are usually |h|, but the final R is a light tap (see after 00:20 here): "corredores, saídas de emergência e a primeira fila devem estar livres de bagagem". A retroflex R (like the American) is also common in syllable coda, but it's forbidden as word-initial phoneme and doesn't occur where orthographically there's <rr>…

 

[Donn]

I heard his Rs as an alveolar trill, though… But it can be tricky to distinguish and it seems like it's harder to recognize sounds properly in one's own language, so my perception isn't totally reliable.

I'm not sure what really happened here - I find that the link is not right.

This sound can be very similar to the alveolar trill, as they are, in fact, both trills. Not fricatives, or anything like stepping on a crab.

 

[J. Bailica]

Paulo Marques - 𝑪𝒂𝒏𝒅𝒊𝒅𝒂𝒕𝒐 𝒅𝒐 𝑷𝑺 à 𝑭𝒓𝒆𝒈𝒖𝒆𝒔𝒊𝒂 𝒅𝒆 𝑪𝒖𝒏𝒉𝒂 𝑩𝒂𝒊𝒙𝒂
That's an uvular trill - ca. 0:15, 0:25. From the Mangualde area of Viseu district, north central Portugal. That's what I'm talking about, that one might hear in some parts of the interior and also possibly as a result of intentional adoption. The most striking example I've heard was a narrator on an old film clip, ca. 1920s? which I wish I could find again.

Your narrator in the flower videos manages to voice an uvular fricative, but the typical urban/TV RR does not come across to me as voiced.

In my area a couple districts to the south - Leiria - I rarely hear anything but alveolar trill. I believe that's true of a large part of the country. Naturally the urban/TV pronunciation has a strong influence everywhere, but these trill pronunciations are still predominant in some areas outside Lisbon or Porto. For a plentiful example, Discurso da Presidente da Câmara Municipal da Marinha Grande, Cidália Ferreira

Note that we're talking about R at the beginning of a word, and RR. Before a consonant, here R is alveolar trill - quite often so short that the tongue barely strikes once, but if enunciated it's a trill. Corda rosa will have an alveolar trill in the first word whether it does in the second or not; where in cor da rosa it's a flap (and in my immediate area, among somewhat more rustic speakers, it will sound like core da rosa. That won't appear in the above video, but the trilled pre-consonant R comes through fairly clearly in verdade 2:17 for example.) I believe that's at least very common in Portugal, but it apparently isn't ubiquitous. The gentleman from Mangualde pronounces his name Mare-ques.

It seems to me there may be an area in the very south of Brazil where, unlike most of the rest of the country, final R is different from initial?

I live really close to Pombal, more to the southwest. I usually don't pay atention to this subject, but I can tell you my Rs sound like those of Cidália Ferreira. I am not sure, but I think they are also close to the Rs of Paulo Marques, maybe not so "strong".

I've noticed people doing it differently, of course - a kind of sound I more or less relate to the sound of J in spanish from Spain, I don't know how to explain it. And yes, I think most speakers tend to produce this particular sound, specially in Lisbon area, wich means also TV, Radio, etc.

 

[guihenning]

This sound can be very similar to the alveolar trill, as they are, in fact, both trills. Not fricatives, or anything like stepping on a crab.

Now the link worked. Yes, these are uvular trills. According to scholars, this is the standard way to pronounce it in Lisbon. But it seems like it is in free allophony with /χ/ …
Here he jumps back and forth from the uvular trill to the voiceless fricative. Even mistakingly shifting the French voiced fricative /ʁ/ when he says "… o Saint Laurent…" to the voiceless vernacular /χ/ . I'd say they're free allophones, similarly to the situation in Brazil.

 

[Donn]

By the way - to my ear anyway - that isn't anything like urban Portuguese.

As for the scholars - they're way off, you have to really search around to find anyone producing that uvular trill, it's quite uncommon - but I hope someday the Portuguese will read wikipedia and resolve to speak better. As you observe, many of them can and do produce two or three variations.

 

[J. Bailica]

As for the scholars - they're way off, you have to really search around to find anyone producing that uvular trill, it's quite uncommon - but I hope someday the Portuguese will read wikipedia and resolve to speak better.

🤪🙂🤪

 

[guihenning]

By the way - to my ear anyway - that isn't anything like urban Portuguese

I think though that Castelo Branco's accent is pretty urban and lisboeta, even if he seems to exaggerate a bit. His realizations of the rhotics are the same as those by Maria flor (the voice actor in the videos I sent above), so I guess the free allophony is the standard just like in Brazil. Well, when it comes to phonotactics the two variants are not far off from one another, even if the pronunciations vary quite a lot.

 

[Forero]

I'm watching the dubbed version of the Portuguese series Rabo de Peixe. They pronounce it throughout /χɑb pɛʃ/. I was expecting the R to be /ʁ/. Do you agree the R can be devoiced in Portuguese? Maybe it should be /ʁ̥/ and not /χ/, although there doesn't seem to be much difference.

Whenever I have heard Portuguese spoken in real life, all the initial "r"s and double "r"s have been unvoiced. I once asked a speaker of Brazilian Portuguese how to pronounce "rr", and she said "[χ] just like in French". All her "rr"s were unvoiced, but she apparently did not notice.

 

[Donn]

In case I'm confused over the symbol - /χ/ is unvoiced, right? Whether any French speakers have a similar pronunciation, I couldn't say for sure - I assume not, but I haven't heard that much French.

As for the exact position, my impression of Brazil pronunciation is that it varies from velar to pharyngeal, and in the latter case I would say it actually does sound voiced. The Portugal version seems to stay in the velar/uvular region.

 

[guihenning]

In case I'm confused over the symbol - /χ/ is unvoiced, right?

Yes, it is.

Whether any French speakers have a similar pronunciation, I couldn't say for sure - I assume not, but I haven't heard that much French.

The French R is mostly a voiced uvular fricative /ʁ/ or approximant (except for Edith Piaf's voiced uvular trill /ʀ/ ).

As for the exact position, my impression of Brazil pronunciation is that it varies from velar to pharyngeal, and in the latter case I would say it actually does sound voiced.

It depends...

In Brazil, /ʁ/ can be velar, uvular, or glottal and may be voiceless unless between voiced sounds; it is usually pronounced as a voiceless velar fricative [x], a voiceless glottal fricative [h| or voiceless uvular fricative [χ]

Here you can find more details about it comparing BP and EP.
And here the whole situation is quite well described.