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The pronunciation of the ending -ão Posted by on Jun 3, 2011 in Uncategorized

Hi, there! I’m Adir Ferreira, your new video blogger from Brazil.

We’re going to have one video every week and we kick things off by practicing the sound of the ending -ão in Portuguese. This sound gives English speakers a really hard time so I decided to make a video about it.

For the video I chose five very common words ending in -ão: mão (hand), mamão (papaya), pão (bread), não (no, not) and chão (ground, floor). I also provided some example sentences with the words ending in -ão so you can practice it.

Remember that we are only able to produce difficult sounds after listening to them many times, so watch the video, stop it, watch it again and you’ll see that it gets better every day.

Nos vemos em breve!

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About the Author: Adir

English / Spanish teacher and translator for over 20 years. I have been blogging since 2007 and I am also a professional singer in my spare time.


Comments:

  1. Kalani:

    These nasal aõ is easy, once you get used to saying it w/o thinking of purposely doing the nasal sound.

    It is the other nasal sounds that are present in some parts of words, such as when a vowel is before the N or M, or when speaking a few words together where a consonant of one word follows a vowel of another. These sounds are naturally produced by native speakers & it is this sound that makes me sound like a foreigner.

    • Adir:

      @Kalani Hello, Kalani. Can you give me some examples of these words? It would be a great idea for a pronunciation video.

  2. Youpele:

    Thanks for posting the video. I will find this video very useful.

  3. Kalani:

    Some examples:

    cama
    bagunça
    falam
    ficando

    Those are the simple ones. But then it becomes more complex & only native speakers would pronounce them correctly whereas the rest of us wouldn’t even notice these:

    uma mocinha
    uma mutação
    uma bactéria escondida no corpo

    Because the nasal sounds are so strong, for us (non-native speakers) these would be harder to detect, maybe for native speakers too that they actually do a stronger nasal sound between the final vowel “a” in “uma followed by an M or N. In the last example, the final “a” in escondida followed by the “n” in “no”.

  4. Kalani:

    I just realized something. I think it’s b/c in Portuguese the M and N is just totally more nasal than it is in English. Or I’m thinking about this way too much. 🙂

    • Adir:

      @Kalani Kalani, the key to mastering sounds in a foreign language is listening. For Brazilians to say words like “THink”, “THought”, “THese”, “THorough” is a hassle because these sounds don’t exist in Portuguese, but I’m planning more videos on pronunciation, keep an eye on the blog every week!

  5. Casandra:

    Thanks for posting, I found this very useful.

    • Adir:

      @Casandra Thanks for visiting the blog, Casandra! More cool pronunciation videos to come!

  6. Kalani:

    I don’t know if listening is the key. I know many americans who speak Portuguese way better than I do but their pronunciation is messed up. 😀 Same with Brazilians and English, yet they can speak it very well.

    I guess it is about listening, or as I’ve always you need a good ear.

  7. dani:

    Very useful, thank you for posting this video! Looking forward to the following ones!

  8. Steven:

    Adir, this video was very helpful. I’m glad that you remembered the most common word with -ão — não! I look forward to the next ones.

  9. Adir Ferreira:

    Thanks Dani and Steven, we have some great stuff lined up to keep visiting the blog!

  10. Yv:

    that is great … boa idéia …