{"id":2116,"date":"2011-03-24T23:45:12","date_gmt":"2011-03-24T23:45:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/portuguese\/?p=2116"},"modified":"2021-08-05T20:01:54","modified_gmt":"2021-08-05T20:01:54","slug":"the-carioca-accent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/portuguese\/the-carioca-accent\/","title":{"rendered":"The Carioca Accent"},"content":{"rendered":"

We’ve talked about regional slang in the past, including vocabulary about how to speak like a Carioca<\/a>. But after I saw this video, I thought it would be helpful to talk a little bit about regional accents as well, and in this case, the Rio de Janeiro accent.<\/p>\n

Cariocas da gema <\/em>(which literally means, people from Rio from the “yolk,” as in the yolk of an egg) often have a local accent, which is principally characterized by two aspects. The first is turning certain “s” sounds into a “sh” sound. For example, a Carioca could pronounce Vasco (a local soccer team) as vah-sh-koh, where as a Paulista could pronounce it as vah-ss-koh. Another example is with the word escola (school): a Carioca would pronounce it esh-coh-lah, whereas a Paulista would pronounce it as ess-coh-lha. With a thick accent, you might even put the sh sound on plurals, like v\u00e1rios (vah-ree-oosh).<\/p>\n

The second component of the Carioca accent is to swallow the “r”s, giving it a gutteral sound rather than a hard sound, like Paulistas would use. For example, a Carioca would pronounce porta (door) as po-hhr-tah, giving the r an open, almost a Yiddish sound by rolling the sound to the back of the throat. Meanwhile, a Paulista might pronounce porta (door) as poR-tah, putting an emphasis on the r sound, closer to an English or Spanish pronunciation of r.<\/p>\n

Watch the video and you’ll hear firsthand what a strong Carioca accent sounds like!<\/p>\n