{"id":2135,"date":"2011-03-28T08:00:02","date_gmt":"2011-03-28T08:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/portuguese\/?p=2135"},"modified":"2011-03-28T23:26:36","modified_gmt":"2011-03-28T23:26:36","slug":"when-to-use-the-letter-x","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/portuguese\/when-to-use-the-letter-x\/","title":{"rendered":"When to use the Letter &#8220;X&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One thing that confuses a lot of people who are learning Portuguese, is when and how to use the letter &#8220;x,&#8221; as opposed to a ch, s, z, etc.<\/p>\n<p>So I found this really <a href=\"http:\/\/www.falemosportugues.com\/pdf\/os%20fonemas%20da%20letra%20x.pdf\">fun &#8220;lesson,&#8221; online on the pronunciation of the &#8220;x&#8221; in Portuguese<\/a>. First, there is a paragraph with a bunch of x&#8217;s &#8211; then they explain which is pronounced how and why (well, the why part sort of&#8230;)<\/p>\n<p><em>Antes do EXAME, oferecem-lhe uma X\u00cdCARA de ch\u00e1, pois o EXCESSO de estudos o tinha DEIXADO em grande EXCITA\u00c7\u00c3O nervosa. Ele era um aluno EXEMPLAR, o que justifica o tratamento de EXCE\u00c7\u00c3O que recebeu dos professores.Depois de tranq\u00fcilizado, fez  EXCELENTE EXAME e falou com propriedade sobre o NEXO EXISTENTE entre os traumas da primeira inf\u00e2ncia e o COMPLEXO de \u00c9dipo, inspirado na EXIG\u00caNCIA  de uma educa\u00e7\u00e3o SEXUAL dos pais e dos educadores. Obteve a nota M\u00c1XIMA.<br \/>\n<\/em><\/p>\n<p>So when do you pronounce which &#8220;version&#8221; of the Portuguese &#8220;x&#8221; in the above paragraph?<\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8220;z&#8221; sound:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>&#8211; exame <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>&#8211; exemplar <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>&#8211; existente <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>&#8211; exig\u00eancia <\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>What do all of these words have in common in relation to the x? <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>For the &#8220;z&#8221; sound in Portuguese, the x should be before and after a vowel, but the following vowels need to be followed by consonants. Exception: <em>m\u00e1xima<\/em>, \u00a0which is &#8220;s&#8221; sounding.<\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8220;s&#8221; sound:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>&#8211; excesso <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>&#8211; exce\u00e7\u00e3o <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>&#8211; excelente <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>&#8211; excita\u00e7\u00e3o <\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>What do all of these words have in common in relation to the x? <\/strong><\/p>\n<div>They&#8217;re all preceded by a vowel (e) and followed by a c! Easy enough, right?<\/div>\n<div><strong>&#8220;ks&#8221; sound: <\/strong><\/div>\n<div>&#8211; complexo<\/div>\n<div>&#8211; nexo<\/div>\n<div>&#8211; sexual<\/div>\n<div><strong>What do all of these words have in common in relation to the x?<\/strong><\/div>\n<div>\n<div>These words are also preceded by and followed by a vowel, but which is not necessarily followed by another vowel or letter at that!<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div><strong>&#8220;ch&#8221; sound (but really &#8220;sshhh&#8221; sound):<\/strong><\/div>\n<p><em>&#8211; x\u00edcara <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>&#8211; deixado <\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>What do all of these words have in common in relation to the x?<\/strong><\/p>\n<div>This is the hardest one because there are so many ways to use it and the pronunciation can be confused with the &#8220;ch&#8221; in Portuguese as well. \u00a0Overall though, there are a few rules for this pronunciation of the &#8220;x&#8221;:<\/div>\n<div>&#8211; At the beginning of words &#8211; like the example, <em>x\u00edcara, <\/em>in the text.<\/div>\n<div>&#8211; After a <em>ditongo<\/em>, which is a vowel &amp; a &#8220;semi-vowel&#8221; in the same syllable. \u00a0So in <em>deixado<\/em>, \u00a0the &#8220;ditongo,&#8221; is &#8220;<em>ei&#8221; <\/em>(this rule has it&#8217;s exceptions, such as <em>recauchutar <\/em>&amp;\u00a0<em>caucho, <\/em> but overall, you should be safe).<\/div>\n<div>&#8211; After &#8220;me&#8221; &#8211; With words like, <em>mexer, mexe, m\u00e9xicano, mexericar, <\/em>etc. \u00a0The only exception here is &#8220;<em>mecha<\/em>&#8220;<\/div>\n<div>&#8211; And after &#8220;en&#8221; &#8211; Examples are &#8211; <em>enxada<\/em>, <em>enxame<\/em>, etc. &#8211; The exceptions here are: <em>encher, enchente, enchova. <\/em><\/div>\n<div>Did that help a little? Note these aren&#8217;t scientific grammar rules, but just some assumptions we can make while trying to pronounce the x in Portuguese. \u00a0This sort of rule is not set in stone and I apologize if I missed any exceptions!<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One thing that confuses a lot of people who are learning Portuguese, is when and how to use the letter &#8220;x,&#8221; as opposed to a ch, s, z, etc. So I found this really fun &#8220;lesson,&#8221; online on the pronunciation of the &#8220;x&#8221; in Portuguese. First, there is a paragraph with a bunch of x&#8217;s&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"post-item__readmore\"><a class=\"btn btn--md\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/portuguese\/when-to-use-the-letter-x\/\">Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2135","post","type-post","status-publish","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/portuguese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/portuguese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/portuguese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/portuguese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/portuguese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2135"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/portuguese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2135\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2149,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/portuguese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2135\/revisions\/2149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/portuguese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/portuguese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/portuguese\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}