Pronunciation Mistakes that Brazilians Make While Speaking English
The origin of many non-native English speakers can be recognized by their accents. For instance, Indians, French, and German people are easily identified by their accent. However, there are accents that are not easily recognizable, and one of them is the Brazilian accent. We can recognize Brazilians while he or she speaks English by 6 mistakes in the pronunciation that only Brazilians make.
This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Monica D. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT.
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Additional Sounds
First, one thing that Brazilians do in many words that is so unique to Brazilians is to add the sound of “ie” in English words that there is not “ie” in the pronunciation. For example, the words hot dog sound “hotie dogie” when a Brazilian is saying it; the social media Facebook sounds like “Faciebookie”. Moreover, the word notebook, Brazilians say “notiebookie”. And when they want to say I have a cough, instead they say that they have a “coffee”. Therefore, if you hear someone adding “ie” in words that it should not be there, 99% the chances are they are Brazilian.
The second mistake that Brazilians make while speaking English is to add the letter “e” in words that starts with the letter “s” followed by a consonant. For example, the soda Sprite for them is “Esprite”. Another word is the street that they pronounce “estreet”.
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Sound Replacement
Third, to recognize if a person is Brazilian, pay attention to how this person pronounces the letter “L” when used in words. The majority of Brazilians pronounce “u” instead of ‘L”. For example, Brazil they say Braziu. Apple they say appu. And if you hear someone saying, “I went to the swimming ‘puu’”, be sure that you are speaking with a Brazilian.
Say as it is Written
The fourth mistake that the majority of Brazilians make is to pronounce the “ed” when it is at the end of words that should not be pronounced such is liked, worked, and stopped. So we can see that Brazilians have difficulty to pronounce past tense verbs.
Fifth, the “ch” in Portuguese has the sound of “sh”. So, chocolate is pronounced “shocolate”. Sometimes you will see a Brazilian person saying, “share” while he or she wants to say “chair”.
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Difficult Sounds
Sixth, Brazilians have a problem to pronounce the letter “r”. Many words that have the letter “r”, Brazilians pronounce “h” instead of “r”. I am Brazilian, and one day I went to a store to buy a rug. Since I could not find it, I asked the employee where was the “HUG” instead of RUG. The employee understood that I wanted a hug, and he gave me a big hug. I learned the hard way that I cannot pronounce “h” instead of “r”. If you hear someone saying “hemember” instead of remember, you can ask which part of Brazil you come from because for sure he or she is from Brazil.
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Therefore, Brazilians will make a few pronunciation mistakes while speaking English. However, it is not important if we make mistakes or have heavy accents. If a person is not a native English speaker, for sure they will have an accent, or they will make a few mistakes. What is important is to have good communication and to let our English flow.
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