Tag: Proparoxítono

Posted in English

Divided by a Common Language: the plot thickens…

Posted on by Colin Lusk
English, espanhol, português

I’ve mentioned a couple of times (here and here) now that I have had long, rambling discussions with Brazilians about whether the third person singular (the “we” form) in the past perfect tense is identical to the present tense. It is in Brazilian but not – or at least not normally – in european portuguese.

I actually ran into a portuguese guy from Beira Alta who says that, where he lives, they say the two words the same way (not surprising) and spell them the same way too (more surprising). We had a bit of a chat about it back and forth and he agreed that the accent in the written form was helpful (I agree 100%) but he wasn’t going to change the way he spoke (also agree 100%) and like a lot of Portuguese people, he felt like the Acordo Ortográfico was an annoying imposition from on high that he didn’t really buy into.

I feel like this was quite a useful conversation for both of us. For me because it’s good to learn about different accents and ways of speaking and I hope also for him because most people in most countries don’t really reflect on their own language until they hit something unexpected, and I like to think that by having this conversation he enjoyed thinking about his own language as much as I do. For example, I mentioned that the two versions (falamos and falámos, say) would both have the stress on the second syllable and he said no, they don’t stress the word anywhere. I guarantee you, there is no portuguese word that is spoken in a flat, robotic monotone. I made a joke about how most words in portuguese are either oxitono (stressed on the last syllable) or paroxitnono (penultimate syllable) and a few are proparoxítono (antepenultinate) but maybe there needed to be a new word “nenhuresitono” for words that are stressed nowhere.

I have learned a lot about my own language from talking to foreigners who were trying to learn it and I really hope his encounter with this confused British chap was helpful for him in the same way.

* I talked a lot about proparoxítono during my brief obsession with Chico Buarque’s excellent song Construção. If you haven’t heard it, I strongly recommend it because it is educational but more importantly its effing brilliant. Yes, I know it’s in Brazilian portuguese, but it’s worth making an exception for! My original post about it, complete with the video, is here and I’ve continued to bang on about it here and here

Posted in English, Portuguese

Buarque Ode

Posted on by Colin Lusk

I’ve really got quite evangelical about this Chico Buarque song, you know. I insist that everyone should learn Portuguese so they can appreciate its greatness. Here’s something I wrote about it in WritestreakPT, and this probably won’t be the last time I mention it either!

Acabo de ler um capítulo do meu livro (“Idiotas Úteis e Inúteis” de Ricardo Araújo Pereira) no qual o autor descreve uma canção do cantor brasileiro Chico Buarque chamada “Construção”. A letra da canção tem um ritmo ligeiramente diferente do que o padrão. Porquê*? Seguindo o Ricardo, é por causa de… Hum… uma palavra desconhecida. Ainda por cima, mal consegui pronúnciá-la! Estava a ler na cama e o dicionário na mesa de cabeceira também a desconhecia, portanto tive de aguardar até hoje de manhã.

A palavra era “Proparoxítono”**. Significa que a palavra tem o acento tónico na antepenúltima sílaba. Todas as palavras de cada linha são proparoxítonas. Em resultado disso, a canção soa muito diferente de qualquer outra canção portuguesa que já ouvi.
Que colheita boa! Num único capítulo, aprendi uma nova palavra, ouvi falar duma nova canção (que é mesmo bonita – acreditem!) e ganhei um novo ponto de vista sobre a língua.

* miraculously the corrector found only one single error in this entire thing except that they thought this should change to “por quê?”. This surprised me a bit because explanations of the various types of por/que usually have only 3 forms and “por quê” is not one of them. According to ciberdúvidas it can be used if you are asking “for what?” but it doesn’t mean “why” according to Elsa Fernandes’s book so at the risk of sounding arrogant, I don’t think the corrector was quite on the mark here. [UPDATE – A better corrector came along and agreed that yes, I was right about Porquê, but they have also pointed out some other mistakes which I have since corrected in the text above. It wasn’t terrible…]

** Amazingly there is a second word for this. Two words meaning “having the accent on the antepenultimate syllable”! It’s like the Eskimos and snow! The other word is Esdrúxulo.

And finally if you’re wondering what you call words that have the stress on the final or penultimate syllable they are oxítono and paroxítono respectively.

Posted in English

Proparoxítono

Posted on by Colin Lusk

This 👇

Is exactly the sort of thing I love. The writer is Ricardo Araújo Pereira, comedian, columnist and all round good guy (well, as far as I know) Anyway, in the passage above, he’s describing a song by Chico Buarque and saying that if a foreigner were to hear it, although they would rightly spot that it sounds lovely, they probably wouldn’t understand it and certainly wouldn’t notice that the last word of every line is “proparoxítona”* and nor would they understand that the word “proparoxítono” itself is proparoxítona**. And he’s right: it is a lovely song and when I read this in bed last night I had no clue what Proparoxítono meant but I knew I had to find out as soon as I woke up.

First of all, let’s hear the song

Oh my god, that is the good stuff alright. I know it’s Brazilian Portuguese, not Portuguese Portuguese but Jesus Christ it’s good. Inject it directly into my veins! There is something slightly strange about the rhythm of the verse though isn’t there? And I never would have spotted what it was.

Before I get I to it, let’s lay a bit of groundwork by thinking about where the stress falls in a Portuguese word.

The vast majority of words in Portuguese put the stress on either the final syllable (if the last letter is r, l, z, u or i ) or the penultimate one (basically, all other letters). Any exceptions to the rule need an accent to be added as a hint to the reader. So for example there are a lot of words that end in – ável or – ível that are pronounced with the stress on the a and the i respectively. If the accent wasn’t there you’d have to say incrivEL and confortavEL. But it’s pretty easy and you get used to it, and before you know it, you’re just used to the rhythm of Portuguese speech without even being conscious of it.

Proparoxítono means that the stress falls on the antepenultimate (last-but-two) syllable. These always have to have an accent because they break the normal rules, like bêbado (BÊ-ba-do) and mágico (MÁ-gi-co) and sábado (SÁ-ba-do) and última and único and tímido and… Well, and every other word he finishes a line with in the song, which is why you get this effect that’s really unusual in a Portuguese song, where the last two syllables of every line are unstressed.

Oh my god, that’s so satisfying. I love it! It’s the most value I’ve ever got out of a single paragraph, I think: a new word, a new song and a new way of noticing the rhythm of Portuguese music.

Anyway, if you want to know more, this video has some good analysis. It’s in Brazilian Portuguese too, so be warned if you’re trying to avoid the dialect. It’s worth making an exception for though.

*it has an a in the end here, unlike in the title, because its an adjective and palavra is feminine

**Now I know what you’re thinking: “Isn’t that the stuff Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying think should be used to cure Covid?” Close, but no, it’s not that either.