European Portuguese sounds like Brazilian Portuguese

Community-Created Courses Portuguese (European)
#1

I am taking your European Portuguese course. I bought the lifetime subscription.

One of your main female speakers isn’t pronouncing European Portuguese properly. She sounds Brazilian? Most of the times she pronounces the “d” as a “j” or “g”. Although I don’t speak the language well, my parents and relatives who originally come from Portugal do.

I am trying to learn European Portuguese. Please correct it. It’s an embarrassing oversight on your part, and NOT fair for people trying to learn the language. If I wanted to learn Brazilian Portuguese I would have chosen that course not the European Portuguese.

4 Likes
Real voice or text to speech, robot voice
#2

Hello @CristinadaSilva68.

Thanks for your message.

Could you please specify what course/level are you taking and, if possible, send us some examples of words whose audios your friends or relatives believe are not European Portuguese?

I am Brazilian, but the European Portuguese course was prepared by a native European Portuguese speaker. The audio files were also recorded by native European Portuguese speakers contractors, as far as I know.

Please, send me some examples and I will double check it with my EUPT colleague.

Thanks! =)

Ignacio C.

1 Like
#3

Good afternoon Ignacio,

Thank you for replying back. I appreciate it. I am glad you asked about specific examples! I realized after that I hadn’t given any examples. My oversight.

I went through this morning and found some examples. I just completed LEVEL 3.

The ‘d’ is many times pronounced as a ‘g’ rather than a ‘d’ It’s very distracting.

Você entende instead of pronouncing the d in entende, she pronounces the d as a g. so it sounds like ‘entenge’ rather than entende.

The other example is the word “onde” which she pronounces and “onge”
Onde você mora? Onde você va?

And there’re more examples of her pronouncing the ‘d’ as a ‘g’

She also pronounces the ‘t’ as a ‘j’

look at the phrase

Boa sorta and boa noite.

She such a clear speaker and sounds very likeable. It’s too bad that she’s pronouncing it differently than the average Portuguese speaker. But I’m paying to learn mainstream European Portuguese.

Thanks for looking into this. I appreciate it.

Yours respectively,

Cristina da Silva

2 Likes
#4

Hi @CristinadaSilva68,

Thanks for your message.

Could you please check and confirm that you are doing our official courses?
I’m asking that because I’ve gone through our 3 entire first modules (Portuguese (Portugal) 1 to Portuguese (Portugal) 3) and there are no phrases like “onde você mora?” or “Você entende”.

Actually, there’s no “você” at all in any phrases, but only as the sole words “você” and “vocês”.

Maybe you are taking a non-official course or even the Brazilian Portuguese course by mistake?

Here are the links for the first three official European Portuguese courses. Please advise if these are the ones you are taking and referring to in your messages.



Thanks!

1 Like
#5

Interesting. Is the lifetime subscription course different from the free account? I purchased the lifetime subscription (that’s how much I want to learn Portuguese).

I sign into Memrise on my ipad every day. I just checked. There are two courses attached to my Memrise account.

  • The European Portuguese (77/3290 items), which has a Portuguese flag. The levels go up to level 44- #13.

  • Portuguese (Portugal) 1 account (37/209 items)

On my ipad, I am signed into the European Portuguese, I am up to level 5, Personal pronouns of subject and contents. The levels go up to level 44- #13.

Surprisingly on my iphone (which I don’t use), I am signed into the Portuguese (Portugal) flag. I am only up to level 3 (being human) level there.

I always use my ipad to learn European Portuguese from Memrise.

I have taken some screen shots from my ipad, to show you.

Hope that helps

Cristina da Silva

1 Like
#6

image001.jpg1540×1525 554 KB

1 Like
#7

Hi @CristinadaSilva68.

Oh, now I see what’s happening.

The course you are taking is a non-official one, created by a user of our community.

For some reason, you started doing that one, instead of our official courses.

Note that courses for free and Pro users are exactly the same. The difference is that free users have some restrictions to access content and learning/review modes.

I’m just not sure if you are with two different accounts in your iPad and iPhone (registered with different e-mails, etc).

If that’s the case, I would suggest you to log-out your iPhone and log-in again with the same account you use in your iPad. Your progress, words learned, courses started, etc, should all be the same and be fully synchronized in every device logged in the same account.

Also, I suggest you start taking our official courses (the “Portuguese (Portugal)” that you already have in the attached print screens). We have 7 modules and they have thousands of native-speaker audios, plus hundreds of videos with real Portuguese people saying the words and phrases taught in the course. You’ll love it! =)

Obviously, you can continue studying the other one, if you prefer to.

So, confirm if you have the same account in all your devices, take a look at our courses and let me know your thoughts about it!

I am available to clarify any other questions.

Obrigado e bons estudos!

Ignacio C.

2 Likes
#8

Hi Cristina,

the course you described

was created by the user Micheal_Agbaji , not “Memrise”.
Only courses 1-7 created by the user “Memrise” are the official ones.

Here is the course description from the web portal (desktop mode) if you might have missed it on your IOS devices:

This course was originally created for personal use as practice alongside the Oxford Take Off in Portuguese course which contains a copyrighted CD by Oxford Press. As such, I’ve added in All audios but some pictures in which I will add later on in the future. Topics Will include: Greetings, Food, Accommodation, Numbers, Transport, Personal info, Daily Life, Interests, Shopping, Times of the day, Phone calls, Weather and much more will be added on to this course

There are other “user-created” courses by BenWhately https://www.memrise.com/user/BenWhately/courses/teaching/

but your “European Portuguese” was/is the only one which Ben is a contributor for; rest of these courses are for PT Brazil.

1 Like
#9

Thanks for clarifying this, Ignacio. Now I know. I really appreciate it. I make sure to click onto the official Memrise European Portuguese course tomorrow. I’ll let you know what I think.

Cheers,

Cristina

1 Like
#10

Thanks, Thomas. For some reasons it’s attached to the Memrise account, and I was bumped into it when I started. Glad I’ve sorted this out early!

1 Like
#11

Sounds great! =)

Tks,

Ignacio C.

1 Like
#12

YES! The OFFICIAL Memrise European Portuguese has the right accent. Abrigada, Ignacio for solving the mystery. Have a great week!

2 Likes
#13

Happy to help, @CristinadaSilva68.

Hope you enjoy our courses!

Regards,

Ignacio

1 Like
#14

Hello, Ignacio

I’ve run into a translation error in the European Portuguese course: European Portuguese 2, Level 14

The translation for “nuts” is “frutos secos” in the course. I believe that is used for raisins, prunes etc (dried fruit)

I believe the commonly used term for nuts in European Portuguese is “nozes”

This is important for people who allergic to nuts. The hospital would think that they were allergic to raisins. LOL!

Could you look into this? Thanks a bunch.

Cristina da Silva

#15

Hi @CristinadaSilva68

For the official PT EU 1-7 series this would be the related thread to report errors: [Course Forum] Portuguese (European) 1 to 7 by Memrise

2 Likes
#16

Thanks, Thomas.

Done.

#17

This course is shown under the ‘European Portuguese’ section but the majority of the audio is Brazilian.
Can the creator change the audio to European pronunciation?

1 Like
#18

Thank you from me as well! I am about to start this course. Duolingo (and Google translate ) tricked me into not realizing there were dialects… But I discovered the reality. And was definitely wanting to focus on European Portuguese. For getting around in Portugal.

Really appreciate you answering this user’s question, I’m sure other people ran into this as well! And as a new user it can be scary to not be sure that you are getting the right content to learn.