SOME DIFFERENCES BETWEEN PORTUGUESE AND ENGLISH
SOME DIFFERENCES BETWEEN PORTUGUESE AND ENGLISH Undoubtedly, there are lots of differences between the Portuguese and English languages, either in grammatical or phonological fields, and learning a second or foreign language is not only a matter of learning its elements but is it also a matter of negative transfer, which is a somewhat negative influence of the mother tongue. ... Broadly speaking, in the field of pronunciation, the most significant differences are those related to vowels, for instance, in Portuguese, the vowels are pronounced clearer than their English counterparts. ... Besides that, in English there are eleven distinct vowel sounds whereas in Portuguese there are only eight. Yet in the field of pronunciation in relation to vowels, Portuguese is syllable timed, that is, each syllable is clearly pronounced because each vowel must be pronounced, whereas English is stressed timed, where each syllable is determined by stress and, the fact that there is an unstressed vowel called schwa, for instance the first ‘a’ in the word ‘again’, and the fact that there are some vowels that are not pronounced, such as the ‘e’ in the word ‘office’, make English different from Portuguese in the field of pronunciation.