#2: Musicality of Language

hi everyone, my name is Seb and welcome back to Pra Caramba, a podcast I created to help you improve your Brazilian accent, one episode at the time.

You could fluently speak any second language and still sound far from native. Why is that? Obviously, everyone has a different accent, even from native speaker to native speaker but what makes an accent recognizable? I would say there’s an informal collection of characteristics that constitutes what I like to call the musicality of any language variant and Brazilian portuguese is not exempt from this, far from it. 

the method I’ve created for myself and now sharing with you has one goal and one goal only: improve your accent. To do this, i say a sentence for the first time, give you some time to repeat out loud, then i repeat it, leave you time to repeat it and then move to the next sentence. The most important part is to focus on imitating the sounds, as exaggerated as you can. this works best if you repeat the exercise twice in a row, at least once a day.

What you’ll see over time is that a muscle memory will develop in your mouth, leaving you with increasingly more brain power to focus on what you want to say as pronunciation, rhythm and intonation will all have just become a second nature. when doing the exercise, don’t hesitate to hit pause and say it the sentences word by word until it starts to sound right.

focus on perfecting, not on trying to be perfect.

here are the sentences:

1. A praia hoje está linda.
2. Hoje eu quero só relaxar e ouvir um pouco de música.
3. Volta no centro e depois tomar um sorvete.
4. Meu primo chegou de viagem.
5. Quando anoitece, a gente sente a brisa suave vindo do mar.
6. A festa no sábado vai ser incrível.
7. Com muita música e gente animada.
8. A festa no sábado vai ser incrível, com muita música e gente animada.
9. A gente se encontra depois do trabalho pra tomar um chopinho.
10. No domingo, a gente vai passear no Jardim Botânico e tirar umas fotos.
11. Meu amigo vai me ensinar a tocar um samba no violão.
12. Quando chove, eu adoro ficar em casa, lendo um livro e ouvindo o barulho da chuva.

That’s it for today. I recommend sticking to at least one episode per week, repeating it twice a day, back to back.. Let me know in the comments if there’s a sentence from a movie that you find cool and would like to see included in the next lesson!. Thanks, and see you for the next episode!

— Seb