Two main pronunciation mistakes give away a Brazilian accent:
1. The way they pronounce the /t/ sound followed by the /ʊ/ and /u/ as in “to” and “two”. Instead of the [t] sound, they produce the /tʃ/ sound as in “church”.
2. Incorrect nasalisation of the lateral consonant/l/ as in “link”.
3. Low tongue positions for plosive consonants /t/ and /d/ as in “tot” and “done” making the sounds “dental”
For all Brazilian/Portuguese speakers of English, I recommend a tailor-made accent reduction plan that will help you sound more like a native English speaker and develop clear speech:
Master pure long English vowels and diphthongs. Try to lean on long vowels and diphthongs. Don’t shorten them even when speaking rapidly. Producing pure long vowels will also improve the tune or music of your speech and help to achieve English sentence rhythm.
I recommend that you practise lessons from the apps: Get Rid of your Accent, Elocution Lessons, and Business English Speech if you want to speak with the British RP accent. If you prefer to speak with the General American accent, then download the app American Accent App and Fluent American Speech:
The first stage of the accent reduction is to work on English long vowels:
- /a:/ as in "car". lesson 1
- /ɔː/ as in “storm”, lesson 3
- /ɜ:/ as in "bird", lesson 5
The second stage of the accent reduction process for Brazilian/Portuguese speakers of English is to work on diphthongs:
- /ɪə/ as in “dear”, lesson 19
- /ʊə/ as in “poor”, lesson 21
- /eə/ as in “hair”, lesson 22
- /əʊ/ as in “boat”, lesson 16
The third stage is to work on the correct usage of the short vowels:
- / ʌ/ as in “bus”, lesson 9
- /ɪ/ as in “pit”, lesson 7
- /ə/ as in “the”, lesson 6
- /ɒ/ a in "box", lesson 10
- /æ/ as in "cat", lesson 15
A real game changer for Brazilian/Portuguese is strengthening the back tongue muscle and keeping the tip of the tongue on the alveolar ridge, thus achieving a higher tongue positioning for /t, d, l, n/ for these sounds. This will remove the incorrect nasalisation of these sounds, a mistake typical of Brazilian/Portuguese.
To achieve that, work on consonants:
- /t, d/ as in “teach” and “did” lesson 27
- / ŋ/ as “king” lesson 31
- Lateral plosion, lesson 34
- Nasal plosion, lesson 32
- /l/ as in “London” lesson 33, particularly at the end of the word
The most advanced stage of accent reduction is intonation.
I recommend the apps Fluent English Speech and 4Ps, power, pitch, pace, pause to master sentence stress, intonation, the use of pauses and voice modulation. It will make your speech easy and interesting to listen to. Practise the Silent Letters chapter with the Business English Speech app.
There are also two video courses to support you on this journey: Get Rid of your Accent Part One and Get Rid of your Accent Part Two.
Click the link below to get useful tips: