Are there any rules for vowel deletion in European Portuguese?

Question

I have noticed that in European Portuguese, many native speakers don’t necessarily pronounce words the same way as the textbook would teach a foreign student to; in that many vowels are elided or even deleted.

One example is in the Cidade FM slogan “só se quiseres”: when actually read out by the Portuguese announcer, it becomes something like “sósquisers”.

I’m not really sure how this vowel deletion works, or how to specify it, except that Portuguese natives typically delete the last vowels of words?

Answer 1

The accepted answer makes little sense and the term "blurred" (maybe they mean assimilated? But that doesn't make sense in context) is misleading at best.

Vowels in European Portuguese can undergo three different processes (each more drastic than the other) that make them difficult to perceive clearly for foreigners. The faster and more informal the speech, the greater the degree of change which will increase the perception (or actually result in) vowel deletion.

1. Reduction (redução)
   This happens in all dialects of Portuguese. Effectively, the full breadth of phonemic vowels are available in tonic syllables. But in both pre- and post-tonic syllables, their number is greatly reduced. Considering just the oral monopthongs, you go from 9 in the tonic syllable to generally 4 in the pretonic and non-final post-tonic, and at most 3 in the final post-tonic. This means that vuar (not a real word) and voar would be pronounced identically (but vua and voa would sound quite different).¹

2. Devoicing (ensurdecimento, desvozeamento, dessonorização)
   This happens particularly in European Portuguese. While normally vowels are considered to be voiced as an inherent quality, it is possible to devoice vowels. Consider the English word potato. Most English speakers will not begin vibrating vocal chords until the onset of the a, but nonetheless perceive an o. The o is pronounced, but it is devoiced and may sound like just a puff of air for those not expecting it (and it basically is, the mouth and tongue are positioned for an O). In European Portuguese, higher vowels, and vowels surrounded by unvoiced consonants are more subject to devoicing. Consider the word Portugal. Because of the reduction described in (1), it is often pronounced /purtu'gal/ and both the first and second u are subject to devoicing — the first is more likely to receive it, however, because it is between two devoice consonants.

3. Deletion (supressão, queda, apagamento)
   Vowels that have been reduced or devoiced are subject to deletion, especially e (reduced to [ɨ]) and o (reduced to [u]) in a final post-tonic syllable and in moderate to fast speech, and any non-final post-tonic vowel (pássaro will often be /'pa.sɾ(u)/. As a result, it is rare to hear the word de as anything other than [d]. You may still "hear" them in lengthened consonants ([d:] for de) or as aspiration (although it's difficult to tell the difference between ['gatu̥] and ['gatʰ]), but often times there won't be any remnants left. This effect is so pronounced it can occasionally cause problems for native-speakers who may accidentally write querer as crer (quite a different verb!).

Note that a key requirement for any vowel to be reduced, devoiced, or deleted is to be in an unaccented syllable. While there may be some variation with respect to falling diphthongs, the tonic syllable will always be pronounced clearly and unambiguously.

Answer 2

Delete is the wrong term. The syllables are "blurred". So in "só se quiseres", the e in se is blurred.

So instead of being: só se quiseres clearly heard, three separate intonation units,

the two syllables are jammed together so that the só se becomes a single intonation unit (sóse) with the tonic stress on the só, the se taking a secondary stress. The final es is reduced and takes a tertiary stress.

So, it is not about deleting anything, it is about changing the tonic stress in this example.

This phenomenon is known as non-accented or unaccented vowels:

"Uma característica do Português Europeu que constitui, talvez, a mais notória diferença em relação ao Português do Brasil diz respeito às vogais não-acentuadas que são muito mais audíveis no Português Brasileiro do que no Europeu, sendo, nesta variedade, muito reduzidas, o que leva, por vezes, à sua supressão. Esta característica do Português Europeu tem como consequência que os estrangeiros compreendem melhor a pronúncia de um brasileiro do que de um português, sentindo, neste último caso, que a língua parece ter só consoantes."

And this is another feature of European Portuguese:

"Um outra característica diz respeito à pronúncia da consoante fricativa que termina sílaba, quer no interior da palavra (antes de outra consoante como em lista, mesmo) ou no final da palavra. Normalmente, a consoante representa-se com a letra <s> (sapos) mas pode também grafar-se com <z> (rapaz). Em Português Europeu, a consoante é uma palatal, ou , conforme estiver antes de uma consoante vozeada ou não-vozeada (mesmo , lista ). Dado que esta consoante é muito frequente por ser o sufixo do plural e por terminar vários radicais, provoca nos ouvintes a sensação de que o Português Europeu, além de ter poucas vogais (muitas vogais átonas são reduzidas ou suprimidas), tem numerosas consoantes palatais. No Português do Brasil só um pequeno número de dialectos apresenta esta consoante palatal, ocorrendo no mesmo contexto, com mais frequência, a fricativa dental [s]."

The phonetic examples of these fricatives are these sounds: [s], [z], [ʃ], e [ʒ].

In other words, when you have a final s or z sound, for example, os rapazes (the young men or guys), the sounding of the final syllable is blurred (the article uses the term reduced. So, as the article explains, as the sound [s] is common in the plural suffixes of words, it sounds reduced. As meninas, three separate syllables in Brazilian Portuguese sounds reduced to as meninush in European Portuguese. sh is the closest way I can think of to write this in non-phonetic style.

For a complete explanation of these sounds, see this article.

There are other differences, the article explains. For example, Brazilian Portuguese adds a sound in words like um absurdo, to sound like: um abisurdo or admirar, that becomes adimirar, in terms of pronunciation.

Answer 3

From what I've been learning, in European Portuguese basically all the vowels which are not in the tonic syllable of a word are not pronounced, or just slightly pronounced.

Answer 4

"sósquiseres"

I find it really funny you spell it out like this. :)

Those radio "spots"/"jingles" are said/spelled really fast - or pronounced in an almost musical way (every second of airwave time costs money). For the native speaker the "e" is clearly there, although it's slightly altered (I don't know enough about phonetics to write the difference.)

In this case "só" has an acute accent on the "ó", and "quiseres" has a diphthong in the "que"(this set of 3 letters is invariant in the stress they're pronounced with.) So it happens the "e" vowel in "se" is sandwiched between a stress vowel "ó" and the diphthong in "que" that just make you put the emphasis/stress on both ends.

Maybe this phenomenon can be called simple laziness of correctly spelling out the less emphasized vowel in the sequence.

Answer 5

Though the answers so far have done a great job pointing out the phonetic rules and phonetic phenomena behind this, I also wanted to point out that there is an undeniable influence of regionality at play here.

In the Portuguese northern accent, in particular, it is a incredibly common to completely jump over or delete vowels and sounds, which I reckon must be very frustrating for non-native speakers.

Common examples are saying "pra quê" instead of "para quê", or not pronouncing the first letters of the verb "estar" and: "está-se mesmo a ver" becomes " 'tá-se mesmo a ver" (thought it might be pronounced a bit more like "tá-se mema ber", hence approximating the similar sounds - the two consecutive vowels -, dropping a sound all together - [s] - and substituting the [v] for a [b]).