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The phonology of Portuguese can vary considerably between dialects, in extreme cases leading to difficulties in intelligibility. This article focuses on the pronunciations that are generally regarded as standard. Since Portuguese is a pluricentric language, and differences between European Portuguese (EP) and Brazilian Portuguese (BP) can be considerable, both varieties are distinguished whenever necessary. One of the most salient differences between European and Brazilian Portuguese is their prosody.〔Parkinson, Stephen. "Phonology". In ''The Romance Languages'' edited by Martin Harris and Nigel Vincent. Routledge, 1988. Pp. 131–169.〕 European Portuguese is a stress-timed language, with reduction, devoicing or even deletion of unstressed vowels and a general tolerance of syllable-final consonants. Brazilian Portuguese, on the other hand, is of mixed characteristics, halfway to being a syllable-timed language, with: *a lighter reduction of unstressed vowels – less raising of pre-stress vowels, much less devoicing and absence of deletion, with the exception of unstressed when occurring word-finally after or between and (in both cases the underlying presence of /i/ is reconstructible from the fact that are affricated to before /i/) *an increasing preference for open syllables, allowing only syllable-final sibilants, the affricate allophones and a coda rhotic, which is weakened in this position (see below) Recent changes in Brazilian Portuguese are steadily eliminating closed syllables:〔 coda nasals are deleted with concomitant nasalization of the preceding vowel, even in learned words; coda becomes , except for conservative velarization at the extreme south and rhotacism in remote rural areas in the center of the country; dialectal coda ( in Europe, as well southern and western dialects) is often never trilled outside the ''fluminense'' area, instead appearing as fricative, and is usually deleted entirely when word-final in words with more than one syllable; and /i/ is epenthesized after almost all other coda-final consonants, with only a few clusters tolerated (e.g., consonant+, ). (Note that some rural "caipira" dialects pronounce the coda-final rhotic as , somewhat like in English.) This tends to produce words almost entirely composed of open syllables, e.g., ''advogado'' ('lawyer'), ''McDonald's'' , ''rock'' . For more detailed information on regional accents, see Portuguese dialects, and for historical sound changes see History of Portuguese. ==Consonants== The consonant inventory of Portuguese is fairly conservative. The medieval Old Portuguese system of seven sibilants (, , , and apicoalveolar ) is still distinguished in spelling (intervocalic ''c/ç z x g/j ch ss s'' respectively), but is reduced to the four fricatives by the merger of into and apicoalveolar into either or (depending on dialect and syllable position), except in parts of northern Portugal (most notably in the Trás-os-Montes region). Other than this, there have been no other significant changes to the consonant phonemes since Old Portuguese. However, several consonant phonemes have special allophones at syllable boundaries (often varying quite significantly between European and Brazilian Portuguese), and a few also undergo allophonic changes at word boundaries. Henceforward, the phrase "at the end of a syllable" can be understood as referring to a position before a consonant or at the end of a word. Phonetic notes * Semivowels contrast with unstressed high vowels in verbal conjugation, as in ''(eu) rio'' and ''(ele) riu'' . Phonologists discuss whether their nature is vowel or consonant. * In most of Brazil and Angola, the consonant hereafter denoted as is realized as a nasal palatal approximant , which nasalizes the vowel that precedes it: . * proposes that Portuguese possesses labio-velar stops and as additional phonemes rather than sequences of a velar stop and .〔 * The consonant hereafter denoted as has a variety of realizations depending on dialect. In Europe, it is typically a uvular trill ; however, a pronunciation as a voiced uvular fricative may be becoming dominant in urban areas. There is also a realization as a voiceless uvular fricative , and the original pronunciation as an alveolar trill also remains very common in various dialects. A common realization of the word-initial in the Lisbon accent is a voiced uvular trill fricative . In Brazil, can be velar, uvular, or glottal and may be voiceless unless between voiced sounds; it is usually pronounced as a voiceless velar fricative , a voiceless glottal fricative or voiceless uvular fricative . See also ''Guttural R in Portuguese''. * and are normally , as in English. However, a number of dialects in northern Portugal pronounce and as apico-alveolar sibilants (sounding somewhat like a soft or ), as in the Romance languages of northern Iberia. A very few northeastern Portugal dialects still maintain the medieval distinction between apical and laminal sibilants (written ''s/ss'' and ''c/ç/z'', respectively). * As a phoneme, only occurs in loanwords, with a tendency for speakers to substitute in . However, is an allophone of before in a number of Brazilian dialects. Similarly, is an allophone of in the same contexts. * In northern and central Portugal, the voiced stops , , are usually lenited to fricatives , , and respectively, except at the beginning of words, or after nasal vowels;〔 a similar process occurs in Spanish. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Portuguese phonology」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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