SaySomethingin Portuguese

[Deborah-SSi]

Currently in alpha testing - watch this space!

[verity-davey]

Watching! Can you give us any indication of a release date? Even just a vague one - this month, next month, Summer?

[Kai]

Tomorrow, maybe (Or by the end of the week at the latest)

[Kai]

As promised, it’s out by the end of the week

Portuguese is live!

I have a tiny update coming soon which will remove a couple wonky phrases we missed on the first pass, but I wouldn’t worry about them too much - there’s bound to be something else we missed anyway

As always, let us know how it goes, as well as if you notice any wonky audio.

[RichardBuck]

@Kai

any wonky audio

A couple of things straight away, I’m afraid. The first is a simple glitch, but a bit off-putting when it’s the first thing you hear: the male voice says that the Portuguese for ‘I want’ is quero, and pronounces it /keru/, as expected; but the female voice says /kero::/, with a super-long ‘ooo’.
The second is a bit of an overall impression: the male voice sounds fairly Portuguese, albeit I think European Portuguese speakers would pronounce rather fewer unstressed vowels than he does; but the female voice sounds more like she’s speaking Brazilian with an Irish accent. I think it’s mostly the quality of word-final -r that’s bothering me: hers sounds like an Irish English approximant rather than a trill or a tap. I don’t know if there’s an explanation for this, or if it sounds that way to other listeners - but I do know I’d hesitate to play it to my bilingual-in-Brazilian partner because I think she’d find it very dodgy.

[Kai]

Thanks, I’ll add the clips to the list for regeneration!

There is an explanation for the voices, and it’s that the current version is a hybrid course - the male voice is a clone of a European Portuguese speaker and the female voice is a clone of a Brazilian Portuguese speaker. I believe the text is Brazilian-leaning, but it’s tried to be neutral wherever possible.

We will separate them out at a later date - the main constraint was that there weren’t very many good voices available, but more get added all the time.

However, this just gave me the idea to add an explanation to the welcome!

[RichardBuck]

I’ve just tried it on my partner and, interestingly, she smirked the moment she heard the female voice - but not because it sounded unrealistic to her (so I retract almost all of what I said!). She did say that it sounded Brazilian, but like the sort of rural/working class accent from São Paulo (state, not city) that might be the butt of other people’s humour - as if it were, say, a West Midlands accent in English.

[martin-harte]

That’s so cool! I’m almost tempted to do the course just to learn that accent ha ha.

[RichardBuck]

@Kai Snagging: “the Portuguese for I’m is” - male voice is OK, female voice adds a weird schwa sound on the end - estou-w@. (I know words in isolation are harder; I imagine the connected phrases will be fine.

[RichardBuck]

“Not to practise” - female voice says another whole phrase before adding Não praticar. Male voice OK.

[mary-8]

Me too! Being Irish it might the natural accent for me! Lol

[RichardBuck]

Snagging - there’s been a few glitches that I’ve skipped over hands-free & not remembered, but there’s one after the bit with Jane’s bag (her bag, a bolsa dela) where the female voice says several phrases before ending on the target one. (Also sometimes pronounces Jane as two syllables.)

[RichardBuck]

Followed by bad glitch on onde está a bolsa dela, female voice.

[RichardBuck]

Portuguese for “with” is - male “na”, female “com”. (Na = in the.)

[RichardBuck]

“It’s time to go away now” - male voice fine, female voice - É hora de ir embora agor… … …agora.