MTEL Portuguese (32) flashcards

32 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.

Nasal vowels

Vowels produced with airflow through the nose, marked by tilde (ã, õ) or by a following m/n (sim, bom). Portuguese has five nasal vowel phonemes distinct from oral vowels.

European Portuguese vowel reduction

In European Portuguese, unstressed vowels reduce to [ɨ] or [ə], so 'de' sounds like [dɨ]. Brazilian Portuguese generally pronounces unstressed vowels more openly.

Final /l/ vocalization

In Brazilian Portuguese, syllable-final /l/ becomes [w]: 'Brasil' → [bɾaˈziw]. European Portuguese keeps a velarized [ɫ] instead.

Acute accent

Marks an open stressed vowel (á, é, í, ó, ú) and often stress position in oxytones and paroxytones, e.g., 'café', 'lápis'.

Circumflex accent

Marks a closed stressed vowel (â, ê, ô), as in 'você', 'avô', 'pêssego'. It distinguishes vowel quality and sometimes meaning (avô/avó).

Crase

Contraction of preposition 'a' with feminine article 'a' or demonstrative 'aquela', written with grave accent (à, àquela). Occurs before feminine nouns, not before masculine or most proper names.

Pretérito perfeito

Simple past tense expressing completed actions (falei, comi, parti). Contrasts with imperfect, which describes ongoing or habitual past states.

Pretérito imperfeito

Past tense for habitual, ongoing, or descriptive actions (falava, comia). Often translates English 'used to' or 'was doing'.

Pretérito mais-que-perfeito

Pluperfect tense indicating an action before another past action. Simple form (falara) is literary; compound form (tinha falado) is common in speech.

Futuro do subjuntivo

Subjunctive tense used in temporal and conditional clauses about the future: 'Quando eu chegar', 'Se ele vier'. Formed from the third-person plural preterite stem.

Personal infinitive

Inflected infinitive that agrees with its subject (para eu estudar, para eles estudarem). A distinctive Portuguese feature absent in Spanish and most Romance languages.

Enclisis

Placement of a pronoun after the verb (Dá-me, Disse-lhe). Standard in European Portuguese affirmative clauses; less common in colloquial Brazilian Portuguese.

Proclisis

Placement of a pronoun before the verb (Me dá, Te amo). Favored in Brazilian Portuguese; in European Portuguese it is triggered by negation, adverbs, or subordinators.

Mesoclisis

Placement of a pronoun inside a future or conditional verb form (Dar-lhe-ei, Far-se-ia). Now largely restricted to formal or literary European Portuguese.

Gender agreement

Nouns and adjectives must agree in gender (masculine/feminine) and number. Adjectives ending in -ão (alemão) change to -ã, -ães, -ãs.

False cognate: embaraçada

In Portuguese 'embaraçada' means pregnant or embarrassed depending on variety; the English 'embarrassed' is often 'envergonhada'. Cognates can mislead readers.

Cantigas de amigo

Medieval Galician-Portuguese lyric poems in which a female speaker addresses her mother or friend about love. Associated with the troubadour tradition (13th–14th centuries).

Os Lusíadas

Epic poem by Luís de Camões (1572) narrating Vasco da Gama's voyage to India. It is the central work of the Portuguese Renaissance.

Fernando Pessoa

Modernist Portuguese poet (1888–1935) known for heteronyms such as Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis, and Álvaro de Campos, each with a distinct style and worldview.

Semana de Arte Moderna

1922 São Paulo arts festival that launched Brazilian Modernism. It promoted national identity, experimental form, and rejection of rigid academic conventions.

Macunaíma

1928 novel by Mário de Andrade featuring a trickster hero and Brazilian folklore. It exemplifies Brazilian Modernist experimentation with language and national identity.

José Saramago

Portuguese novelist and Nobel laureate (1998). Known for long sentences, sparse punctuation, and works such as 'Ensaio sobre a Cegueira' and 'Memorial do Convento'.

Mia Couto

Mozambican writer known for blending Portuguese with oral African traditions and inventing new words. Works include 'Terra Sonâmbula' and 'O Último Voo do Flamingo'.

Eça de Queirós

Portuguese Realist novelist (1845–1900) whose works such as 'Os Maias' and 'O Crime do Padre Amaro' satirize bourgeois society and the Church.

Crônica

Short prose genre common in Brazilian journalism, mixing narrative and commentary on everyday life. It is typically personal, reflective, and set in the present.

Conto

Short fictional narrative with a single plot, few characters, and a concise climax. It differs from romance (novel) in length and complexity.

Tu vs. você

Both mean 'you'. 'Tu' takes second-person verb forms (tu falas) and is common in Portugal and parts of Brazil; 'você' takes third-person forms (você fala).

A gente

Colloquial Brazilian Portuguese subject meaning 'we', used with third-person singular verbs (a gente vai). Standard written form is 'nós' with first-person plural verbs.

Acordo Ortográfico

1990 spelling reform adopted across Lusophone countries. It removed some silent consonants, standardized hyphenation, and altered accent rules (e.g., 'pára' → 'para').

Oxytone stress rule

Words stressed on the final syllable are oxytones. They take an accent when ending in -a, -e, -o, -am, -em (café, avô), but not when ending in -i, -u, or a consonant.

Paroxytone stress rule

Words stressed on the penultimate syllable are paroxytones. They are accented when ending in -i, -u, -l, -r, -x, -ão, -ã, -ps (lápis, fácil).

Proparoxytone rule

Words stressed on the antepenultimate syllable are always accented in Portuguese: 'médico', 'pêssego', 'lâmpada'. No exceptions apply to this rule.