Drop the mic!

There are beautiful words. Actually, “Beautiful” is one of them.

There are strange words. “Escanifobetic”.

There are funny words. “Hullabaloo” is a good example!

And there are ugly words. Does anyone like “Seborrhoea”?

I am not referring to the meaning of each word, but rather to their phonetics. There are words that, stripped of meaning, sound good. They are pleasant to hear. But others are harsh, crude, piercing the eardrum. This is the case with the Portuguese “carregador”, a battery charger.

The R in Portuguese is very hard. It grates on the ear. In a Portuguese voice, when used in the middle or at the end of a word it involves giving a little flick with the tongue on the palate next to the incisors, just like the spirit of the single R. It’s cold. Harsh.

Still in EU Portuguese, if the R is used alone at the beginning or with a double R in the middle of the word it becomes very, very pronounced.

It’s almost… Noise. Or “Ruído”, as we Portuguese would say. With a strongly harsh R.

It isn’t pretty.

It sounds like we’re a dog growling!

Rrrrr…

In English-speaking countries, this problem hardly arises, whether with one or two Rs. It’s even funny for a Portuguese speaker to say “error” “sorry” or “mirror.” It’s as if we pull on the R’s leash, and it stays restrained. In other cases, and once again for us Portuguese speakers, using the R in English words sounds light, with the tongue rolling as if diving under a wave. Sometimes, they naturally sound “piratish” to us. It’s cute!

But in the Portuguese language… RRRRrrrr….

Where am I going with this? Well, imagine a voice-over in European Portuguese (pt-PT) for a technology tutorial focused on a battery, in which “carregador” (Portuguese word for charger) “carregar” (charging) and an even harsher “recarregar” (recharge) appear more than a hundred times in less than 10 minutes!

Rrrrr… Rrrrr…

I sound like a dog roaring all the time…

The subject of this Portuguese voice work is actually important because the voice tutorial is in the healthcare field and…

Rrrrr… Rrrrr…

I sound like a dog growling while giving important explanations…

The voice-over explains how to use lifesaving device but… RRrrrr…

And it isn’t possible to substitute those words. The text is really about them.

Rumble.

Radical.

Ruthless Rs…

(These are the most R-harsh words I can find in English and they are not even close to a native Portuguese R!)