Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 16.djvu/345

* PORTUGtTESE LANGUAGE. 291 PORTUGUESE LANGUAGE. eleven vowel sounds, at least, viz. three values of a, one rather close, like the a of father, a sec- ond quite open, like the a of malt, and a third, slurred and indistinct in nature, but akin to the a of around; three e sounds, one close, another open, and a third (written e or t) indistinct in value and not unlike the French so-callod mute e or the sound of u in fur; two i's, one like the i of hit and the other like the i of ravine, this latter value being represented by the vocalic y and by e, as well as by i; two o sounds, an open and a close; and a u sound (denoted by u and o) , approximate to the u of flute. These are all oral vowels. There occur also nasalized forms of five of them, viz. a nasalized a (written a, an, or am) , a nasalized close e (written em or en), a nasal- ized i (written !»i or in), a nasalized closed o (written 6, om, on), and a nasalized u (written Mm or !(»)• Portuguese has a number of diph- thongs. Several of these latter may also be nasalized : but the process of nasalization is not so complete in the case of either the vowels or the diphthongs as it is in French, for some trace of the nasalizing consonant (»(, n) seems to persist (with a velar quality). The investiga- tions of expert phoneticians like Vianna show the existence of no fewer than twenty-five consonan- tal sounds in the language. These are: p, h, a bilabial 5, f, c, u; (denoted by « or o in hiatus) ; m, t, d, a spirant d {d pronounced like th in the), I, a palatalized I (written Ih and pronoimced ap- proximately like the li of filial), a guttural I. n, a palatalized n (written nh and pronounced not unlike the ni of onion), a velar n (that is. the ng sound which ordinarily follows a preceding nasalized vowel) : tongue-trilled r and rr (writ- ten r, rr, and rh ) ' the latter a reinforced form of the former and both carefully pronounced: the silibants s ( having the value of the En- glish ss, and written s, ss, c before e or i, c before other vowels and occasionally x), z (pro- nounced like the English z and written s or »), s (the phonetic notation for the English sh sound, represented in Portuguese by eh, x, s, z), and i (the phonetic notation for the sibilant sound heard in the English azure and represented in Portuguese by /, g before e or i, s, and z] ; ij (that is i or e with a consonantal value easily acquired in hiatus) ; k (the English k sound, denoted in Portuguese by c before a, o, u, by q before na. by qu before e or i, by ch in a few learned words, and by k in some foreign words) ; and finally ff (that is the sound in the English go, denoted by g before a, o, or u and by gu before e or !)■ Of the consonants d. t, n. I, it should be remarked that their dental character is more pro- nounced than in English, as in the formation of them the tongue tends to touch the base of the upper teeth. The linking together in utterance of syntactically related words in a sentence ac- counts for the variations in value of certain con- sonants: it does so particularly in the case of the sibilants .s and c. One of the most marked features of tlie Portuguese as compared with other Romance languages is the loss of intervo- calic I and H ; thus quaes represents the Latin quales and pessoa the Latin persona. The forms of the article o, a, "the," are due to the intervo- calic position of the I in such syntactical com- binations as de-lo. de-la. 'of the.' whence have resulted the forms do and dn. and by a re-division of the compound d'o and d'a. In common with Spanish, but probably to a greater degi-ee, Portu- guese shows an interchange of I, r, and n. A metathesis of vowels, consonants, and even whole syllables of the Latin etj-mon is not infrequent in the language. As a result of linking or sentence- phonetics, contiguous vowels of different words in a sentence are often pronounced in a single syllable; thus toda a armada becomes in rapid speech todarmada. In its grammar Portuguese rather closely parallels Spanish. A great body of the substan- tives has the distinctive endings of a for feminines and o for masculines, corresponding to the Latin first and second declensions. There are traces of the survival of the Latin nominative case {Deos, Domingos, etc.), but the accusative is in general the norm of the Portuguese form. The sign of the plural is regularly s. As in Spanish, the regular verbs of the -ere conjugation have joined either the conjugation in -ere or that in -ire. An extremely interesting phenomenon is the appearance of a personal or inflected in- finitive, which makes possible a very succinct construction, comparable to the Latin accusative and infinitive. Partir, for example, may be con- jugated: partir eu, "I to depart;' partires tu, ■tliou to depart;' jxtrtir cllc, "he to depart;' par- tirmos nos, 'we to depart ;' partirdes vos, 'you to depart:' partirem elles, 'they to depart;' and 'it is time for us to depart' may be rendered tempo e de partirmos. The earliest written speci- mens of Portuguese appear to be certain docu- ments of 1192. Consult : Cornu."DieportugiesischeSprache."in Groeber's Grundriss der romanischen Philologie, vol. i. (Strassburg, 1888) ; Coelho, A lingua por- tugueza (Porto, 1881) ; id.. Theoria da eonjuga- Quo em latim e portuguez (Lisbon, 1870) ; Gon- Calvcs Vianna. Bases da ortografia portugueza (ib., 1885) ; A., ExposicCio da pronuncia normal portugueza (ib., 1892) ; Monaci and F. d'Ovidio, Manueletti d'introduzione agli stud/ neolatini, vol. iii., Portoghese (Iniola, 1881); De Souza, Grammaire portugaise (Paris, 1871) ; Von Rein- hardstoettner, Grammatik der portugiesisehen S/yraehe (Strassburg, 1878); Elwes, J^ Grammar of the Portuguese LanguJige (2d ed., London, 1884) ; Ribeiro, Grammatiea portugueza (3d ed., Rio de Janeiro, 1889) ; Pacheco da Silva and Lameira de Andrade, Vofoes de grammatiea por- tugueza (ib., 1887) ; Leite de Vasconcellos, Dia- lecto brazileiro (Porto, 1883) ; dialect o miran- dez (ib., 1882) : Flores mirandezas (ib., 1884) ; ilappa dialectologica do continente portuguez, ftrecedida de uma classifieacao summaria das linguas por A. R. Gonralves Vianna (Lisbon, 1897) ; De Fonseca, A'oro diccionario da lingua portugueza (3d ed.. Paris. 1831) ; de Santa Rosa de Viterbo, Elucidario d^is palavrax, etc., que em Portugal antigamente se usaram (2d ed.. Lis- bon. 1805) ; Vieira. Grande diccionario portuguez ou Thesouro da lingua portugueza, etc. (Porto, 1871); Da Silva, Diccionario da lingua portu- gueza, com grande numero de termos novos usados no Brasil e no Portuguez da India (Lis- bon, 1877-78) ; Caldas Aulete, Diccionario con- temporaneo da lingua portugueza (ib.. 1881) ; Coelho, Diccionario manual etymologieo da lingua portugueza (ib.. 1890) : Roquette, Dictionnaire portugais-francais (Paris. 1855); De Lacerda, A Xcw Dictionary of the Portuguese and English Languages (Lisbon, 1871); Jlichaelis, A Neio