Say Whaaaaat?!

Being a linguist (I feel totally pretentious every time I say that) I am constantly realizing weird little things about language that I and only I (well, maybe Danielle too, I hope) find interesting. In hopes that others might share my interest, I’ve created this little subsection of my blog: “Say Whaaaaat?!” for all my linguistic inquiries.

I’ll start with the Brazilian word-intial “R”. Oh Brazilian “R”, how you have provided me with hours of entertainment at my Namo’s expense. I do not know how many times I have heard Brazilians refer to “rats” as “hats” and “rap” as “happy” (gotta love that strong accent on the word-final stops). “Hippy-hoppie”, “picky-nicky”, “flippy-floppy” (okay I made up that last one).

In attempting to drill the correct pronunciation of the American word-initial “R” into my Namo’s head, I seem to have gone over board. Now, words that start will “H” are being pronounced with “R”s. Like some sort of crazy overcompensation. So now not only do I have to decipher rat vs. hat, and rap vs. happy, but roneymoon vs. honeymoon and rouses vs. houses.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not meaning to bash on Brazilians. Learning a new language is hard and it is kicking my ass as well. I can’t even tell you how many times I have flubbed up the infamous pão vs. pau. And I have decided to just pretend ver & vir are the same verb because I don’t want to (read: can’t) figure out the difference in conjugations.

I came here with the intention of being a teacher, but other opportunities arose and I put teaching on the back burner. I know a lot of you are teachers, do your students do this? Pronounce words starting with "R" with an "H" sound and vice versa?