A little of Pimsleur - by my side:

1. Do you have time for talking - Você tem tempo para conversar?
2. It is too much time - É tempo demais
3. your friends - os seus amigos
4. my friends - os meus amigos
5. he's not going - ele não vai comer
6. is he going to eat alone - ele vai comer sozinho
7. No, with our friends - não com os nossos amigos
8. We eat - Nós comemos
9. Who eats - quem come
10. We speak - nós falamos
11. We are Americans - Nós somos americanos
12. We are from here - Nós somos daqui
13. We speak English - Nós falamos Inglês
14. We speak English with our friends - nós falamos inglês com nossos amigos
15. Are you from here? - você daqui?
16. We are not from here - Não. Nós não somos daqui
17. We can eat - Nós podemos comer
18. That's fine, maybe - Esta bem talvez
19. eighty - oitenta
20. ninety - noventa
21. it is too much money - é dinheiro demais
22. we have money for eating - nós temos dinheiro para comer
23. for eating and paying - para comer e pagar
24. he is over there - ele esta la
25. do you know where we can eat? - você sabe onde nos podemos comer?
26. We don't know - Nós não sabemos

Hey, what gives? We can eat--Nós podemos comer. I expected the "d" in "podemos to have the "g" sound. However, both speakers are clearly using a "d" sound. I know that the voce, ele, and ela all use the "g" sound in "pode" since we have already used them many times. Is this because of where the stress on the word falls? Or something else? The word "de" alone certainly has the "g" sound as has every other word with a "de" combination that we have learned so far. Thanks to anyone who can answer this question.

I'm no phonetics expert but:

podemos - long e sound as in "emily"
pode - short e sound as in "easy"

the sound of the "e" afects how the d is pronounced - pode sounds almost like "poh-gee" while podemos is "pu-dem-ooze". Altough if you ask a brazilian, they'll tell you that both words are pronounced with a "d", they really don't notice how much they soften the consonant before a short vowel. And it's very regional - a gaucho will say "poh-DEE" while a carioca wil say "poh-gee" and a bahiano will day "poh-jay" or some such.

Hope this helps,

BS



(Message edited by badseed on July 30, 2003)

Thanks Badseed. It's interesting that Brazil should have major regional differences in the language. And maybe not that surprising. We certainly have some big ones in this country. The good thing about this then is that eventually I will be fluent enough to BS my way into convincing the people that I am simply from a distant country town visiting the big city.