When we learn Portuguese, we may encounter a strange story at some point. We can read texts well, understand every Portuguese speaker, watch movies in Portuguese, and even think in Portuguese, but when we open our mouths, we realize that our tongues simply don’t obey, even though we know all the grammar and vocabulary.
Our speech apparatus is not ready to pronounce unfamiliar letters and sounds. That’s why we’ve prepared a list of tongue twisters in Portuguese for you! Of course, this method alone won’t help us acquire the intonation or perfect pronunciation, but at the very least, by practicing these tongue twisters from time to time, we can stumble less on almost every word while speaking Portuguese.
Tongue twisters with numbers
Sayings that will not only help with the pronunciation of the letter combination “tr”, but will also make you remember some numerals, are the following:
- Três pratos de trigo para três tigres tristes. (Three wheat dishes for three sad tigers.)
- Em vinte pratos de trigo, vinte tigres tristes comiam trigo. (Of the twenty dishes with wheat, twenty tigers ate the wheat.)
It’s funny and almost makes no sense, because tigers don’t eat wheat! However, these are not the most ridiculous sayings, because there is another one that makes you think a lot, because the calculations just don’t add up. Read it and tell us what kind of monster this is? Do you have any ideas?
Dez dedos numa mão e quinze dedos num pé. (Ten fingers on one hand and fifteen toes on one foot.)
But the truthfulness of the following tongue twisters is easy to believe! Piglets can really eat a lot, but sheep don’t care how many trees there are in the field, because they eat grass. Here’s what it sounds like in Portuguese:
- Os cinco porquinhos comeram cinco quilos de milho. (Five piglets ate five kilograms of corn.)
- Oito ovelhas a pastar num campo com três árvores. (Eight sheep are grazing in a field with three trees.)
Tongue twisters with animals
Yes, yes, the previous tongue twisters were also about animals, but in this section we will do without numbers. These examples are very funny and even have some short plot.
- O rato roeu a rolha da garrafa do rei da Rússia. (The mouse gnawed through the cork of the King of Russia’s bottle.)
- A vaca malhada foi molhada por outra vaca molhada e malhada. (A spotted cow got wet by another wet spotted cow.)
Naturally, they still do not carry any semantic load or information, but they sound funny. However, after the following expressions, you will definitely go looking for the answer on the Internet, since you don’t know it!
- Sabia que o sabiá sabia assobiar? (Did you know that a blackbird can whistle?)
- Quando o sol nasce, a sombra onde vai ficar? (When the sun comes up, where will the shadow be?)
Tongue twisters about countries
There are a lot of tongue twisters in the Portuguese language that mention countries, but we have chosen the most difficult ones to pronounce. Because we are writing this article to make it really difficult, because only after this can there be a good result.
- O elefante escocês escorregou em Estocolmo. (A Scottish elephant slipped in Stockholm.)
- A Ana arrumou aranha árabe na Argentina. (Ana found an Arabian spider in Argentina.)
- Se o Rei da Rússia quisesse coroar a rainha, quantos reis seriam necessários para coroar a rainha? (If the King of Russia wanted to crown the Tsarina, how many kings would it take to crown the Tsarina?)
The difficulty with the last two phrases is that you need to remember three rules for pronouncing the letter “r”: at the beginning of the word, double letters “rr”, in the middle and at the end of the word.
Tongue twisters with meaning
Jokes aside, but some smart and truthful expressions can be remembered and even taught to others. These are not just phrases that are difficult to pronounce, they are “folk wisdom”, so to speak.
- A vida é uma sucessão decisões sucessivas. (Life is a series of sequential decisions.)
- Se o sábio soubesse que o saber é saber apenas o ser, saberia mais. (If the sage knew that knowledge is knowledge only of being, he would know more.)
These examples not only exercise our language, but also contain a philosophy that will be useful to think about. Long tongue twisters
Finally, we will suggest you to voice several long Portuguese training sets of sentences. Don’t be lazy to carefully analyze each word and not lose the thread of what is being said.
- O tempo perguntou ao tempo quanto tempo o tempo tem, o tempo respondeu ao tempo que o tempo tem tanto tempo quanto tempo o tempo tem. (Time asked time how much time had passed, time answered time that time had as much time as time.)
- O doce perguntou ao doce qual é o doce mais doce que o doce, o doce respondeu ao doce que o doce mais doce que o doce é o doce de batata doce. (Candy asked candy which candy is sweeter than candy, candy answered candy that the sweetest candy is sweet potato candy.)
Of course, you don’t need to memorize them, but read until you can do it without hesitation, your pronunciation will become clearer and you will be able to speak Portuguese much faster
Conclusion
Sometimes you need to be distracted from grammar, but you don’t need to be distracted from the main topic – learning Portuguese. Idiomatic expressions, funny comparisons, sayings, and today tongue twisters make learning fun, so we try to tell you about it from time to time. We know how difficult it is sometimes to speak a foreign language and we try our best to help you through our blog and classes!