Georgian → Portuguese
Portuguese uses 35 sounds. You already own 16 of them from Georgian. The other 19 are the work — and 12 of those are the dangerous kind: close enough to something you already say that you will substitute them without hearing yourself do it.
The silent swaps
Your mouth has something close enough to reach for. These survive for years precisely because they sound right to you — the fix is hearing the difference first, not trying harder.
the move: without the aspirated part
Portuguese: bread · written "p"
Your /pʰ/ is the one in ფული (money).
the move: without the aspirated part
Portuguese: everything · written "t"
Brazil palatalises it before i: /t͡ʃ/.
Your /tʰ/ is the one in თევზი (fish).
the move: without the aspirated part
Portuguese: house · written "c", "qu", "k"
Your /kʰ/ is the one in ქალი (woman).
the move: close, but not identical
Portuguese: yes · written "im", "in"
Your /i/ is the one in ის (he / she / it).
the move: close, but not identical
Portuguese: one, a · written "um", "un"
Your /u/ is the one in ღამე (night).
the move: alveolar → labiodental
Portuguese: to speak · written "f"
Your /s/ is the one in სახლი (house).
the move: front → central
Portuguese: small · written "e (unstressed)"
The vowel that vanishes. Often deleted outright, which is why European Portuguese sounds like a run of consonants.
Your /i/ is the one in ის (he / she / it).
the move: velar → uvular
Portuguese: car · written "rr", "r- (initial)"
Back in the throat, like French r. Brazil often makes it /h/.
Your /ɣ/ is the one in ღვინო (wine).
the move: open-mid → close-mid
Portuguese: fear · written "e", "ê"
Your /ɛ/ is the one in ერთი (one).
the move: open-mid → close-mid
Portuguese: grandfather · written "o", "ô"
Your /ɔ/ is the one in ორი (two).
the move: trill → tap
Portuguese: expensive · written "r"
One tap.
Your /r/ is the one in რძე (milk).
Words you may say identically
Two or more Portuguese sounds landing on one sound of yours. Until the ear separates them, the mouth cannot — which is what the ear trainer is for.
Genuinely new
Nothing in Georgian sits close to these. They sound foreign in your mouth — which is the good news: you can hear that you are not saying them yet.
wine
Spanish writes this ñ, French gn, Portuguese nh.
Closest thing you own: — but bilabial → palatal.
son
Closest thing you own: — but alveolar → palatal.
time
Closest thing you own: — but open-mid → close-mid.
good
Closest thing you own: — but open-mid → close-mid.
father
Closest thing you own: — but plosive → approximant, velar → palatal.
wool
lá 'there' vs lã 'wool' — the nasality is the whole difference.
Closest thing you own: — but open → near-open, front → central.
bad
Closest thing you own: — but plosive → approximant.
Rhythm and pitch
The layer spelling never records, and the one that makes a correct sentence still sound foreign.
| Georgian | Portuguese | |
|---|---|---|
| Rhythm | Syllable-timed, heavy clusters | Stress-timed (Portugal) |
| Stress | Weak and non-contrastive. Two-syllable words take it on the first syllable; longer words tend toward the third-from-last. No pair of Georgian words is distinguished by stress alone, which is why dictionaries do not mark it. To an English ear Georgian can sound evenly stressed, almost flat — that is correct, not a lack of expression. | Contrastive and written. The default is the second-to-last syllable; anything else takes an accent, and the accent also picks between open and close vowels — avó /ɔ/ is a grandmother and avô /o/ is a grandfather. |
What you have that Portuguese doesn't
17 sounds with no job in Portuguese. They are not mistakes — but they are where an accent leaks in, because a sound you own is easy to use when a hard one is due.
The honest caveat
This is a prediction from the shape of two sound systems, not a recording of you. It says what your inventory makes likely — it cannot know that your Georgian has a regional variety that already owns one of these, or that you learned Portuguese from someone whose accent you copied. A teacher listening to you beats it. Use it to know what to listen for.
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