Portuguese → French
French uses 36 sounds. You already own 26 of them from Portuguese. The other 10 are the work — and 10 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: close, but not identical
French: eight · written "u+vowel"
Say /y/ and glide into the next vowel. nuit, lui, pluie.
Your /w/ is the one in mau (bad).
the move: close, but not identical
French: good · written "on", "om"
Your /ɔ/ is the one in avó (grandmother).
the move: rounded
French: you · written "u", "û"
Round your lips for /u/, say /i/. NOT English 'oo'.
Your /i/ is the one in vida (life).
the move: rounded
French: little · written "eu", "œu (open syllable)"
Your /e/ is the one in medo (fear).
the move: rounded
French: fear · written "eu", "œu (closed syllable)"
Your /ɛ/ is the one in pé (foot).
the move: close, but not identical
French: bread · written "in", "im", "ain", "ein"
Your /ɛ/ is the one in pé (foot).
the move: rounded
French: brown · written "un", "um"
Parisians merge it into /ɛ̃/: brun = brin.
Your /ɛ/ is the one in pé (foot).
the move: near-open → mid
French: small · written "e (open syllable)"
Often dropped in fast speech: p'tit.
Your /ɐ/ is the one in cama (bed).
the move: near-open → open, central → back
French: dough · written "â"
Merging with /a/ for most younger speakers.
Your /ɐ/ is the one in cama (bed).
Words you may say identically
Two or more French sounds landing on one sound of yours. Until the ear separates them, the mouth cannot — which is what the ear trainer is for.
Rhythm and pitch
The layer spelling never records, and the one that makes a correct sentence still sound foreign.
| Portuguese | French | |
|---|---|---|
| Rhythm | Stress-timed (Portugal) | Syllable-timed |
| Stress | 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. | This is the one that surprises everyone: French words have NO fixed stress. Prominence lands on the last syllable of the rhythmic GROUP, not of the word — so the same word is stressed differently depending on where it sits. 'Un chocolat' stresses -lat; 'un chocolat chaud' moves it to chaud and the word chocolat loses it entirely. There are no French minimal pairs by stress, because there is nothing to contrast. |
What you have that French doesn't
9 sounds with no job in French. 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 Portuguese has a regional variety that already owns one of these, or that you learned French 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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