In a message dated 10/17/00 10:38:37 AM Eastern Daylight Time, caioross@z... writes: caioross@z... writes:
<< English and German and European Portuguese are stress-timed languages, so they are necessarily less monotonous than Spanish, French, Italian and Brazilian Portuguese, which are syllable-timed ones. >>
Caio, what is stress-timed and syllable-timed? Does it have something to do with always stressing the penultimate syllable unless told to do otherwise by means of an accent mark? I had no idea that was a difference between European and Brazilian Portuguese! What about the highly, highly inflected to the point of sing-song of the Northern Brazilians? The Cariocas sing also. But I'd venture to guess that normal speech for a Brazilian covers a way wider pitch range than any typical American's.
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