Inteligibilidade na aprendizagem das vogais médias do português brasileiro por falantes nativos do espanhol

Abstract

This study, of theoretical-bibliographical nature, analyzed research on the teaching-learning process of Portuguese as an Additional Language (PLA) by native Spanish immigrants. Specifically, phonetic-phonological issues of Spanish and Portuguese were analyzed regarding their vowel systems, focusing on the acquisition, perception, and pronunciation of the middle vowels /e/ - /ε/ and /o/ - /၁/, in pairs such as “seco – sεco; soco – s၁co” by Spanish speakers. The objective of this study was to select and analyze academic articles that dealt with learning PLA middle vowels associated with the concept of intelligibility. The corpus presented three scientific articles, selected and filtered by determining criteria, namely, (a) the use of the concept of intelligibility; (b) the production and/or perception of Brazilian Portuguese middle vowels; (c) the involvement of Spanish speakers as PLA learners. Data analysis, observed in the light of the theoretical assumptions of the perception and production of tonic mid vowels and the concept of intelligibility, allowed us to verify that Spanish speakers tend not to fully produce the acoustic difference between /e/ - /ε/ and /o / - /၁/ of Portuguese, with an associative inclination to the categories existing in their L1 system, Spanish, and the overlapping of sounds. However, data found in the selected research showed that, even though the production of Portuguese low-middle vowels was not fully achieved, the production of Spanish speakers was evolving, providing utterances that reached the intelligibility of Brazilian listeners.