teletubbies in Brazilian Portuguese

[Miriam Coimbra]

The teletubbies characters when speaking Brazilian Portuguese have somewhat
different phonological patterns than the ones summarized by Sarah Schimdt
for English. It seems that the Brazilian tv network responsible for the
broadcasting and translation adjusted the language to an older age range
(maybe 3 to 4 years-old).

The Brazilian version agrees with the English version in relation to the
production of fricatives and liquids in words like:
dois 'two'[dojs]
bola 'ball'[bola]

The production of:
tchau 'bye' [tSaw]
gipsy [dZipsi]
is advanced for a toddler in Brazilian Portuguese

However, I have not found any deviant productions in Portuguese such as the
ones pointed out by Sarah.
In relation to clusters, only once in the entire program the characters
reduced a cluster to a CV sequence in the word tres 'three' [tejs].

It seems to me the Brazilian version has lost the most important
chracteristic of the English version which is the intention to make the
characters sound like a toddler.

Miriam Coimbra
Unijui
Ijui, RS  Brasil
Miriam Coimbra
Professor of Linguistics
Department of Communication, Arts and Language (DELAC)
UNIJUI
Ijui, RS   Brasil
mcoimbra at main.unijui.tche.br