North coast dialect ( pt, dialeto da costa norte, ), also called cearense dialect, is a dialect of Portuguese in the

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

ian state of

Ceará Ceará (, pronounced locally as or ) is one of the 26 states of Brazil, located in the northeastern part of the country, on the Atlantic coast. It is the eighth-largest Brazilian State by population and the 17th by area. It is also one of the ...

, having many internal variations, like in the regions Jaguaribe and Sertões (back-countries).

Main characteristics

* Preference for the pronoun instead of ( both meaning "you"), without distinction of formal and informal speech. * Opening of pre-tonic vowels and to and , but always obeying a rule of

vowel harmony In phonology, vowel harmony is an Assimilation (linguistics), assimilatory process in which the vowels of a given domain – typically a phonological word – have to be members of the same natural class (thus "in harmony"). Vowel harmony is t ...

. * Lenition of and to , and reduction of syllables that have these phonemes, represented in Portuguese by and respectively. * Stronger or low "r" sound, depending on their syllabic position (generally strong at the beginning and middle of words, and weak final syllables). Word-finally it is not pronounced. * Heightening of to and to . *

Palatalization Palatalization may refer to: *Palatalization (phonetics), the phonetic feature of palatal secondary articulation *Palatalization (sound change) Palatalization is a historical-linguistic sound change that results in a palatalized articulation ...

of fricatives to when adjacent to letters or . * In Fortaleza and metropolitan area, Ceará North and Ceará Northeast, and close hinterland regions, this group there palatalization phonetic, getting affricates to ͡ʒiand ͡ʃi * Stronger "r" is realised as , and also debuccalization of phonemes to . * Unique vocabulary is present in this dialect, leading many authors to write books of various dictionaries of such expressions. This, perhaps, is symbolic of the people of Ceará, with their antics and humor. Examples: (indicates surprise or astonishment, admiration), (something that is crazy).

References

{{Portuguese dialects Brazilian Portuguese Ceará Piauí