The mandarin pronunciation apllied to sing: a proposal for the Brazilian portuguese speaker

• Grant number: 12/13185-6
• Support type: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Effective date (Start): September 01, 2012
• Effective date (End): August 31, 2013
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Arts - Music
• Principal researcher: Martha Herr
• Grantee: Carlos Alexandre de Moraes Alferes dos Santos
• Home Institution: Instituto de Artes (IA). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de São Paulo. São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The interest on learning Chinese is frequently increasing in the whole world, and in Brazil it is becoming more common to face Mandarin students. However, the difficulties in the first contact with the language are a lot more complicated than the ones we meet when learning a language with the same origin as Portuguese. This is due to the fact of Mandarin's ideographic universe that generates big complications under phonetic-phonologic issues. It is hard to the natural Portuguese speaker to break the association with the phonographic writing. Using the international pattern of Chinese, the Pinyin, we can minimize this obstacle, meantime, it does not establish a biunivocal phonographic transcription as we see in the IPA - International Phonetic Alphabet.With the IPA use, a phonetic transcription referential pattern will be built to Mandarin and applied to the chant, focusing on the Brazilian Portuguese speaker. The research "Brazilian Portuguese sung: Standards for the pronunciation of Brazilian Portuguese in Erudite Chant". In addition, this proposal also objectives to raise questions about the Mandarin phonological and prosodic aspects. The main result will be the development of a reference table to the pronunciation of Mandarin applied to the chant, with Chinese ideographic notes, the Pinyin, IPA and also the elementary rules of pronunciation. This proposal may also contributes the occidental access to the Chinese culture and music, causing an increase of the number of Brazilians singers interested on Chinese music repertoire. Although there is a vast and valued repertoire sung in Mandarin, a lack of study turns it inaccessible to the Brazilian Portuguese singer. (AU)