Good evening, DU Fam, I have a question about ONE of the languages I'm learning that I can't figure out to
save my life. I am learning Portugeuse, ("FAIRLY" easy as I have a pretty good knowledge of Italian, Spanish & French.) but can someone, ANYONE tell me why if a sentence ends in a word that is spelled ending with an "r", that word if pronounced as if it ends in a "SH" sound? I don't get it. I'm learning to just go with the flow BUT I need to understand why this is.
I'll be forever grateful.... I understand Magyar, (Hungarian), Czech & Polski but as weird as some of the languages I've learned can be, ( NAVAJO is a TRIP, BTW), I absolutly need to know why this is the case. Is it similar to the Spanish that's spoken in Andalusia with a lisp, supposedly because centuries ago, there was a ruler with a HORRIFICALLY rough lisp or is it just because?
= new reply since forum marked as read
I learned a little Portuguese to learn the lyrics to a song that I like. I know some French and some Spanish and I concluded that Portuguese is a combination of French and Spanish. There seems to be a bit of a consonant shift remnant in the feature you mentioned.
A consonant shift that took place in Europe included the replacement, of sorts, of the "r" with "s" and the way "t" is pronounced, this may be a remnant stuck in the middle of a blended language. That's the simplest way to put it, just a thought.
Traveling there in the fall. I know most people speak English but it is fun learning a new language (and good for my old brain). I do well while I am in the language program and reading it but I still cannot understand it when I hear it spoken - they speak very quickly. I keep plugging away though. At least I will be able to say a few phrases. I have also tried watching Portuguese movies with subtitles for practice.
But I do not know the answer to your question. 
Bom Dia!
Which option works for your variety of Portuguese depends on which variety you're talking about.
The consonant hereafter denoted as /ʁ/ has a variety of realizations depending on dialect. In Europe, it is typically a voiced uvular fricative [ʁ]. There is also a realization as a voiceless uvular fricative [χ], and the original pronunciation as an alveolar trill [r] also remains very common in various dialects.[11] A common realization of the word-initial /ʁ/ in the Lisbon accent is a voiced uvular fricative trill [ʀ̝].[12] In Brazil, /ʁ/ can be velar, uvular, or glottal and may be voiceless unless between voiced sounds;[13] it is usually pronounced as a voiceless velar fricative [x], a voiceless glottal fricative [h] or voiceless uvular fricative [χ]. See also Guttural R in Portuguese. All those variants are transcribed with ⟨ʁ⟩ in this article.
That's written in "linguistics" with a heavy dose of jargon. Let's paraphrase.
What you think of as "r" is pronounced differently by dialect. In Europe, it's pronounced close enough to French "r" : rouge, guitariste, guitare . (Not like the "r" in "decider".) ("The consonant hereafter denoted as /ʁ/ has a variety of realizations depending on dialect. In Europe, it is typically a voiced uvular fricative [ʁ]."
It may be pronounced like the "ch" in German "macht" or pretentious American pronunciations of "Bach", but it was originally pronounced like the "rr" in Spanish or the "r" in Italian, and that's not uncommon in some regions. (There is also a realization as a voiceless uvular fricative [χ], and the original pronunciation as an alveolar trill [r] also remains very common in various dialects.)
In Lisbon, it's common to pronounce "r" as the French "r" (same examples as before). (A common realization of the word-initial /ʁ/ in the Lisbon accent is a voiced uvular fricative trill [ʀ̝])
In Brazil, all bets are off. (I'm guessing that's both by region and socioeconomic status). In Brazil, "r" can be like a backed can be various sounds I can't always easily place in languages we might both have knowledge of. It might show up as something in-between the "s" in "leisure" and a French "r"; as a French "r" as described above; or "glottal" (which could mean various things and guessing it's like a Spanish "g" between in fast speech between vowels--the "g" in "agua" in low SES or fast informal speech is very much not an English "g"
. Now, that holds between vowels (and probably between /d/, /g/, /z/, /b/ in any combination, but that's a detail I infer). If the "r" is in some other place--at the start of words or at the end of a word at the end of a sentence then "r" can show up as Spanish "j", an English "h" or a German "ch" (as in "macht, again). I think this is unlikely inside a sentence where there's a vowel ending a word and immediately before "r". But Wiki writes them all with the symbol ⟨ʁ⟩. (In Brazil, /ʁ/ can be velar, uvular, or glottal and may be voiceless unless between voiced sounds;[13] it is usually pronounced as a voiceless velar fricative [x], a voiceless glottal fricative [h] or voiceless uvular fricative [χ]. See also Guttural R in Portuguese. All those variants are transcribed with ⟨ʁ⟩ in this article.)
Hope it helps. I'd actually meant to look this up for a while and never got around to it.