# Lisbon / Estremenho European Portuguese (pt-PT-x-lisbon): Phonology Reference

**Code**: `pt-PT-x-lisbon` | **Family**: Indo-European > Romance > Ibero-Romance | **Script**: Latin (alphabet) **Parent**: `pt-PT` | **Quality tier**: research **Sources**: Hristovsky (2008, *Textos Seleccionados* XXIII ENAPL, APL, pp. 239–255). Mateus & d'Andrade (2000, *The Phonology of Portuguese*, p. 19). Cruz-Ferreira (1995, *JIPA* 25:90–94). Cintra (1971, *Boletim de Filologia* 22:81–116). Segura (2013, *Gramática do Português*, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian)

## A distinct urban variety, not the conservative norm

`pt-PT-x-lisbon` models the speech of Lisbon and the surrounding Estremenho (Centro-Litoral) zone as a **distinct urban variety with its own phonological innovations**. It is expressed as a delta on top of the `pt-PT` base. The `pt-PT` base is the broad *descriptive* European Portuguese standard. Lisbon inherits it and adds features that **deviate from the conservative / neutral prescriptive norm**, which is traditionally anchored to educated central (Coimbra-type) speech.

The status of Lisbon relative to "the standard" is genuinely contested in the literature, and this spec represents that honestly rather than picking a side. Cintra (1971) argues that the prestige standard of European Portuguese broadly coincides with the Central-Southern (Estremenho / Lisbon) type. The conservative pedagogical reference norm, however, is often anchored to central (Coimbra) speech, which lacks several of the Lisbon innovations recorded below. Lisbon is therefore **not** encoded as identical to that reference norm.

## Inherited from pt-PT (not restated here)

These broad European Portuguese processes are **inherited unchanged** through the `pt-PT` base edge (`graphemes_base`, `allophones_base`, `positional_graphemes_base`, and the id-keyed `allophone_rules` overlay). They are the values Lisbon shares with the base standard and are deliberately **not** duplicated in this spec:

- **Strong unstressed vowel reduction**: pretonic/final unstressed /e/ → [ɨ] (inherited positional map). The spec keeps explicit unstressed /a/ → [ɐ] and /o/ → [u] reduction rows. This way it reduces the unstressed vowels without inheriting the base's open [ɔ]/[a] stressed-nucleus defaults, which are lexically unpredictable for spelling-unmarked stressed `<o>`/`<a>`.
- **Dark (velarised) coda /l/ → [ɫ]** (`PT_CODA_L_DARK`).
- **Coda-sibilant *chiado***, coda /s z/ → [ʃ ʒ] (`PT_CODA_S_HUSH`, `PT_CODA_Z_HUSH`), with the coda-/s/ voicing sandhi. Lisbon keeps the **standard alveolar [z]** for the external prevocalic /s/-sandhi (`estás a ver` → [eˈʃtaz ˈɐ ˈvɛɾ]). The palatal [ʒ] here is a Southern/Azorean feature (Algarve, São Miguel), **not** a Lisbon one.

## Lisbon innovations modelled

| Feature | Value | Example | Source |
|:--|:--|:--|:--|
| **Stressed `<e>` → [ɐ] before a palatal** | /e ɛ/ → **[ɐ]** before [ʎ ɲ ʃ ʒ] | coelho → [ˈkoɐʎu], fecho → [ˈfɐʃu], venho → [ˈvɐɲu], espelho → [eʃˈpɐʎu], abelha → [ɐˈbɐʎɐ] | Hristovsky 2008:239; Mateus & d'Andrade 2000:19 |
| `<ei>` diphthong lowering-centralisation | `<ei>` → **[ɐj]** | leite → [ˈlɐjtɨ], primeiro → [pɾiˈmɐjɾu], reino → [ˈʁɐjnu], seis → [ˈsɐjʃ] | Cintra 1971; Segura 2013; Mateus & d'Andrade 2000 |
| `<ou>` monophthongisation | `<ou>` → **[o]** | ouro → [ˈoɾu] | Segura 2013; Cintra 1971 |
| Rhotic realisation | /ʁ/ → **[ʁ]** (uvular fricative, Lisbon-urban norm) | carro → [ˈkaʁu] | Mateus & d'Andrade 2000 |

### The signature innovation: stressed `<e>` → [ɐ] before a palatal

The single most characteristic Lisbon feature modelled here is the **centralisation of the stressed front mid vowel to [ɐ] before a palatal consonant**. The relevant palatals are [ʎ ɲ ʃ ʒ], produced by the digraphs and letters `<lh>` → ʎ, `<nh>` → ɲ, `<ch>`/`<x>` → ʃ, and `<j>`/`<g(e/i)>` → ʒ:

- coelho → **[ˈkoɐʎu]**, espelho → **[eʃˈpɐʎu]**, fecho → **[ˈfɐʃu]**, venho → **[ˈvɐɲu]**, abelha → **[ɐˈbɐʎɐ]**.

Hristovsky (2008:239) surveys the filological, dialectological and phonological literature: Gonçalves Viana (1883), Cintra (1971), Barbosa (1965), Andrade (1981), and Barros (1994) for the sociolinguistic distribution *in Lisbon speech*. These authors agree that the vowel /e/ (and /ɛ/) is realised as [ɐ] before a palatal segment, as a dissimilatory process. Mateus & d'Andrade (2000:19) list stressed [ɐ] as occurring in exactly three contexts: before a palatal consonant (*telha* [ˈtɐʎɐ]), before the palatal glide (*lei* [ˈlɐj]), and before a nasal. They treat it as a *derived*, not underlying, vowel. Cruz-Ferreira (1995:92) notes that all vowels are raised and advanced before palato-alveolar and palatal consonants. **The conservative / central (Coimbra-type = `pt-PT` base) norm keeps [e]/[ɛ] in this context.** That is exactly why this is encoded as a Lisbon delta rather than in the base.

This is implemented by the `LX_STRESSED_E_PREPALATAL` allophone rule (`followed_by: "palatal"`). It runs as a post-lexical rescorer **after** positional reduction. Unstressed /e/ has already reduced to [ɨ] by that stage, so the rule fires only where the vowel still surfaces as [e]/[ɛ], i.e. the **stressed** (or word-initial) realisation. This makes the rule stress-gated without needing a dedicated "stressed-before-palatal" position.

**Scope note (honestly stated).** Hristovsky (2008:239) reports the change for /e/ in tonic *and/or* atonic position. The atonic case, however, is variable and sociolinguistically graded (Barros 1994). In a broad transcription, unstressed pre-palatal /e/ overwhelmingly reduces to [ɨ]: melhor → [mɨˈʎoɾ], fechar → [fɨˈʃaɾ], mexer → [mɨˈʃɛɾ]. That is the value the base and the gold data use. Only the categorical **stressed** case is modelled. The reduced unstressed value is deliberately left untouched.

### The `<ei>` → [ɐj] diphthong

The `<ei>` → [ɐj] realisation is the diagnostic grapheme-level Estremenho feature. Conservative and Northern EP keep [ej] instead: see `pt-PT-x-porto`, which declares `<ei>` → [ej] and `<ou>` → [ow] as its diphthong-preservation deltas. The Centro-Litoral / Estremenho zone lowers and centralises the nucleus to [ɐj]. Cintra (1971) and Segura (2013) treat [ɐj] as characteristic of that zone. The isophone of `<ei>` monophthongisation/centralisation is one of Cintra's boundary lines running near the Tejo.

## Not modelled here

- **Intervocalic voiced-stop spirantisation** (/b d ɡ/ → [β ð ɣ]) is a general EP process, not Lisbon-specific. It is deliberately not encoded here: every available pt gold is broad/phonemic and transcribes the stops (see the `pt-PT` base notes). It belongs to a future narrow-transcription task.
- **Apico-alveolar vs predorsodental sibilant place** (Cintra's primary North/South isogloss) is an articulatory distinction invisible to a phoneme-level, orthography-blind engine. The predorsodental value the base produces is what Lisbon uses.

## Benchmark

`pt-PT-x-lisbon` is scored against two expert-human gold sets, `ep_dialects` (n = 45) and `clup_dialect` (n = 5). These small, unvalidated gold sets are internally inconsistent in exactly the pre-palatal context modelled here: for example, they transcribe *venho* with a plain front vowel. So the pre-palatal delta does not by itself move the aggregate PER. The delta is justified on the documented phonology, not on a PER gain.

## Sources

- **Hristovsky, Gueorgui (2008)**. *Estudo fonológico de alguns padrões na variação da vogal /e/ seguida de /i/ ([j]) ou de consoante palatal no Português Europeu*. In *Textos Seleccionados, XXIII Encontro Nacional da Associação Portuguesa de Linguística*, Lisboa: APL, pp. 239–255. [PDF](https://apl.pt/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/18-Hristovsky.pdf). (p. 239 for the /e/, /ɛ/ → [ɐ] before-palatal generalisation.)
- **Mateus, M. H. M. & d'Andrade, E. (2000)**. *The Phonology of Portuguese*. Oxford University Press. (p. 19: stressed [ɐ] before a palatal consonant, the palatal glide, or a nasal.)
- **Cruz-Ferreira, Madalena (1995)**. *European Portuguese*. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 25(2):90–94. (p. 92: vowels raised/advanced before palato-alveolar and palatal consonants.)
- **Cintra, L. F. Lindley (1971)**. *Nova proposta de classificação dos dialectos galego-portugueses*. Boletim de Filologia (Lisboa), vol. 22, pp. 81–116. [PDF](https://cvc.instituto-camoes.pt/hlp/biblioteca/novaproposta.pdf). Republished in *Estudos de Dialectologia Portuguesa*, Sá da Costa, 1983.
- **Segura, Luísa (2013)**. *Variedades dialetais do português europeu*. In Raposo et al. (eds.), *Gramática do Português*, vol. I, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, pp. 85–142.
- **Cunha, C. & Cintra, L. F. L. (1984)**. *Nova Gramática do Português Contemporâneo*. Sá da Costa.

---
[← Pyrenean-valley Aragonese subdialects](an-valleys.md) · [Home](../index.md) · [Portuense / Northern European Portuguese →](pt-PT-x-porto.md)
