There are no porches in Portugal…

and there are no gulls.

Well, I am sure many houses in Portugal have verandas or porches and many beaches have many gulls.

However, if you consider how many Americans pronounce the word Portugal and how the Portuguese pronounce the name of their country, you will understand my quip.

Many American pronounce the name of the country as Porch-uh-guhl or Porch-you-guhl where "uh" is the most frequent vowel in the English language, the schwa, an unaccented form of a short u.  Some may get closer to the Portuguese pronunciation with Porch-uh-gahl.

In the Google Translate (http://translate.google.com/#en/pt/portugese), the English speaker says POUR-chyu-gahl, but the Portuguese speaker says Por-tu-GAHL with the "l" held a bit longer.

How do you pronounce two, too, and to?

If you say that all three are pronounced the same, you aren't listening.

More often than not, to is pronounced tuh. I've heard radio announcers, politicians, and ordinary people of all kinds pronounce to with a schwa (an unaccented vowel) rather than with the oo sound. I've even heard English people use tuh.

It sort of proves my point that there is no "correct" language, only "current" language that people actually speak.

Two, too, and to are pronounced the same, right?

Once upon a time the title used to be true of American English, but not anymore. Thirty years ago when my daughter was in high school, I often heard her say "to" as "tuh". Now I hear announcers and politicians saying "tuh".

Sometimes I think American English should be called Schwaglish after the name of the unaccented, obscure sound that has crept into so many words. For example, do you say "ahbscure" or "uhbscure" for "obscure"? Do you know anybody who says "ohbscure"?

Oh, well! Change always happens to languages. If not, why don't we pronounce the number after one as "tvoo" or some other two consonant version like "två", "zwei", or "dva", all used in modern European languages.