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For Brazilian Portuguese speakers

Your English has a Brazilian Portuguese shape. Here is where.

Brazilian Portuguese keeps the lips more active than English, often rounding or pushing them slightly forward, and the jaw tends to drop a bit more on open vowels. A key habit is lowering the soft palate (velum) frequently and for longer stretches, sending air through the nose to create the language's many nasal vowels — something English speakers rarely do on purpose.

The Brazilian Portuguese comparison is being researched. Daily tips are available.

Face at rest, lips loosely rounded, jaw slightly dropped, velum raised so air flows only through the mouth.
Resting/oral vowelFace at rest, lips loosely rounded, jaw slightly dropped, velum raised so air flows only through the mouth.
Same mouth shape but velum drawn down, soft palate lowered, and a faint suggestion of airflow escaping through the nose alongside the mouth, lips still rounded.
Nasal vowelSame mouth shape but velum drawn down, soft palate lowered, and a faint suggestion of airflow escaping through the nose alongside the mouth, lips still rounded.
Compare the same lip and jaw shape with the velum raised (oral vowel) versus lowered (nasal vowel), showing how Brazilian Portuguese routes air through the nose far more often than English does.

How Brazilian Portuguese moves

sourced

Portuguese gives most syllables fairly similar length and weight, rather than sharply shrinking unstressed ones the way English does. Stress still exists and adds duration and loudness to one syllable per word, but nearby syllables don't collapse into a quick, mumbled schwa. This can make Portuguese-accented English sound evenly paced, with extra syllables surfacing and stressed words not standing out as sharply from their neighbors.

Where Brazilian Portuguese rests

sourced

Brazilian Portuguese keeps the lips more active than English, often rounding or pushing them slightly forward, and the jaw tends to drop a bit more on open vowels. A key habit is lowering the soft palate (velum) frequently and for longer stretches, sending air through the nose to create the language's many nasal vowels — something English speakers rarely do on purpose. The tongue rests a touch more forward than in English. Overall muscle tension is moderate and relaxed, without the tighter jaw or spread lips common in American English. When Brazilian Portuguese speakers move into English, they may carry over this nasal habit, lip rounding, and a tendency to add small vowel sounds after final consonants, since Portuguese rarely ends words on a bare consonant.

Focuses on general urban Brazilian Portuguese (e.g., São Paulo/Rio norms); notes on Southern and Northeastern variation where relevant