AcaDEmia or acadeMIa? Words with different stress placement in the learning of Portuguese as a foreign language by Spanish speakers

Cognates between Spanish and Portuguese often differ in their stress placement. Hence, they can be expected to be a frequent source of phonological interference for Spanish-speaking learners of Portuguese. In the following article, this interlingual phenomenon shall be examined in two steps: Firstly, a synchronic contrastive analysis of the two languages will shed light on the systematic differences in word stress. Secondly, empirical evidence for the relevance of this error type will be presented based on the results of a study conducted with learners of Portuguese and this type of words. Finally, it will be argued that textbooks should treat the underlying pronunciation patterns more extensively.