Speech and language therapy

The twelfth entry is o nódulo das cordas vocais, and the English for it carries a trap that Portuguese is built to avoid. In English the pair is « the vocal cords », and « cord » is the ordinary word for a length of twisted fibre: a curtain cord, a flex, and inside the body the spinal cord. Its homophone « chord » belongs to music and to geometry — three notes sounded together, or a straight line drawn across a curve. The two are indistinguishable aloud, so « vocal chords » gets written constantly, and it is wrong every time; a report that contains it announces that nobody read it through. Portuguese runs no such risk, because it keeps the two apart in shape as well as in sense: a corda is the rope and the string, while the musical chord is o acorde, a different word with a different ending. One further point of usage is worth carrying across: a British report is likelier to write « the vocal folds », since what is described are folds of tissue rather than strings, and leaves « cords » to ordinary speech.