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Why does the Portugese language sound like Russian

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    Why does the Portugese language sound like Russian

    any ideas?

    I sort of follow old language stuff, and can see no connection.

    (and I was unable to use a ? in the title of this thread)

    #2
    Why does the Portugese language sound like Russian

    It doesn't

    But European Portuguese is stress timed like English which means that syllables can be sort of swallowed and stuff - which to my ear makes it sound much less latin and much more northern/eastern European

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      #3
      Why does the Portugese language sound like Russian

      A similar question, which almost certainly has the same answer that ad hoc posted to gerontophile's, is why do Tanzanian place names sound Japanese?

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        #4
        Why does the Portugese language sound like Russian

        so to my untrained ear, that makes it sound like Eastern European, or indeed (as I speak a tiny bit) of Russian?

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          #5
          Why does the Portugese language sound like Russian

          I'm with ad hoc. I've found European Portuguese to have more of a Northern European (rather than Slavic) vibe. Brazilian Portuguese is significantly more "Latin", and therefore easier for someone with some Spanish, but no Portuguese, to understand.

          I'd be interested to hear what Steveeeee and Edwin think on this point.

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            #6
            Why does the Portugese language sound like Russian

            erwin, you mean.

            A similar question, which almost certainly has the same answer that ad hoc posted to gerontophile's, is why do Tanzanian place names sound Japanese?
            Like Dar es Salaam? More to the point, where did Mandela acquire that Japanese accent of his?

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              #7
              Why does the Portugese language sound like Russian

              I can't speak Portuguese or Russian, but I've done a bit of linguistics. Besides the intonation, I reckon it's because the two languages share sounds like the "zh" in Jose, the "y" sound after consonants and the dark L, which aren't normally found in Latin languages.

              It's entirely random. In the same way that Boris notes the Tanzanian/Japanese thing, I always wondered why Nigerians had Japanese-sounding names.

              Different languages have different sets of sounds, and sometimes they overlap. For example, I've heard that that Poles can relatively easily learn to speak French without an accent, but not German or English.

              I suspect that Portuguese people are ace at speaking Russian.

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                #8
                Why does the Portugese language sound like Russian

                I think Bantu languages are, many of them, based on syllable phonemes, each syllable consisting of either a lone vowel, a consonant-vowel pair or a sonorant consonant like n. The same's true of Japanese.

                I was at school with a member of one of only two Onuma families in London. My mate was from Nigeria; the other family was Japanese.

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                  #9
                  Why does the Portugese language sound like Russian

                  .

                  What ad hoc and Alderman said about Portuguese. Also, an 's' followed by a consonant is pronounced 'sh', so there's a lot of shushing.

                  I remember that when I first visited Portugal, not speaking a word, I was struck, too, by how it sounded vaguely eastern European.

                  In my experience, the Portuguese are generally very good at languages, especially English. Most foreign TV programmes, for example, are undubbed (except those for kids), and the similar sound system (see ad hoc's comments) make the comprehension and production of English relatively easy.

                  Brazilians, on the other hand, have more difficulties.

                  .

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