If you speak Russian, you may have had the experience of overhearing Portuguese speakers in the street and confusing their language with Russian. If so, you are not alone, as this type of confusion is common for many Russians and speakers of other Slavic languages.
So, this type of mix-up is perplexing for many. Some experts have explained this by highlighting that both Russian and Portuguese are stress-timed languages , which makes their intonation sound very similar, but only in rhythm. A stress-timed language involves uttering stressed syllables at approximately regular intervals. Unstressed syllables therefore take a shorter time to be said, so that they adjust to this rhythm. Stress and rhythm are independent elements from words and their meaning, and they can be similar from language to language, even when the lexicon is entirely different.
The fact that Portuguese and Russian follow this same melodic pattern can confuse native speakers of both languages. If we were to place Portuguese in a family tree, we would see its actual relatives are the Romance languages. And no, they are not called Romance because they are romantic! It is hard to say exactly how many there are, but the most spoken ones are Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, French and Romanian.
There are some words in Russian that could easily be Spanish too though, like Balalaika, which reminds me of Bailar. Portuguese and Russian seem very smooth. Portuguese is smoother. There are a few similar sounds. Get started. Does Portuguese sound like Russian?
February 24, Both Russian and Portuguese have similar specific sounds. September 25, WulfgarGoodread Portuguese can sound a lot like Russian. February 25, February 27, American guy, here. I've spent the past five weeks at an Airbnb in Lisbon with a Portuguese family. Brazilians, interestingly, don't sound Russian-esque; they just sound nasal. Search titles only.
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In English, why does a Portuguese accent sound Slavic? Thread starter killerbee Start date May 13, I've noticed that folks from Portugal and some from Brasil tend to sound as if they have a Slavic accent when they speak English, you don't see this with speakers of closely related Spanish. So what influences from Portuguese cause this?
It's the general sound structure of the language Palatalized consonants are noticeably quite frequent. Actually the two languages are remarkably similar in sound. It's not surprising that speakers might have similar accents in English. The sounds of Spanish are quite different: 5 mid-closed vowels with the same quality in each syllable. It's a syllable timed language with no syllable reduction giving it a staccato rhythm.
Spanish actually mirrors modern Greek quite well, but sounds totally different than Portuguese. Angelo di fuoco Senior Member Germany. Angelo di fuoco said:. Click to expand Egmont Senior Member Massachusetts, U. Whenever I hear someone speaking in a language that sounds like Russian, but I don't understand any of it, I assume it's Portuguese.
So far, that's always been true. In my part of southeastern Massachusetts, one hears a lot more Portuguese than Russian. Until now I didn't know there was a reason for that! That said, I don't detect a Slavic sound when Portuguese speakers speak English, but that may be because I'm so used to Portuguese accents in English that I don't notice them any more.
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