Why Does Portuguese Sound Like Russian?! (or Polish)

hello everyone welcome to the Laing focused Channel and my name is Paul thank you for watching and have a nice day [Music] Nikki what what do you want what do you mean that's wrong I say that in every video oh right cut hello everyone welcome to the Laing focused Channel and my name is Paul today's topic is why does Portuguese sound like Russian Oh be quiet so why am I even asking that question well a lot of people hear Portuguese and it's usually the Portuguese spoken in Portugal rather than Brazil or elsewhere and they think it sounds Russian or Slavic Russian being a Slavic language of course most of the people who say this are people who don't speak either language but just think that something about Portuguese sounds Russian without really being able to describe why now I'm sure that a lot of Portuguese speakers and Russian speakers will say that that's ridiculous they sound nothing alike but I've even heard native speakers of Russian say that they think Portuguese sounds Russian and I've heard native speakers of Polish as well say that they think Portuguese sounds like polish let me be clear that they are not saying that Portuguese is mutually intelligible with Russian or with any other Slavic language it's not at all what they do say is that if they hear Portuguese being spoken at a distance but they aren't close enough to hear what's being said or if they're not really paying attention to what's being said then they think it sounds like Russian or polish and I've heard the same thing in Reverse from European speakers of Portuguese if they hear Russian or another Slavic language from a distance they might think that it sounds like Portuguese so how can that happen well it's because of some similar elements in their phonology stress timed languages one important similarity between Portuguese and Russian is that both of them are stress timed languages in a stress timed language the length of time between stressed syllables remains relatively consistent and in order to fit into that fixed time interval unstressed syllables become compressed and shortened this results in a lot of vowel reduction European Portuguese contains quite an extreme amount of vowel reduction for example can foam this means I'm hungry you can see that the sound o is reduced to you or a schwa and the eighth sound is reduced can form another example impotent again the O is reduced and a is reduced or basically disappears important and there's similarly a lot of vowel reduction in Russian for example Oobleck this word means cloud the R is reduced to a schwa and o is also reduced to a schwa Oobleck another example subrogee this word means boots you probably noticed the reduction in these two vowels right here sub baggy Russian and other Slavic languages also have a lot of consonant clusters and because of the heavy vowel reduction in European Portuguese it ends up having more consonant clusters than other Romance languages here is a Portuguese example so this means to despise this is a consonant cluster with four consonants which results from the dropping of the e vowel a preserve for consonants is an extreme example and 3 is more common and here's a Russian example splits this means splash this cluster also has four consonants splits in addition to the vowel reduction the stressed timing results in a similar rhythm a similar cadence in contrast with stress times languages there are also syllable timed languages in syllable timed languages each syllable lasts for a more or less equal duration of time other Romance languages are much more syllable time to than Portuguese which gives it it's different cadence and its vowel reduction it's interesting to note that Brazilian Portuguese which has weaker stressed timing than European Portuguese is often said to sound more like Spanish than European Portuguese does but there are lots of stressed timed languages including English and I don't hear anybody saying that Portuguese sounds like English so there must be more to it than that sibilance one feature of Russian is that sibilant sounds are quite prominent sibilants are consonants that have a hissing or hushing sound as in the english civil ha-cha-cha ja ja Russian features these sibilants ha ha cha-cha-cha and Portuguese features these four ha ha ha ha Portuguese contains frequent sibilants and specifically has an abundance of palato-alveolar sibilants sha which is voiceless and Asia which is voiced orthographic s and z are rendered as sha Anja in some contexts before a voiceless consonant or before a pause sibilance are pronounced shut for example C ROG meaning cities Alex meaning happy in the plural form first Trish this means makes 3 ills this means they in this example the s becomes shook at the end of the word and also notice that the reduced vowel a fully dropped vowel actually results in a consonant cluster ending in show before a voiced consonant yeah for example fleas mint meaning fortunately it's also worth noting that the letter J and also G when it's pronounced as a soft G are also pronounced sure these two Russian sibilants and have similar sounds to portuguese shah and this russian sibilant jaw is similar to Portuguese jaw they're not exactly the same the Portuguese ones are post alveolar sibilants while these Russian ones are retroflex sibilants with a slightly different place of articulation and this one here is an Alvey Leo palatal sibilant this sound is also slightly different from the Portuguese one but it sounds somewhat similar at least to people who don't use that sound natively a moment ago we saw a type of consonant assimilation in Portuguese that makes the sibilant either voiced or voiceless depending on what follows in Russian there's a similar type of assimilation for most consonants voiced consonants are pronounced as voiceless at the end of a word or before another voiceless consonant and voiceless consonants are pronounced as voiced before a voiced consonant for example moosh in this word Jah becomes voiceless and is pronounced as sha vodka in this word the becomes voiceless and is pronounced as to the ghazal in this word becomes voiced and is pronounced as good so the frequent voiceless sibilant show at the end of words and Portuguese as well as the assimilation of sibilants to the following consonant making them either voiceless sha or voiced Asia might unconsciously remind us of the similar but more generalized pattern in Russian that same pattern is also a feature of Polish and most other Slavic languages with Ukrainian being a notable exception palatalized consonants one prominent feature of Russian is a distinction between hard consonants and soft consonants which are palatalized they sound somewhat like a consonant with a u sound immediately following Portuguese features two palatal consonants the characters in H represent na a palatal nasal for example canoe which we saw before a similar sound appears in Russian as one of the soft consonants for example who strain yet meaning eliminate and in Portuguese the letters L H stand for na a palatal lateral approximant for example could a volume again there's a soft consonant in Russian that sounds similar for example booyah these two palatal consonants alone are not enough to make Portuguese sound Slavic after all these sounds do appear in some other Romance languages too but together with the other elements this is one thing that contributes to the overall Slavic sound of Portuguese the dark L another phonetic feature that sounds Slavic is the villa rised L of European Portuguese this is like Ola the dark L sound at the end of the word filled o the standard L o sound in Russian is also a dark L like this here's a Portuguese example alt meaning high natal meaning Christmas and a Russian example Blut meaning to swim luke meaning bow or onion nasal vowels and diphthongs I mentioned before that some people think that portugee sounds like polish another Slavic language and all of the features that I mentioned about Russian also applied to polish but polish has one other feature in common with Portuguese that Russian does not nasal vowels in old Slavonic there were nasal vowels but in modern Slavic languages they have merged with oral vowels except for in Polish in Portuguese there are a number of nasal vowels and nasal diphthongs and in Polish there are two nasal vowels this letter is pronounced Oh which sounds close to the Portuguese nasal diphthong oh and there's one more L this is the nasal I sound because polish nasal vowels consist of an oral vowel followed by a nasal semi vowel they sound somewhat like nasal diphthongs of which Portuguese has several here's a polish example lunch meaning snake and here's a Portuguese example with a similar nasal vowel down here's another polish example Venza meaning snakes and here's a Portuguese example in so even though Portuguese is not closely related to Russian polish or any other Slavic language they just belong to language families within the wider indo-european language family that's their only connection they do share a number of phonological features that make them sound superficially similar to the untrained ear especially from a distance or when you're not paying attention to what's being said it's not really a big deal in the grand scheme of things but it raises an interesting question what are those features that stand out to us and make us think that they sound similar largely on an unconscious level the question of the day two speakers of Portuguese and two speakers of Russian polish and other Slavic languages have you ever had the impression that Portuguese sounds Slavic what sounds or features might have given you that impression and to other people does Portuguese sound Russian to you or sound Slavic to you you may not consciously know what Russian or Slavic sounds like but you probably associate them with certain sounds unconsciously leave your responses in the comments down below be sure to follow Lange focus on Facebook Twitter and Instagram and once again thank you to all of my amazing patreon supporters these are my top tier patreon supporters right here on the screen many extra special thanks to them welcome to the Laing focused channel and my name is Paul [Music]

Channel: undefined

Views: 1,441,089

Rating: 4.8886881 out of 5

Keywords: linguist, linguistics, phonology, pronunciation, vocabulary, phonetics, Portuguese language, Russian language, Polish language, European Portuguese pronunciation, Are Portuguese and Russian related?, Portuguese and Russian similar sounds, Russian soft consonants, Stress-timed language, syllable-timed language, sibilant consonants, Portuguese phonology, Portuguese pronunciation, Russian phonology, Russian pronunciation, Polish nasal vowels, Portuguese nasal vowels

Id: Pik2R46xobA

Length: 11min 38sec (698 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 25 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

I am brazilian.

Last year, I was in London. I passed by a couple, both blonde and tall, talking fast. I thought they were speaking russian.

It was portuguese. Both were brazilian too.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[u/[deleted]]

I always have wondered if other people thought it sounds Slavic! LOL, it seems so!

[u/garaile64]

Up next: why does Greek sound like Spanish?

[u/Blotny]

Being Polish native speaker and knowing some Russian, Portuguese sounds to me like Spanish with replaced "s" to "sh".

[u/thedinosaurhead]

I was translating Portuguese to English when i was with my dad at the hospital. The doctor was russian and started speaking russian to us.

[u/elchulow]

I always knew Portuguese is like if a drunk Russian person was trying to speak Spanish

[u/dipnosofist]

This video is a blessing. The division into stress-timed and syllable-timed languages is an interesting concept. I've been noticing the difference between the two but wasn't sure if it was legit or just my faulty perception, now I know.

[u/[deleted]]

I’ve been learning Spanish for 6 years now and whenever I hear people speaking Portuguese from a distance, it sounds very Slavic. But, of course, when I get closer and I can understand a good chunk of what they’re saying it doesn’t sound Slavic it all.

[u/gabilromariz]

I guess this explains why so many Russian/Ukranian/polish immigrants pick up portuguese so fast and well!