hello everyone welcome to the langfocus
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
this means i'm hungry you can see that
the sound o is reduced to oo or a schwa
and the sound is reduced
another example
again the o is reduced
and a is reduced to uh or basically
disappears
and there's similarly a lot of vowel
reduction in russian for example
this word means cloud the ah is reduced
to a schwa and o is also reduced to a
schwa
another example
this word means boots you probably
noticed the reduction in these two
vowels right here
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's a portuguese
example
this means to despise this is a
consonant cluster with four consonants
which results from the dropping of the e
vowel
four consonants is an extreme example
and three is more common
and here's a russian example splensk
this means splash this cluster also has
four consonants splensk
in addition to the vowel reduction the
stress timing results in a similar
rhythm a similar cadence
in contrast with stress-timed 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 timed than
portuguese which gives it its different
cadence and its vowel reduction it's
interesting to note that brazilian
portuguese which has weaker stress
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 sibilance
russian features these sibilants sa za
cha
cha cha
zha and portuguese features these four
sa
portuguese contains frequent sibilance
and specifically has an abundance of
palatal alveolar sibilants she which is
voiceless and je which is voiced
orthographic s and z are rendered as she
and je in some contexts before a
voiceless consonant or before a pause
sibilants are pronounced shu for example
sidons meaning cities alex meaning happy
in the plural form
this means makes three ilsh this means
they in this example the s becomes shu
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 shu
before a voiced consonant je for example
flishment
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 je
these two russian sibilants sha
and sha have similar sounds to
portuguese shah
and this russian sibilant ja
is similar to portuguese ja 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
alveliopalatal 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
in this word ja
becomes voiceless and is pronounced as
sure
in this word
becomes voiceless and is pronounced as
ti
in this word ka becomes voiced and is
pronounced as
so the frequent voiceless sibilant shi
at the end of words in portuguese as
well as the assimilation of sibilance to
the following consonant making them
either voiceless or voiced je
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 nh represent
a palatal nasal for example
which we saw before a similar sound
appears in russian as one of the soft
consonants for example
meaning eliminate
and in portuguese the letters lh stand
for
a palatal lateral approximant for
example
again there's a soft consonant in
russian that sounds similar for example
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 velarized l of
european portuguese this is like ul the
dark l sound at the end of the word feel
o
the standard l sound in russian is also
a dark l like this here's a portuguese
example alt meaning
meaning christmas and a russian example
bleet meaning to swim
luke meaning bow or onion
nasal vowels and diphthongs i mentioned
before that some people think that
portuguese sounds like polish another
slavic language and all of the features
that i mentioned about russian also
apply 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
which sounds close to the portuguese
nasal diphthong
and there's one more
this is the nasal e 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
meaning snake and here's a portuguese
example with a similar nasal vowel
here's another polish example
meaning snakes and here's a portuguese
example
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 to speakers of portuguese and to
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
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and my name is paul
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thank you
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