Sounds like French?

[hindupridemn]

Portuguese reads like Spanish, but I think it sounds more like French. Anyone else think so?

[MillMaths]

It sounds like Spanish with nasal vowels.

[Lazar Taxon]

There was a post on Language Log recently about how European Portuguese is undergoing some of the same reductive processes that gave us modern French.

[JackFrost]

It sounds way too off to be closer to French than to Spanish. I know they're all Romance languages, but Spanish and Portuguese share the same branch in the family whereas French has its own. And it's obvious why they're classified like that.

[MillMaths]

It is the nasal vowels and the /ʒ/ sound that make it sound like French.

[uvulartrill]

I don't think it sounds French. European Portuguese sounds somewhat Slavic though.

[הענט]

It doesn't sound like French at all When I first heard it, it took me like 10 seconds to know it's not Russian

[BlackZ]

Does Brazilian Portuguese sound slavic to you guys too?

[uvulartrill]

I haven't heard much of it, but no. It sounds a bit like Catalan mixed with Dutch.

[Osias]

I haven't heard much of it, but no. It sounds a bit like Catalan mixed with Dutch.

The Catalan part I agree, but Dutch?!?

[הענט]

Well there's a certain similarity between the Brazilian Portuguese and Dutch.

For example the ê in inglês sounds like ee in geen. And there are more cases when the e sounds like ey.

[uvulartrill]

Like Dutch because of the uvular /r/ and heavily velarized /l/ in all (non-coda) positions in some speakers' speech, both of which are rather common in the Netherlands. Especially given the fact that Brazilian /r/ can be a voiceless velar or voiceless uvular fricative, both of which are common realizations of northern Dutch <g> and/or <ch>.

And if we don't count the nasalization then yes, some of them can sound pretty similar to the Dutch ones as well, though northern Dutch vowels (especially /ɑ ɔ u/) seem to me to often have somewhat special quality, especially in men speech. I think there's some pharalyngealization or uvularization involved in this, though I haven't seen any source that could back that up. Perhaps that's just an incredibly low tone of voice that some of Dutchmen have (comparable to RP or even lower), but that is not enough of an explanation for me. That's a bit OT though.

[vijayjohn]

Portuguese reads like Spanish, but I think it sounds more like French. Anyone else think so?

It sounds kind of like French to me. At least European Portuguese kind of does. Partly that's because of the nasal vowels and /ʒ/ like MillMaths said, and partly it's because of silent word-final <e>.

[TeneReef]

Only some dialects (like baiano) sound like French, because they have pure nasal vowels: bom [bõ], sim [sĩ]:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIuJAzmwM1Y

Most dialects have nasalized vowels only.

Compare
pure nasal vowels: Hindi नहीं, French bon
nasalized vowels: sim [sĩⁿ], sinto ['sĩⁿtʊ], bom [bõ^m], sunga ['sũ^ŋgɐ]

Cristófaro-Silva, Barbosa & Albano and Canepari say Brazilian Portuguese has no nasal vowels,
only nasalized ones. Pure nasal vowels, as in sim [sĩ], sinto ['sĩ.tʊ], bom [bõ], bomba ['bõ.ba] sound regional (Nordestino) in non-marked Brasilian Portuguese, which is based on the Southeastern usage,
but they can sometimes/rarely be heard in the Southeast, Sandy & Júnior use [bõ^m] predominantly in this song, but there's a few [bõ] realizations here, which sound like French bon [ bõ] (close/Parisian realization of the nasal open O):
https://youtu.be/mFcTW2zOOSo?t=2m16s


Further reading:
Nasal Coda Restoration in Brazilian Portuguese
http://libra.msra.cn/Publication/343476 ... portuguese

http://www.lingref.com/cpp/larp/5/paper2633.pdf
Nasal Coda and Vowel Nasality in Brazilian Portuguese

http://ojs.gc.cuny.edu/index.php/lljour ... /1446/1546
Variation in nasality between nasal and nasalized vowels in in Brazilian Portuguese: a pilot study

[Prowler]

Portuguese reads like Spanish, but I think it sounds more like French. Anyone else think so?

It sounds kind of like French to me. At least European Portuguese kind of does. Partly that's because of the nasal vowels and /ʒ/ like MillMaths said, and partly it's because of silent word-final <e>.

That's mostly the dialects of Lisbon and Coimbra where people pronounce the "rr" and the "r" at the beginning of a word("rato" per example) in a guttural manner, which is what's considered the "proper" aka "standard" way to speak European Portuguese. In some other places people just roll the "rr" twice. And in Setúbal... people pronounce EVERY damn "r" in a guttural manner. Even the ones they're not supposed to such as single "r" in words like "cara" or "pássaro".

Also, apparently a way to correct the pronunciation of kids in certain regions was to make them say "O rato roeu a rolha da garrafa do rei da Rússia". Every "r" in this sentence needs to be pronounced in a guttural manner. As a capital city guy I don't struggle with the guttural sound at all.

Now why did the guttural r become common in the Lisbon and Setúbal regions? Because the Lisbon aristocracy kinda looked up to the French.

[vijayjohn]

Thanks, Prowler!