Cited on HN 4 times, 2021–2025, never outright recommendedscore 0
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026
Cited as the explanation whenever commenters notice Portuguese sounds Slavic.
A Langfocus video examining why Portuguese, especially European Portuguese, sounds like Russian or Polish. It compares shared sounds such as vowel reduction and palatalization.
“Langfocus did a video on why (European) Português sounds like Russian.” (HN, 2022)
He also has one about Portuguese vs. Russian/Polish: [this video] And extreme syllable-timed language family (opposite of these) are languages Tagalog, Malay, Indonesian. EVERY syllable is pronounced and it becomes a mouthful but there's a strict cadence that comes from it. Foreign words break it a bit but native words are "ma-ka-ba-la-bu-sa-ng-ah-ga-ta-na..." [link]
Langfocus video on why Portuguese sounds like Russian or Polish.
It’s because Pt-Pt is a stressed timed language vs Br-Pt which is a syllable timed language. Pt-Pt drops a lot of unstressed vowels whereas Br-Pt almost all syllables are pronounced. Langfocus did a video on why (European) Português sounds like Russian. [this video]
Explains why European Portuguese sounds like Russian.
It caught me off guard too, portugese from portugal do sound somewhat slavic if you're not familiar with either: [link] Even my slavic gf was tricked for a few seconds and wasn't sure if it was some kind of eastern language she wasn't aware of. And for the explanation [this video]
Explanation for why Portuguese sounds somewhat Slavic.
> My wife is a native Russian speaker, and despite making numerous grammatical errors is far better understood than I am. There's an explanation for this [this video]
Offers an explanation for the Russian speaker being understood better.
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