Similar accents of languages apparently unrelated

Viri Amaoro   Sun May 07, 2006 3:50 am GMT
Many years ago I spent a vacation in Barcelona. When I first heard Catalan spoken (on TV in the hotel) I was totally surprised to find such a similarity between the Catalan and Portuguese accents. They are very similar and what amazed me more is that Catalan is a separate language, from another group in the Latin language family. There is european portuguese, brazilian portuguese and african portuguese. It's the same language, with different accents. But these do not come close to Catalan in resemblance with the portuguese pronounciation.

I found that to be puzzling. I must say that is the reason why I find Catalan to be a sort of strange sister language of Portuguese. They are not brother languages, like Portuguese and Galego (Galician), they are cousin languages at best, but every time I hear Catalans speak in their own language, with their own accent (not the spanish one), I fell close to them - and that is a curious psychological effect of hearing something that sounds very familiar to my language.

Concerning this strange phenomenon of languages, aparently unrelated, having come to sound almost the same, I did notice another similarity between two other european languages:

Greek sounds just like Spanish (castillian)! The first time I heard Greek I couldn't (and can't) understand a word, but it struck me as sounding just like Spanish, which I found very odd! These two are even less related than Portuguese is to Catalan.

Does anyone has an opinion on these strange similarities? Unfortunately I'm not very traveled nor do I have acess to TV in other european languages.
Perhaps someone knows of other similar-sounding languages?...
greg   Sun May 07, 2006 1:19 pm GMT
Le français parlé par certains Alsaciens reprend les intonations des dialectes alémaniques d'Alsace.
Gringo   Tue May 09, 2006 8:30 pm GMT
Viri Amaoro:
««Concerning this strange phenomenon of languages, aparently unrelated, having come to sound almost the same, I did notice another similarity between two other european languages:»»

Brennus :
««In fact, history records a bishop of the diocese of Oporto with the Celtic name of Mahaloc as late as the year 572 A.D. »»

Although the Portuguese names Luis, Fernão and Rui are thought to be of Germanic origin they also present that stange phenomenon of languages, of being aparently unrelated to celtic.


"Luis, Old Irish Luis is either related to luise "blaze" or lus "herb". The arboreal tradition has caertheand "rowan".

Fearn, Old Irish Fern means "alder-tree", Primitive Irish *wernā, so that the original value of the letter was [w].

Ruis, Old Irish Ruis means "red" or "redness", glossed as trom "elder"."
[ogham-wikipedia]
Ed   Wed May 10, 2006 1:31 pm GMT
««Concerning this strange phenomenon of languages, aparently unrelated, having come to sound almost the same

On another site a song in an unknown language was posted to try and identify the language. I did not know what it was, but it sounded rather like Turkish to me, though I could tell it was not Turkish. It turned out to be Farsi, which is of course not related to Turkish, but comes from the same region.

>Although the Portuguese names Luis, Fernão and Rui are thought to be of Germanic origin they also present that stange phenomenon of languages, of being aparently unrelated to celtic.

The name Luis is always slightly amusing to me because 'luis' means 'louse' in Afrikaans. If one says the word 'lace' with ones lips pouted to round the vowel it comes close to the pronunciation of the word ;)
Dawie   Wed May 10, 2006 2:33 pm GMT
One can hardly call Catalan and Portuguese "apparently unrelated" languages. They are found on opposite sides of the Iberian peninsula and are quite obviously very closely related.

Also this subject of accents is very subjective. Japanese and Korean might sound very similar to non-speakers, however I am sure that to speakers of either language they sound nothing alike.
Viri Amaoro   Wed May 10, 2006 4:20 pm GMT
Well, Dawie, in the case of Portuguese and Catalan I can asure you that native speakers of both languages agree that they sound quite similar.
I myself am a native speaker of Portuguese and I can say, with an internal knowledge of the language that probably no other language comes close to portuguese in its sound-system. I've met catalans who, at least twice, asured me that they too found that portuguese "sounds much like Catalan".

These are the impressions of native speakers of both languages, with an "inside" knowledge of them. I don't know how similar the languages would sound to non-native ears.
Dawie   Wed May 10, 2006 4:40 pm GMT
Hmmm, I'm afraid you misunderstand me. If you read my post carefully you will see that I agree that they ARE similar. My comparison of Portuguese and Catalan had nothing to do with my comparison of Japanese and Korean.

I know very well that Portuguese and Catalan are similar. Despite only being a third-language speaker of Spanish, I can quite easily understand bits and pieces of both Portuguese and Catalan, and of course reading them is even easier.
Gringo   Wed May 10, 2006 11:31 pm GMT
Ed
««The name Luis is always slightly amusing to me because 'luis' means 'louse' in Afrikaans. If one says the word 'lace' with ones lips pouted to round the vowel it comes close to the pronunciation of the word ;) »»

Haha, good thing we do not pronounce it the same way. "luis" in EuPortuguese is pronounced "Loo-ee-sh". (sh as in shine)
Guest   Wed May 10, 2006 11:35 pm GMT
However spanish and greek similarity is a lot more striking, first the languages are very distant relations, and yet the sound strikingly similar. On a trip to Corfu 2 years ago I noticed ppl in the street sounded exactly like ppl from madrid, just using very strange words. There is some sounds that are not common, and intonation can give away a greek from a spaniard even in english, but still standard greek has by far the closest phonetics to standard european spanish I have ever heard, a lot closer than italian which is usually quoted as the sister language of spanish
Presley.   Thu May 11, 2006 5:01 am GMT
<Also this subject of accents is very subjective. Japanese and Korean might sound very similar to non-speakers, however I am sure that to speakers of either language they sound nothing alike. >

Dawie is correct. I speak both Korean and Japanese, and I must say, there is a HUGE difference in the way they sound and the way they are spoken.

Korean has very, subtle, specific sounds which requires you to have a very trained ear, and mouth as well. It is difficult to explain in English, but one thing I noticed was that when I speak Korean, I use my jaw, tongue, and abdominal muscles.

Japanese has much easier pronounciation than Korean. Japanese has less consanants than Korean, and our vowels have more obvious differences. I tend to use more of my cheek and tongue muscles. Japanese may seem to have a softer, gentler, easier flow and sound than Korean. I love speaking Korean, because I can express emotions much better than in Japanese.

Also, I once heard someone speaking Greek, and I was shocked at its phonetic similarity to Spanish.
tina   Sun Jun 04, 2006 2:13 pm GMT
i find phonetic similarities between Portuguese and the slavic languages of the balkan . i also find similarities between Greek and Spanish.
Ed   Mon Jun 05, 2006 2:35 am GMT
> i find phonetic similarities between Portuguese and the slavic languages of the balkan .

Yes, I've noticed this. When tuning into a Portuguese radio station but not knowing what it was my first guess was that it was a central or eastern European, probably slavic language. Then when they said the name of the station and I realised it was Portuguese I felt foolish as once I knew what it was I could fairly easily hear the similarity to Spanish.
Serbo-Canadian in China   Mon Jun 05, 2006 8:12 pm GMT
Talking not about phonems, but really ACCENTS, i.e. "tones" of a same phoneme, Putonghua falling tone is similar to Serbian long-falling accent.

No relation whatsoever.
Deborah   Thu Jun 08, 2006 1:58 am GMT
I also have mistaken Portuguese for a Slavic language. To me, Persian (Farsi) and Arabic don't sound similar at all, but that might be because by the time I first heard Farsi, I'd already studied a bit of Arabic. Most of my exposure to Korean was through loitering in a Korean-owned video store. I used to stay longer than I needed to, just to listen to the language. It does sound similar to Japanese to me, but I was aware of a couple of sounds that I'd never heard in Japanese.

When I was in Helsinki, I thought that the rhythm of Finnish was something like that of Swedish. I'm sure this will seem ridiculous to Swedish and Finnish speakers, but that's how it sounded to me.
Johnathan Mark   Sat Jun 10, 2006 5:48 pm GMT
I think both Spanish and Greek have a 5 vowel scheme /i,e,a,o,u/. This probably contributes to the apparent similarity. I'd imagine that, except for inflectional differences, a Spaniard and a Greek speaking a language with more vowels (such as english) would sound very similar indeed.