Both Baltic languages sounds totally different.

Ian   Mon Nov 19, 2007 1:47 pm GMT
<< I dont' speak Portuguese . I understand some Portuguese because I speak a Romance language but I don't find Portuguese and Russian to sound similar. I think that before comparing how two languages sound, one must clean his ears so he can perceive the sound clearer. >>

The best candidates to judge are people who don't understand Portuguese nor Russian at all.

I admit now that I know both languages it's hard for me to say they're similar, simply because now I understand them, and I know that they are two completely different languages, but for someone who has no knowledge whatsoever upon the two languages and doesn't understand them, they sound totally similar.

Just ask Portuguese people who are or have been in a foreign (not Latin or Slavic) country how often they were mistaken for speaking Russian. A considerable number of Portuguese experienced this.
Guest   Mon Nov 19, 2007 8:21 pm GMT
"Just ask Portuguese people who are or have been in a foreign (not Latin or Slavic) country how often they were mistaken for speaking Russian. A considerable number of Portuguese experienced this".


More than Russian I'd say that Portuguese may sound like other slavic languages, for instance Polish, at least Polish has nasal vowels as Portuguese. In my view Russian has a peculiar and distinctive accent.
Guest   Mon Nov 19, 2007 9:15 pm GMT
Portuguese sounds like Portuguese and not like ANY slavic language. Zh sound is totally different and so is everything else. Please stop with this nonsense.
Guest   Mon Nov 19, 2007 9:36 pm GMT
To me it's like when people say that Chinese and Japanese sound the same. It's all ching-chong to them, they say.
It's ignorant.
Guest   Mon Nov 19, 2007 9:42 pm GMT
Castillian Spanish and Greek sound similar, they both have few sounds and most of them are shared
Guest   Mon Nov 19, 2007 11:20 pm GMT
Chinese and Japanese don't sound alike. I think people are confused because of the Chinese characters they see. I don't know how many times I've heard this. I think people are ethnocentric when I hear this. I think, "Oh you probably don't care about people in Bangladesh either." Of course, I don't say anything except that no, they actually sound different.

I don't think Portuguese and Russian sound alike, but I like that "zh" sound and its variations.

My brother speaks both Greek and Spanish and thinks they sound similar in some ways.
Estonian   Thu Nov 22, 2007 11:28 am GMT
Latvian has strong Finno-Ugric influence. Latvian is probably more Finnic as Baltic language at least phonetically :)
Guest   Wed Dec 19, 2007 2:50 pm GMT
Portuguese has a slavic accent. And so what?
The germanic invasion came from the slavic area. The taifa of Badajoz had a slavic ruler . The taifa of Lisbon had two slavic rulers sons of the above. There were lots of slavs known as sqaliba in the Iberian peninsula.
Nothing new.
Guest   Wed Dec 19, 2007 2:51 pm GMT
Spanish has slavic accent.
latvietis (latvian)   Wed Dec 19, 2007 2:56 pm GMT
That`s interesting, also to my hears Portuguese people have Slavic accent when speking, let`s say English :-)
Guest   Wed Dec 19, 2007 4:14 pm GMT
slavic language stinks, Germany overtakes them again
Guest   Wed Dec 19, 2007 4:38 pm GMT
Spanish is the ugliest latin languages
Guest   Wed Dec 19, 2007 4:40 pm GMT
All latin languages are ugly.
Guest   Wed Dec 19, 2007 4:53 pm GMT
Germanic languages are even uglier
Guest   Wed Dec 19, 2007 4:54 pm GMT
It's impossible, no language can be uglier and more affected than Italian and French.