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I'm a native speaker of Portuguese, but I have a hard time trying to understand what people from Portugal and Angola say... With a big effort, I can understand, but it's not easy... And it's all about the accent, since the written form is almost the same as in the Brazilian Portuguese.
I'm a native speaker of Portuguese, but I have a hard time trying to understand what people from Portugal and Angola say... With a big effort, I can understand, but it's not easy... And it's all about the accent, since the written form is almost the same as in the Brazilian Portuguese.
It's interesting. Those are purely systematic pronunciation differences on both sides, still they lead to quite a different pronunciation of the two kinds of Portuguese. If one is not fluent in any Portuguese, one might not even realize it is the same language
It's interesting. Those are purely systematic pronunciation differences on both sides, still they lead to quite a different pronunciation of the two kinds of Portuguese. If one is not fluent in any Portuguese, one might not even realize it is the same language
To me, any Portuguese sound like an extremely nasal version of Spanish with lots of letters cut out during pronunciation
To me, any Portuguese sound like an extremely nasal version of Spanish with lots of letters cut out during pronunciation
To a certain extent that also happens with some Spanish dialects. In Andalusia for instance they often don't pronounce s, which makes Spanish sound softer.
I have somewhat of a hard time understanding people from Australia or New Zealand. Definitely need to concentrate a lot. Same with certain regional accents in the UK. No problem at all with all sorts of accents in North America (apart from that weird island off the East Coast, I forgot the name).
When it comes to Spanish it really depends. I can understand Mexicans and Colombians just fine. The accent in Argentina is very difficult though, so are some accents in Spain.
the Dialect of the "Chtis" in Northern France is also incomprehensible to me.
I am American, and I was surprised to learn that the most-viewed, most popular French MOVIE (FILM) in all history, is a comedy called "Bienvenue Chez les Chtis" and yet this movie is totally unheard of in America and it has never been translated or dubbed (subtitled) in English.
a comedy called "Bienvenue Chez les Chtis" [...] has never been translated or dubbed (subtitled) in English.
That isn't true. The English name of the movie is "Welcome to the Sticks", and while I don't know about an English sync, there are indeed English subtitles. (Check Amazon.co.uk, for example.)
Last edited by namegoeshere; 03-10-2012 at 01:32 AM..
To a certain extent that also happens with some Spanish dialects. In Andalusia for instance they often don't pronounce s, which makes Spanish sound softer.
That's how I speak Spanish as well, albeit to a more extreme than what they speak in Andalusia. I don't say the S in most endings and some beginning, change the ending R to a L sound, and cut out the d in the -ado suffix to be -ao (e.g. estoy mariado = I'm dizzy. I say e'toy mariao). But that's it, the rest of the letters stay in there. Portuguese, on the other hand, sounds like they only pronounce half the letters they write down add the super nasal effect and you have a language that almost looks like Spanish written down, yet sounds like a mix of Spanish and Russian (that varying tone) when spoken. Unlike Spanish which has a rather flat tone throughout sentences
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add the super nasal effect and you have a language that almost looks like Spanish written down, yet sounds like a mix of Spanish and Russian (that varying tone) when spoken. Unlike Spanish which has a rather flat tone throughout sentences
