Brazilianchap wrote:

They speak like Portugueses to me but portuguese spoken in Angola and Cape Verde is more clearly to understand (to my ears). Portuguese spoken in Portugal requires lots of my attention so I can get to understand them whenever I'm listening to their media, be it, radio, podcast, films, music or the news. I did not know that I had this portuguese news channel on my cable TV and I was listening to it wihout attention, just using the sound as a background for me to work out and I thought I was listening to Russian. I am not kidding, for me, whenever I listen to Russian language, i related to Portugal's portuguese, the melody, the r sound and the shhhh sound is so similiar, just when I was like " wtf, a russian channel " and then I stopped and paid attention, I saw it was Portuguese, if I talk to someone from Portugal, that has literally to be face-to-face, otherwise some of them are impossible to understand and African portuguese is easier for me, they have the same pronunciation as the Portugueses but I don't find them hard to get.

actually i think african's angola accent is very portugal. but other ones they speak like portugal but with an special other accent which for me it's easier to understand . and some portuguese people sounds like russians indeed , so strong nasal accent t-t

The Brazilians I know understand me as well as I understand them , I guess you're kinda forcing your description. I understand it might be hard at first since we "eat" some letters when talking or even syllables but it's a matter of training. If it wasn't the Brazilian soap operas I wouldn't be able to understand some words and accents as well....

The accents in Africa depend on many factors, like education. Someone in university tends to speak differently than someone in the basic school....the accent is exactly like the one in Portugal, in a general way, but like Portugal and Brazil they have different accents in the country. For example, in Benguela they sound like Brazilians....in Luanda they sound more like the Portuguese.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoEl6RG7aFg
When she says "ganhar a vida", she says ganhar and vida like the portuguese and a like the brazilians.


Conclusion: It's kinda like a mixture

They do have some different words, not as much as the Brazilians thought.....and Portugal and Angola share a lot of slang (we actually adopt it from them)

English: bus
Portugal/Cape Verde/ STP/Timor/ Macau: autocarro
Brazil: ônibus
Angola/Mozambique: machimbombo
Guinea-Bissau: toca-toca, otocarro (not so often)

Catarina1991 wrote:

The Brazilians I know understand me as well as I understand them , I guess you're kinda forcing your description. I understand it might be hard at first since we "eat" some letters when talking or even syllables but it's a matter of training. If it wasn't the Brazilian soap operas I wouldn't be able to understand some words and accents as well....

Actually it's not that far fetched, european portuguese does sound like a different language to a brazilian who isn't used to it, I moved to Portugal when I was 11 or 12 and I had a hard time understanding television, even the news where the language is impeccably correct, and it wasn't the different words that confused me, it was the pronunciation, speaking to an average portuguese person was even worse since they spoke faster than they do on TV.

It took me a little while to get used to it, the vowels are more "closed" and the consonants have a "harsher" sound to them.
It could have been even "worse" if I was from a part of Brazil where they spoke an even more distinct portuguese.

As for africans being easier to understand, I think it's because of the vowels, they pronounce their consonants just like portuguese people do but their vowels are a bit more "open" which makes it easier for a brazilian to understand.

It's interesting though, how different the portuguese from Brazil has grown from the portuguese from Portugal, or how different the portuguese from Portugal grew from how it was in the early XIX century, in Angola and Mozambique however they had a stronger portuguese presence and influence until the 60s or thereabouts, no? That contributes to it being much more similar to european portuguese than brazilian portuguese.
Population size must also be a factor, Brazil being much more populated then Portugal or it's african colonies must have played a role in how fast the language change (or did not change) and how it evolved.

/rant :p

Like LewdLove said, european portuguese is not heard easily in Brazil. Portuguese music, films and etc are not promoted here at all. And I know many of our films, singers and actors are well known in Portugal. Some people told me that our soap operas are aired on Portuguese tvs, so of course, Portugueses are pretty familiar to our accents.

My grandmother, for example, the first time she heard a portuguese person was in one of our soap operas, very old one, where there was this taxi driver from Portugal, I remember back then, everybody used to complain that it ws impossible to understand what he said during his appereances on the soap opera. He kept his true accent and no one could understand him properly.

Another portuguese actor very famous in Brazil: Ricardo Pereira, had to lose his accent in order to play a role in our soap operas. So, why do portuguese actors when working for our soaps need to reduce the accent?

http://oglobo.globo.com/revista-da-tv/ricardo-pereira-faz-trabalho-arduo-para-perder-sotaque-portugues-em-insensato-coracao-2816874

Because a natural portuguese accent is not understanble to our ears.

Catarina, now I am forcing, this video is not the best option, I know, but I can tell you that I couldn't understand anything from the reporter and absolutely nothing from the man being interviewed:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06PM39PObPQ&feature=related

I think 'not understandable' is too much.

Portugal knows more about Brazil than Brazil knows about Portugal, that's the problem.
The brazilians are more insensitive when it comes to understand portuguese accents and vocabulary, because we rarely hear them.
However, I don't think is soo complicated. Just people who talk using too many regional expressions that I find a bit hard to understand. But the accent they use on the portuguese news I think it's cool.

Brazilianchap wrote:

Another portuguese actor very famous in Brazil: Ricardo Pereira, had to lose his accent in order to play a role in our soap operas.

Wasn't he pretending to be Brazilian? Of course he had to lose the accent.....Joana Solnado, Paulo Rocha, Maria Vieira, Joaquim Monchique....etc, etc....they kept the accent. When the first brazilian soap opera came to Portugal ("Gabriela") do you think it was completly understandable? We had to "train" our hear to the brazilian accent.....but brazilians don't want anything to do with the portuguese (I'm generalizing, but it's a normal and cultural thing).
The portuguese actors only had to speak slower and like it is written. Because that's the only problem, you are not used to the way how we speak and then do not know how we pronounciate words....and many brazilians think we speak like "ora pois, como vós bem sabeis..." and that's not true since decades ago...

Brazilianchap wrote:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06PM39PObPQ&feature=related

Do you think I undersand the guy? He is drunk, I only understand part of it.....not a good example

And how many Portuguese do we see everyday? I see Brazilians everyday! Listening a Brazilian is more normal than listening an Azorian here...

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Wasn't he pretending to be Brazilian? Of course he had to lose the accent.....Joana Solnado, Paulo Rocha, Maria Vieira, Joaquim Monchique....etc, etc....they kept the accent. When the first brazilian soap opera came to Portugal ("Gabriela") do you think it was completly understandable? We had to "train" our hear to the brazilian accent.....but brazilians don't want anything to do with the portuguese (I'm generalizing, but it's a normal and cultural thing). The portuguese actors only had to speak slower and like it is written. Because that's the only problem, you are not used to the way how we speak and then do not know how we pronounciate words....and many brazilians think we speak like "ora pois, como vós bem sabeis..." and that's not true since decades ago...

His last soap opera " Insensato Coração " he was playing a Brazilian role and he's got almost no portuguese accent, but he started with the process of reducing the accent since his first work here " Como uma onda ". These other actors I'm not sure who they are :s, just Paulo Rocha, cos I can remember that the girls from my college said they'd rape him :s, but I've never seen him on tv, i don't watch tv actually, didn't know that many of portuguese actors are working here, great.

I'd not say that Brazilians don't want anything to do with Portugal.. because actually, other countries' media is not promoted here as well, spanish songs are not played on the mainstream radios here, maybe a very few of them, actually in three big cities I know, they never play spanish, french, italian music.. the only span/ita/french music we hear are those promoted by Globo on one of these soap operas, but it's not like if you watch MTV Brasil or listen to our mainstream radios, you'd hear them, I never did... Shakira's english songs are the only one promoted, I think the only spanish song from her that was really known here was " Estoy aqui ".. a french song that I can remember " Carla Bruni " something like this.. also from a soap opera and the very few radios who sometimes rarely play these other language songs are for adult radios, adult contemporany radios which not a lot of people listen to.

This is really sad, many great singers are produced in these latin countries, italy, france, spain and of course in Portugal, an example given, Toranja, which is one of my favourite portuguese-language kind of music. And it's like our music, it's only known in latin america countries and portugal... one or two catchy songs get to be promoted in other different countries like " Michael Telo with Ai se eu te pego ".. but other than that, no one knows our music out there.

Quote:

And how many Portuguese do we see everyday? I see Brazilians everyday! Listening a Brazilian is more normal than listening an Azorian here..

I'm so sorry to hear that =/

Brazilianchap wrote:

I'm so sorry to hear that =/

Lol it isn't a problem

Actually MTV brazil only plays crappy american music , all from usa and uk and poppish "divas" , that's sad , also sometimes rock bands from the same countries.. brazilians in general doesn't know too much about other countries , then the ignorance comes out.....

HonjaNamja wrote:

Actually MTV brazil only plays crappy american music , all from usa and uk and poppish "divas" , that's sad , also sometimes rock bands from the same countries.. brazilians in general doesn't know too much about other countries , then the ignorance comes out.....

Some Brazilian songs are well known here. Ai se eu te pego, Magalenha, Samba de Janeiro, etc lol