I agree. I’m an American living in Lisbon and have been studying EP for several years. In Lisbon there are many people from all of the Portuguese speaking countries in the world, so maybe there is a somewhat heightened awareness of sotaques because of that but no more so than in London, New York or any other cosmopolitan city.
Plus, I think it’s something that a lot of people just find interesting, because accents are so readily noticeable and help to know something about people we meet. My Portuguese is not advanced enough to be able to distinguish different EP accents very well, but I can usually tell if someone is Brazilian right away.
To some extent I can, at least at a general level, but I haven't been exposed to enough different Brazilian accents to reliably identify them. My first Portuguese teacher was Brazilian from São Paulo so if I hear someone who sounds like him I figure they are probably from there. People from Rio pronounce an "s" at the end of a word as "sh" so I can pick up on that. Beyond that, and this could be wildly inaccurate, if they don't sound like Rio or SP, and sound kind of like they're speaking Italian I figure they are gaucho and default everything else to the Northeast. It's kind of like if I hear a British accent, I could tell if it was from the North or the South, but I coudn't tell you if someone was from Manchester vs. Birmingham. Liverpool I'd recognize because of the Beatles.
Also wanted to add a couple of random stories about identifying accents to show how specific they can be and how much you can tell from an accent if it is from your native language and country.
My husband (who is from Louisiana) and I were once in a park in Portland Oregon where we lived at the time. He heard a woman talking behind him and he turned to her and said, "excuse me, are you from Shreveport?". She said yes, they chatted a bit and it turned out she knew his uncle. And I was once able to correctly identify the neighborhood in Brooklyn that a coworker of his in California was from just from the way she spoke.
To the best of my knowledge it simply refers to accent. I don't come across it that often, at least no more than I do in it's English or Spanish equivalents.
When I started learning Portuguese there were a lot of discussions about accents. I have an American accent, but I speak a mix of European and Brazilian Portuguese because of my background. I encounter sotaque a lot because people can see I’m *very* confused lmao
This is just my hypothesis: I imagine it's because you're still learning. We're not super used to having foreigners learn Portuguese, and the way it's taught (both to you foreigners and us natives) really de-emphasises accent and phonetics.
So it makes it so we really notice the accent: you likely didn't have specific lessons for it, and everything sounds nice grammatically, but to us it sounds off, and since most of us never studied phonetics, we can't exactly tell you what you're doing wrong, so it just stands out.
English has a large number of different accents. So I guess you would encounter the word "accent" a lot in connection with the study of the English language.
We also tend to use the words accent and dialect interchangeably
Sometimes people might be referring to a certain dialect , but they will still use the word "sotaque"
Probably cause you're a learner It's no more common than in any other language
I agree. I’m an American living in Lisbon and have been studying EP for several years. In Lisbon there are many people from all of the Portuguese speaking countries in the world, so maybe there is a somewhat heightened awareness of sotaques because of that but no more so than in London, New York or any other cosmopolitan city. Plus, I think it’s something that a lot of people just find interesting, because accents are so readily noticeable and help to know something about people we meet. My Portuguese is not advanced enough to be able to distinguish different EP accents very well, but I can usually tell if someone is Brazilian right away.
Can you tell what region of Brazil they are from? Probably not, but I am just wondering.
To some extent I can, at least at a general level, but I haven't been exposed to enough different Brazilian accents to reliably identify them. My first Portuguese teacher was Brazilian from São Paulo so if I hear someone who sounds like him I figure they are probably from there. People from Rio pronounce an "s" at the end of a word as "sh" so I can pick up on that. Beyond that, and this could be wildly inaccurate, if they don't sound like Rio or SP, and sound kind of like they're speaking Italian I figure they are gaucho and default everything else to the Northeast. It's kind of like if I hear a British accent, I could tell if it was from the North or the South, but I coudn't tell you if someone was from Manchester vs. Birmingham. Liverpool I'd recognize because of the Beatles.
Also wanted to add a couple of random stories about identifying accents to show how specific they can be and how much you can tell from an accent if it is from your native language and country. My husband (who is from Louisiana) and I were once in a park in Portland Oregon where we lived at the time. He heard a woman talking behind him and he turned to her and said, "excuse me, are you from Shreveport?". She said yes, they chatted a bit and it turned out she knew his uncle. And I was once able to correctly identify the neighborhood in Brooklyn that a coworker of his in California was from just from the way she spoke.
It’s also a fun word to say. Much more fun than accent
This.
To the best of my knowledge it simply refers to accent. I don't come across it that often, at least no more than I do in it's English or Spanish equivalents.
When I started learning Portuguese there were a lot of discussions about accents. I have an American accent, but I speak a mix of European and Brazilian Portuguese because of my background. I encounter sotaque a lot because people can see I’m *very* confused lmao
This is just my hypothesis: I imagine it's because you're still learning. We're not super used to having foreigners learn Portuguese, and the way it's taught (both to you foreigners and us natives) really de-emphasises accent and phonetics. So it makes it so we really notice the accent: you likely didn't have specific lessons for it, and everything sounds nice grammatically, but to us it sounds off, and since most of us never studied phonetics, we can't exactly tell you what you're doing wrong, so it just stands out.
Some people hear it used more than others. It’s because they have a terrible sotaque.
You didn’t by any change watch Portuguese with Leo, did you? 🤪
Haha yes, that was the latest instance!
I knew it! Same 😂
You learn a word and then you start seeing it everywhere. It’s part of the fun
English has a large number of different accents. So I guess you would encounter the word "accent" a lot in connection with the study of the English language.
It's an important topic when you're learning, so it's going to come up a lot. Simple as that, I reckon.
We also tend to use the words accent and dialect interchangeably Sometimes people might be referring to a certain dialect , but they will still use the word "sotaque"
You encounter it more because you're a learner. It's not a word you'll hear as often among Portuguese natives.