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Comment by diego_moita | Hacker News Reader

Scottish people can pronounce the same sound!

When you say "Loch Ness" with a very thick Scottish accent, the "ch" in loch is quite close to it.

Also the sound is quite common in other languages: "roi" in French, "reisen" in German, ... Even some Spanish dialects like Galego have the same r. Only Castilian/normal Spanish doesn't have it.

OTOH, just ask a Brazilian to pronounce simply "the". The "th" phoneme is quite hard for Portuguese speakers.

Better yet, ask a native from Rio to pronounce any word with a mute "t" or "d". It's hilarious. "Brad Pit" becomes "brahdjee peetchee".

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>"Brad Pit" becomes "brahdjee pitchee"

I think this is very much standard all over Brazil. It's a common pattern in a large amount of english words, I think most or all of us can pronounce it correctly, but we don't because it'd be harder say and recognize while trying to pronounce it like an american almost sounds like pedantry here.

> I think this is very much standard all over Brazil.

You mean about the "mispronunciation"? Because the j in "bradhjee" I hear mostly in southeastern accents, where people in Northeast says it more closely with how it's spoken in English.

I believe the standardization refers to adding the vowels to the end of thos consonant-ended words. I believe most northeasterners would say "brédi píti".

> Even some Spanish dialects like Galego have the same r

You are opening a can of worms here considering that Galego is officialy a language, not a dialect, and it's basically very very similar to Portoguese, up to a point in which a galician colleague of mine, when we were at a conference in the USA would talk in Galego with a couple of Brazilian guys and they talked to him in Brazilian Portoguese and they went along just fine. Modern galego and portugues stem from the same root[1]

[1] https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idioma_gallego#Historia

> You are opening a can of worms here considering that Galego is officialy a language, not a dialect, and it's basically very very similar to Portoguese,

True, you are right. I stand corrected.

The difference between a language and a dialect is often just politics.

> The difference between a language and a dialect is often just politics.

Indeed! It can be defined by loosing or winning a war. If you win, it's a language; if you loose, it's a dialect.

That's pretty much why it's called "Portuguese", they pushed the moors before other parts of Hispania did it and decided to get their own kingdom started instead of waiting for all the other nobles to finish the work. If it wasn't for that Portugal might not even exist as a country in itself.

"A language is a dialect with an army and navy"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_language_is_a_dialect_with_a...

Hot-Dog: Rotchi-Dogee

Hardcore: Rardjee-Core

Armlock: Army-locky

Facebook = Fassy-Bookee

Hobby: Rhobby

Screen capture: prin-tche

That's so true! The thing with "th" I see is that we Brazilians speak it as "fink" (fɪŋk) or "sink" (sɪŋk) rather than the traditional "θɪŋk". But I find that's mostly a pedagogical problem, with teachers also doing it and students copying. However after quick explanation and practice, most can learn (I think I did :).

I think that phoneme sounds and looks silly. The whole putting the tongue out in order to properly pronounce "th" is very weird for Portuguese speakers. Like in this scene from The Hunchback of Notre Dame, where Claude Frollo says: "The sentence: death!":

https://i.imgur.com/lBEU5Zk.png

It's very funny to watch this in Portuguese because the word he uses is "morte", and he looks very stupid putting the tongue out after saying "morte".

People from Northeast inland will pronounce "breadee peetee".

Also on the coast

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