The Off Topic Topic

[HVC]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UibNKykq4do

You and I are on totally different wavelengths.  Portagee is all sshhh and zh and jh.  Kind of lispy and lazy sounding.  German is the exact opposite.  No one cuts corners.  Every consonant gets your full attention and concentration.

" This video was recorded by Daniel Bogre Udell in Brasília, Brazil, where Augusto lives and works. "

I can't even understand Brazilian personally. I mean if the educated from the city sometimes, but not the average Brazilian. I understand Spanish infinitely more.


*editt*
Here's continental Portuguese from the same YouTube series. Closure to what I think of as Portuguese. It appears  he's from saxony so still not exactly the Portuguese I'm used to.  I can't place his accent but duque might.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrWw4TTt0XM


*edit 2*. He says he's from the Ribatejo, which is central Portugal.

[Admiral Yi]

OK, a couple Russian sounds in there.

[Razgovory]

I thought he sounded Spanish.

[Eddie Teach]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UibNKykq4do]
Portagee is all sshhh and zh and jh. 

That describes Chinese to me. Shushu shishi.

[Sheilbh]

No, Portuguese sounds Russian because it somehow both over enunciates and has a lot of " shh" sounds .

Yeah. When I first went to Portugal it sounded like everyone was speaking Polish

[Duque de Bragança]

Do we finally have an explanation for why Portuguese sounds Russian?

It does not. Russian has no nasals, let alone nasal diphtongs.

[Duque de Bragança]

converso!

Etymologically speaking, the Marrano is right though about Sabbath/Sábado, be it for Castilian, Portuguese and even French though it is less obvious. 

[Duque de Bragança]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UibNKykq4do

You and I are on totally different wavelengths.  Portagee is all sshhh and zh and jh.  Kind of lispy and lazy sounding.  German is the exact opposite.  No one cuts corners.  Every consonant gets your full attention and concentration.

" This video was recorded by Daniel Bogre Udell in Brasília, Brazil, where Augusto lives and works. "

I can't even understand Brazilian personally. I mean if the educated from the city sometimes, but not the average Brazilian. I understand Spanish infinitely more.


*editt*
Here's continental Portuguese from the same YouTube series. Closure to what I think of as Portuguese. It appears  he's from saxony so still not exactly the Portuguese I'm used to.  I can't place his accent but duque might.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrWw4TTt0XM


*edit 2*. He says he's from the Ribatejo, which is central Portugal.

Centre-south.
You chose a good example, he is articulate. Manages to trill the r, something lost in the south, not just Lisbon, and spreading unfortunately.

Here is a link for the Algarvian dialects. I had trouble understanding at times.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZc4HGaoY70

[Syt]

Germany put that kind of stuff on stamps.

Stamps

Heh, that triggered a memory. And as it turns out, I still have them 

Nice.

I used to have a lot of GDR stamps as a kid (because they were cheap to buy in the supermarket), plus a fair bit of Soviet ones and Weimar Republic (including ones that started out as 5,000 and then were stamped over as e.g. 200,000 ). The GDR stamps were quite good, actually.

[The Larch]

Continental Portuguese and Portuguese from almost anywhere else (with Brazilian Portuguese being the most representative) sound really different, in my experience, mostly because for some bizarre reason Continental Portuguese people seem to be genetically unable to open their mouth more than a few centimetres to vocalize the words they say, and when they do they tend to ignore half the letters. Brazilian Portuguese, by comparison, vocalizes much more when speaking (although they also tend to include some funky sounds here and there).

[Josquius]

Nice.

I used to have a lot of GDR stamps as a kid (because they were cheap to buy in the supermarket),

Aren't you from West Germany? Whats the story there?

[Duque de Bragança]

Continental Portuguese and Portuguese from almost anywhere else (with Brazilian Portuguese being the most representative) sound really different, in my experience, mostly because for some bizarre reason Continental Portuguese people seem to be genetically unable to open their mouth more than a few centimetres to vocalize the words they say, and when they do they tend to ignore half the letters. Brazilian Portuguese, by comparison, vocalizes much more when speaking (although they also tend to include some funky sounds here and there).

African Portuguese has its idiosyncrasies from European Portuguese dialects (Açores and Madeira have their peculiarities) but African Portuguese are less than Brazilian Portuguese dialects (Rio de Janeiro being closer to Lisbon). Most Brazilians dialects are known for their palatalizations (soft t and j), beyond that Brazilians have already too much trouble to follow the São Paulo or Rio de Janeiro "standards".

Lisbon people have trouble articulating though, i'll grant you that, with some vowels and diphtongs disappearing by simplification or reduction.
But then Castilians have pentavocalists so it's not like they are prepared for the vowel variety of Portuguese.

[Richard Hakluyt]

DDR stamps were much easier to get hold of than West German stamps. They were often cancelled to order rather than postally used  They also had lots of nice designs. This was common with Warsaw pact countries, I think it was part of their propaganda effort. Going by the stamps the DDR was much better than the boring old Bundesrepublik 

[Sheilbh]

Sad to discover we need to purge the middle class

Wood burning at home now biggest cause of UK particle pollution

Fires used by just 8% of population but cause triple the particle pollution of traffic, data shows
[...]
Two-thirds of the people burning indoors used a stove, while a third had open fires, and 96% had alternative sources of heating such as gas or electricity. Most of the indoor burners used seasoned wood but 20% were using wet wood, the research found.

"The most common reasons they gave for using their indoor burning appliance were to create a homely feel, so they could heat just one room, to save money, and/or because they liked the look of a fire," the report says. "Habit also seemed important: 79% of indoor burners reported having a fire at home when growing up as opposed to 23% of [those never burning at home]."

Almost half the indoor burners (46%) were from the highest AB social grades, which represent about a quarter of the population overall. The researchers identified five types of indoor burners, including people who burned as a "lifestyle choice" for aesthetic reasons (28%) and for reasons of tradition (18%). A small number, who tended to be older, less affluent and more rural, had no other heating (8%). The rest burned at home to save money or supplement other heating.

[The Brain]

Is wood burning the biggest cause in the areas with the highest levels of particle pollution?