What Does the _____ Say?

It’s been a couple years since this went viral:

It doesn’t answer the question, does it? What does the fox actually say? And for that matter, what do some other animals say? Aren’t you curious about that? Let’s find out.

The fox:

Rabbits are pretty quiet, aren’t they? Just wait until you hear this:

How about a giraffe? Do they make a sound? This is interesting.

And what about river otters?

And porcupines?

Ever wonder what a wolverine sounds like?

How about a skunk?

And here are some raccoons.

And finally, from Japan, the tanuki, which is also known as the raccoon dog. It’s actually a type of wild dog.

And just for fun, dumb-sounding birds of North America.

What did you think? Any surprise you?

Test Driving Languages – Portuguese

Back to the Romance languages this time, I’ve tested Portuguese. I must make a note that the Portuguese offered on Duolingo is Brazilian Portuguese. Why? Well, there are far more Brazilian Portuguese speakers than any other in the world. It’s that simple. However, considering the origin country of the language, I am including the flags of both Brazil and Portugal.

With that said, Portuguese is an interesting language, as it’s very similar to Spanish, but has some differences that are tripping me up a bit. We’ll talk about that below.

Eu sou um homem.

— I am a man.

Alphabet

Similar to Spanish, it has many of the same accents, but the letters are all familiar to speakers of most European languages. There are no difficulties here other than learning which words use which accents.

Pronunciation

This threw me off a little bit, because of how the ‘j‘ is pronounced. It’s not like the Spanish, which is pronounced like the English ‘h.’ It’s more like a soft English ‘j.’ Other than that, I had some problems with the course’s recorded voice. It’s quite obviously a computer voice, more so than the other languages. It’s a little distracting. But other than that, the pronunciation seems straightforward, and looks to follow strict rules, like Spanish.

Grammar

What little grammar I’ve seen is very straightforward. Verb conjugations are a bit easier than Spanish, as they use the same conjugations for you, he, she, and it. Also, you (plural) is the same as they. Less to remember! The articles follow similar patterns as other languages, depending on the gender of the noun. However, what gave me trouble was the definite article, “a.” That’s the feminine definite article, which corresponds to “the” in English. That confused me at first, and I accidentally used the indefinite article in English. Oops. That’ll take a little getting used to.

Overall Impression

Similar to Spanish, but it has its differences. I think this should be easy to learn after Spanish, but there may be some confusion and accidental mixing of languages. I can easily see that happening. But it sounds nice. I think it sounds softer than Spanish. I’m looking forward to studying Portuguese!

Have you studied Portuguese? Are you interested in it? Let me know in the comments below.