Can you tell the difference between Brazilian accent and Russian? We need you to uncover spies!

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tungemål
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Can you tell the difference between Brazilian accent and Russian? We need you to uncover spies!

Postby tungemål » Wed Dec 07, 2022 10:49 am

A researcher with Brazilian passport who worked as a researcher in Tromsø University (Norway) was recently apprehended by the police. It turns out he was really a Russian spy:
https://www.nrk.no/norge/pst-sikter-spi ... 1.16156368
https://www.itromso.no/nyheter/i/Xb95En ... a-i-brasil

He was a guest researcher in a project on security and hybrid threats.

Curiously, earlier this year a spy was detained in the Netherlands. He also had a cover story as someone with a Brazilian background, and tried to infiltrate the war crimes court in Hague.
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2022/ju ... etherlands

I'm guessing Russians spies assume that Brazilian accent sounds similar to Russian and that noone can hear the difference?
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Re: Can you tell the difference between Brazilian accent and Russian? We need you to uncover spies!

Postby LupCenușiu » Wed Dec 07, 2022 1:16 pm

tungemål wrote:I'm guessing Russians spies assume that Brazilian accent sounds similar to Russian and that noone can hear the difference?


I heard opinions that Portuguese sounds like some Russian mixed with Spanish. But it was european Portuguese.
Portuguese and Russian share common phonological features that make them sound superficially similar from a distance – both are stress-timed languages with a similar rhythm and accentuated vowel reduction. Additionally, both languages share an abundance of hushing fricative and palatal consonant sounds

From http://www.portuguesepedia.com/why-portuguese-sounds-russian.

So I guess it was good enough for them to try :D
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Re: Can you tell the difference between Brazilian accent and Russian? We need you to uncover spies!

Postby Xenops » Wed Dec 07, 2022 1:33 pm

Are they speaking English with a Brazilian/Russian accent, or Norwegian/Dutch with a Brazilian/Russian accent?
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Re: Can you tell the difference between Brazilian accent and Russian? We need you to uncover spies!

Postby Doitsujin » Wed Dec 07, 2022 1:53 pm

tungemål wrote:I'm guessing Russians spies assume that Brazilian accent sounds similar to Russian and that noone can hear the difference?
It's more likely that the Russians had a source in Brazil who was willing to issue genuine passports that could be used for international travel and didn't care about the accent.
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Re: Can you tell the difference between Brazilian accent and Russian? We need you to uncover spies!

Postby tungemål » Wed Dec 07, 2022 2:06 pm

Xenops wrote:Are they speaking English with a Brazilian/Russian accent, or Norwegian/Dutch with a Brazilian/Russian accent?

English. That's common among researchers.
The spy hasn't admitted guilt. He was offered a portuguese interpreter by the police, but he prefered to speak english.
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Re: Can you tell the difference between Brazilian accent and Russian? We need you to uncover spies!

Postby AroAro » Wed Dec 07, 2022 4:51 pm

tungemål wrote:I'm guessing Russians spies assume that Brazilian accent sounds similar to Russian and that noone can hear the difference?


Interesting, maybe they watched that video by Langfocus ;)
My bet is that there a high percentage of sibilant sounds in both languages.
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Re: Can you tell the difference between Brazilian accent and Russian? We need you to uncover spies!

Postby Le Baron » Wed Dec 07, 2022 5:44 pm

I think even Brazilian Portuguese has Russian-like sounds. That young fellow on those mutual intelligibility videos is Brazilian and his accent has them.
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Re: Can you tell the difference between Brazilian accent and Russian? We need you to uncover spies!

Postby Ug_Caveman » Wed Dec 07, 2022 6:22 pm

Langfocus did a whole video on this - although it was noted that these similar sounds were mainly a factor in Iberian Portuguese, not Brazilian (and similar video on Spanish-Greek having a close phonology):

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Re: Can you tell the difference between Brazilian accent and Russian? We need you to uncover spies!

Postby Sae » Thu Dec 08, 2022 11:28 am

Huh, I had wondered about this a while ago. When I was looking to buy a motorcycle I stumbled upon a review channel by guy in Portugal and I thought the guy sounded very Russian. And I used to know a couple of Portuguese people who didn't. So I guess it's not just Brazilians (and judging from other comments).

But this is the video in question (and for the motorbike I ultimately ended up buying):



Given I thought this guy might be Russian, the answer for me probably is "no". I don't have a lot of exposure to either, so I'd probably not notice the difference. But I'd probably think spy was Russian anyway, but only by luck, because in that specific scenario I'd probably also suspect some poor Brazilian tourist of being a Russian spy too until somebody says "dude that's a Brazilian accent"...just as well I work in an entirely different work sector.
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Re: Can you tell the difference between Brazilian accent and Russian? We need you to uncover spies!

Postby BrennoGold » Thu Dec 08, 2022 1:03 pm

Brazil's biggest news program, our equivalent of 60 minutes, did a report about this case. Link here
In summary, the apprehended person did admit he is not a real Brazilian, but he never admitted to being a spy. But coincidentally, Russia wants to extradite him under the pretense that he has a drug conviction in Russia so they want him to "serve time" there.

About his accent, the story shows a video of his deposition, and I could clearly detect his Russian accent, he wasn't even that good of a portuguese speaker - although he seemed fluent in the language (in the sense that he could easily think of the words he wanted to say, and he actually lived in Brazil so he didn't seem to have trouble with the language), but he could not pass as a "perfect" portuguese speaker.

About his passport, some people here in the topic have said he maybe got the passport because portuguese sounds like Russian. That's not why. As one person pointed out, the portuguese that sounds like Russian is the european one, not the Brazilian one.
The real reason his cover was to be Brazilian, (according to the news story) is that Brazilians can have many ethnicities, and a blond Russian like him could easily pass as a Brazilian without further questions (and the journalists talk to a known former Russian spy who says this is well known, and they would do this a lot).
This guy only had to preface to Brazilians he met, that his accent was due to him growing up in the border with Argentina (which makes no sense since his accent has nothing to do with southern Brazil's accent, or Spanish accent, it's a clear Russian accent if you've ever heard a Russian speaking).

If you guys have any problems accessing the video of the news story because of geoblocking, just tell me and I'll download the video to post here in some way.
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