Historical Ties
The original settlers of both Portugal and Eastern Europe were Celts. Before Germanic tribes invaded and took over most of Western Europe, Celtic tribes had lived for hundreds of years in both places, seeding each land with their beautiful language, including elements such as vowel harmony and phonemic nasal vowels.
The two languages developed differently over time but maintained a great deal of similarity in vocabulary and even phonetics. Today, Irish is one of Ireland’s official languages, French is France’s official language despite its Germanic origins, and many Slavic languages are derived from Sanskrit and Latin. The shared heritage of these countries makes sense when you hear them side by side, although it’s not surprising considering how close together they all lie on a map!
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Another factor contributing to why Portuguese seems so similar to some Slavic languages is that they have experienced massive linguistic influence since becoming colonies during the Age of Discovery. Portuguese speakers, particularly those from Portugal and Brazil, have rich vowel phonologies, including central vowels, unrounded vowels, and nasalized vowels, resulting in dissimilar vowels and a wide range of vowel allophones. This influence extends to Cape Verde, where Portuguese people settled, impacting the phonetics and phonology of the language.
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During colonial rule, European powers imported millions of enslaved people into Brazil and exported millions more to labor in silver mines. These slave workers hailed mainly from East Africa, where Bantu was spoken, which makes up much of modern-day Zulu, Swahili, and Shona, among other dialects still spoken today (e.g., Xhosa). The encounter between Portuguese and African Bantu languages led to the incorporation of phonemic nasal vowels and other linguistic features into Brazilian Portuguese, creating a rich and complex consonantal system. Brazilian Portuguese also developed vowel reductions and a distinct single nasal vowel, influenced by these interactions.
Many colonists brought their native tongues with them as well (the Angolan population predominantly speaks Kikongo), causing Portuguese to borrow heavily from other African Bantu languages like Nkongo when enslaved people who spoke these languages mixed with those who spoke European ones. After independence, the new Brazilian government began adopting a series of policies called linguistic purification designed to wipe out traces of African languages and institute strict rules about what could be said in Portuguese, including the use of non-final unstressed vowels and epenthetic vowels.
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