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I took some Spanish in school but my most notable experience attempting to learn (Brazilian) Portuguese as a native English speaker was hearing the difference b

I took some Spanish in school but my most notable experience attempting to learn (Brazilian) Portuguese as a native English speaker was hearing the difference between the names José and Roberto. There's the quintessentially, native-English-speaking pronunciation of José with a hard J. With Spanish, the J is obviously silent, or extremely soft, but in Brazilian Portuguese (I can't speak for other forms), you pronounce it almost like someone reading the name for the first time in English, with the hard J. And then you have the opposite with the name Roberto, in Spanish the R is hard and present (and easy for native-English-speakers), but in Portuguese, the R has that same soft J sound that Spanish speakers use on José. It's fun how these (three) languages intertwine.

Rygian 5y ago
As a Spaniard, I am confused by the "the J is obviously silent". The most neutral pronunciation of José in Spain (the one you would hear in Spanish broadcast news) is indeed /xo'se/. Spanish is extremely rich in pronunciation variations, due to the large population spread over several continents, so in most cases when you observe something about "Spanish" you need to focus on a specific region or dialect, for the observation to have a proper context.
- School-Cotton 5y ago
  It's also /xo'se/ in Mexico as far as I can tell. I'm not Mexican but I know a lot of Mexicans and am pretty sure that's how they'd pronounce it. I would be very surprised if the "Spanish J" is silent anywhere; the person you're replying to almost certainly just made a mistake.
  - kergonath 5y ago
    From my experience, native English speakers have a very hard time pronouncing the Spanish /j/ (or the German /ch/, for that matter, or even the French /r/), so they just pronounce it as a somewhat stressed /h/ (for lack of a better term).
    - School-Cotton 5y ago
      “ch” in German actually represents two different sounds: e.g. the one in “ich” and the one in “Bauch”. I’m a native English speaker and I find those extremely difficult to distinguish. But the French r is fine. (I spoke French to a near-native level 15 years ago; it’s probably decayed to “advanced intermediate” by now).
- FeteCommuniste 5y ago
  Maybe they got Spanish "J" confused with Spanish "H?" There are some cases like "halar" / "jalar" but I don't think I've seen the name "Hosé" before. :-)
cassianoleal 5y ago
The R in Roberto can be soft like a Spanish J, or it can be pretty hard, albeit with the back of tongue bouncing off the palate rather than the tip, depending on many factors - local accent, the speaker's mood or energy level, etc. Mind you, to us it will still be the same phoneme, just at different "softness" levels. In other accents, the tip of the tongue is used in the same fashion as in Spanish. This is especially present in border regions. In other regions, that R is a single hit of the tip of the tongue, especially around Italian and German colony regions, similar to what a single R in the middle of a word typically sounds in Portuguese.
School-Cotton 5y ago
What is a "hard J"? As another speaker pointed out, the J in José is not silent or nearly-silent in Spanish. It is a sound that doesn't exist in mainstream English, but is most close to the English "h" sound.

Rygian 5y ago

As a Spaniard, I am confused by the "the J is obviously silent". The most neutral pronunciation of José in Spain (the one you would hear in Spanish broadcast news) is indeed /xo'se/. Spanish is extremely rich in pronunciation variations, due to the large population spread over several continents, so in most cases when you observe something about "Spanish" you need to focus on a specific region or dialect, for the observation to have a proper context.

School-Cotton 5y ago
It's also /xo'se/ in Mexico as far as I can tell. I'm not Mexican but I know a lot of Mexicans and am pretty sure that's how they'd pronounce it. I would be very surprised if the "Spanish J" is silent anywhere; the person you're replying to almost certainly just made a mistake.
- kergonath 5y ago
  From my experience, native English speakers have a very hard time pronouncing the Spanish /j/ (or the German /ch/, for that matter, or even the French /r/), so they just pronounce it as a somewhat stressed /h/ (for lack of a better term).
  - School-Cotton 5y ago
    “ch” in German actually represents two different sounds: e.g. the one in “ich” and the one in “Bauch”. I’m a native English speaker and I find those extremely difficult to distinguish. But the French r is fine. (I spoke French to a near-native level 15 years ago; it’s probably decayed to “advanced intermediate” by now).
FeteCommuniste 5y ago
Maybe they got Spanish "J" confused with Spanish "H?" There are some cases like "halar" / "jalar" but I don't think I've seen the name "Hosé" before. :-)

cassianoleal 5y ago

The R in Roberto can be soft like a Spanish J, or it can be pretty hard, albeit with the back of tongue bouncing off the palate rather than the tip, depending on many factors - local accent, the speaker's mood or energy level, etc. Mind you, to us it will still be the same phoneme, just at different "softness" levels. In other accents, the tip of the tongue is used in the same fashion as in Spanish. This is especially present in border regions. In other regions, that R is a single hit of the tip of the tongue, especially around Italian and German colony regions, similar to what a single R in the middle of a word typically sounds in Portuguese.

School-Cotton 5y ago

What is a "hard J"? As another speaker pointed out, the J in José is not silent or nearly-silent in Spanish. It is a sound that doesn't exist in mainstream English, but is most close to the English "h" sound.