Why Does Greek Sound Like Spanish?!

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Special thanks to Edu Tudela and Joanna Hotova for their Spanish and Greek audio samples! And thanks to Jimmy Giokezas for his additional Greek samples.

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Music:

“Rocka” by Text Me Records / Bobby Renz.
“Sunrise Drive” by South London HiFi

Sources of information for this video include:

Greek Phonetics: The State of the Art. Amalia Arvaniti.

Phonetic Variability of the Greek Rhotic Sound. Mary Baltazani.

Celdrán, Eugenio & Planas, Ana Maria & Carrera-Sabaté, Josefina. (2003). Castilian Spanish. Journal of the International Phonetic Association. 33. 255-259. 10.1017/S0025100303001373.

Spanish Words From Greek Ending in '-ma' Often Masculine. Gerald Erichsen.

Durational Variability in Speech and the Rhythm Class Hypothesis. Esther Grabe. University of Cambridge.

The following online discussion:

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Комментарии

I'm an active member on several Pod101 sites, and I hope you'll enjoy them as much as I do!

(Full disclosure: if you sign up for a premium account, Langfocus receives a small referral fee. But if I didn't like it, I wouldn't recommend it, and the free account is pretty good on its own!)

Langfocus

I speak Spanish and when the Greek came on I was shook because I understood nothing but felt like I should.

eurasianlynx

I’m Greek, learning Spanish. A week after starting, I could read a text in Spanish, without understanding not even one word, but Spanish people would tell me: excellent! You speak perfect castellano!!

issith

I'm Spanish living in Bulgaria and I often get asked if I'm Greek.
I guess it makes now sense since Greece is a neighbour country to them and both languages sounds so similar to foreigners.

moviusdc

I once had a Greek woman from the island of Kos read a page from a Spanish book for me. She only spoke Greek and English, but her pronunciation of the Spanish was so good it sounded like she was 99% native (after explaining the basic LL = Y, V=B ). It was really a shock to me that someone without any prior exposure to a language can read that language out loud and sound virtually indistinguishable from native. I have since then (2004) been telling everyone and their mother how similar these two languages are, phonetically. And Today I finally see your video as a proof of why! Hurray!

mdkooter

As a Greek who took a Spanish class I never had to learn the accent

dirtybits

I'm Greek, and studied in UK. Many times, when I heard Spanish people on the street talking, I confused them for Greek until I realize I cannot understand what they are saying. My Spanish friends told me that they had the same problem with Greeks.

helekin

I've heard Greek spoken in Madrid and it confused me terribly: how could I not understand it when it sounded like Spanish? Then I realized it was Greek. My brain struggled with it since the sounds are incredibly similar. It's a funny feeling every single time. Also, Greeks can speak impeccable Spanish whenever they learn it, it's amazing. I might learn Greek sometime 😊 By the way, beautiful country and wonderful, friendly people.

mariancuenca

I'm spanish, I visited Greece some years ago. I learned how to greet in greek, so I used to say "kalimera" or "kalispera" as entering a shop or a restaurant. Sometimes they answered back speaking in greek and got surprised when I said in english "sorry, I don't speak greek", "but you sound greek!" they said 😁
By the way, greek sounds to me as the accent from Galicia (north west Spain)

donnar

For 22 years, I work as a bartender in Creta and i ve seen thousands of tourists. Only the spanish people can pronounce every greek word, as accurate as it gets.

kostaskonstantinos

When Greeks and Spaniards speak English, they have the same accent.

georgenikolopoulos

Cuando era adolescente mis padres me llevaron a Grecia de vacaciones y también me impresionó que 'no tenían acento', que sonaba como si fueran españoles pero hablando incoherencias... Ahora sé que no eran imaginaciones mías, gracias! Jajajaja
No puedo dejar de agradecerte que tu magnífico canal esté subtitulado al Español, se agradece muchísimo el detalle. Mucha suerte!

Google-translated (Sorry!)
When I was a teenager my parents took me to Greece on vacation and I was also impressed that they 'didn't have an accent', that they sounded like they were Spanish but speaking incoherently... Now I know it wasn't my imagination, thank you! Hahaha
I cannot stop thanking you for the fact that your magnificent channel is subtitled in Spanish, the detail is greatly appreciated. Good luck!

ivancuenca

I'm from Peru, my mother tongue is Spanish, and I'm learning Greek on my own as a foreign language (I love Greek mythology), and I noticed that the pronunciation and the grammar of the Greek language is the same as in Spanish. Yes, I believe that could make learning the language a bit easy.

gerardocaceres

The thing is, in the video, we Greeks, do not speak that slowly! Our language sounds similar to spanish because we also talk at a quick pace. The woman that was used for the greek examples in the video spoke way to slowly for Greek people.

elenapantelivocalcoach

I had a friend who was spanish.She came to Greece for an erasmus program and within a year she was speaking greek like it was her mother tongue.

xzbplpp

I'm a Spanish speaker living in an English-speaking country. A couple of times I've met people speaking English with an accent I'd swear was Spanish (from Spain). Turns out they were Greek. Weird. Languages are very different, but the accent and intonation is almost identical.

hombrequemiralaluna

I went on a vacation in Greece and the first two days I got a headache from trying to understand them. I simply couldn't stop my brain from trying.

Gladdig

Laughs in greek: χαχαχαχαχαχα
Laughs in spanish: jajajajajajajaja
Laughs in english: hahahahahaha
Let's gather here "laughing" in all languages 😄🤭

pablodraco

I'm portuguese and always told my friends: "If you don't realize why you don't understand what a spanish is talking... chances are you're actually listening to a greek..." LOL

miguel.m.digitalart

as a brazilian, I understood everything in spanish, but the greek I felt like I was a gringo listening to spanish for the first time

eduardofalcao

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