Can you compare the languages of Spanish and Portuguese to Serbian and Bulgarian?

Answer 1

Yes, they can be compared as they sound similar to the ear. As well, in my experience, Serbian language speakers usually do not have a difficult time learning Spanish quite fluently. As a language learner, Portuguese can also tend to sound like Russian as well as Serbian when one speaks very quickly. As Bulgarian is closely related to Russian, it makes sense to compare some of the articulation when speaking.

Answer 2

The languages, phonetically, are actually quite similar, to the point where a slavic speaker might hear Portuguese and believe that they are speaking their native tongue until they realize that they cannot understand it. In fact, both languages have a wide range of aspirated consonants, with Portuguese's D,J,T,CH corresponding more or less with Serbian's Đ,Ž,Ć,Š. Additionally, the intonation between the languages are quite similar with stress never falling on the final syllable, but instead falling frequently on the second-to last syllable, for example, "ONde" in Portuguese, and "OVde" in Serbian. However, the stress is often more drawn out in Portuguese than in Serbian, and in longer words, the stress in Serbian is placed on the second syllable from the start, rather than from the end, so "GosPOdine" can be compared to a longer word in Portuguese "aparenteMENte", where the stress remains on the second to last syllable.