[afiodorov]

Apparently Persian and Russian are close. Which is surprising to say the least. I know people keep getting confused about how Portuguese from Portugal and Russian sound close yet the Persian is new to me.

[CGMthrowaway]

Idea: Farsi and Russian both have simple list of vowel sounds and no diphtongs. Making it hard/obvious when attempting to speak english, which is rife with them and many different vowel sounds

[dashtiarian]

While Persian has only two diphtongs and 6-8 vowels, Other Languages of Iran are full of them(e.g. Southern Kurdish speakers can pronounce 12+1 vowels and 11 diphtongs). I find it funny if all Iranians are speaking English with the Persian accent.

[ilyausorov]

Yeh they seem to be in the same "major" cluster, although Serbian/Croatian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Turkish, Polish and Czech are all close.

Turkish and Persian seem to be the nearest neighbors.

[zehaeva]

When I went to Portugal I was struck by how much Portuguese there does sound like Spanish with a Russian accent!

[oscarfree]

Part of this is the "dark L" sound

[BalinKing]

I’d guess that the sibilants, consonant clusters, and/or vowel reduction would play a big role.

[binary132]

I thought I was the only one who perceived an audible similarity between Portuguese and Russian.

[dgan]

I am native Russian speaker, and work/visited Portugal. It definitely tricks me when not paying attention, its very similar sounding

[mh-]

I speak neither, and both also sound similar to me depending on the accents of the speakers.

[djmips]

I had that too but it was Brazillian Portuguese where I noticed it.

[maleldil]

The characteristics that make pt-PT sound similar to Russian are largely absent in pt-BR.