As you may already know, my first language wasn’t Spanish, it was Brazilian Portuguese. Of course, now my Spanish (and even my English!) are much better than my Portuguese, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t left me with a subtle accent some people sometimes notice.

As of now, I can point out to 2 specific quirks of my accent that cause this. The first one is my pronunciation of the palatal nasal /ɲ/ sound, better known as “ñ”. Usually, one would produce this sound as any other nasal consonant like /n/ and /m/: by blocking the airflow in the place of articulation and letting it exit through the nose. However, I realize it as a nasalized palatal approximant [ȷ̃], which means I don’t fully block the airflow. For instance, I say [es.paˈȷ̃ol] and not [es.paˈɲol]. This is more common in Brazilian Portuguese than Spanish, although this Wikipedia page does cite some examples in both languages, including an obscure variety of Spanish called “Zwole-Ebarb Spanish”.

The second quirk is the fact that I effectively speak with a seven vowel system instead of a five vowel one. Apart from the typical /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, and /u/, I also distinguish /ɛ/ and /ɔ/ like in Portuguese, which are like /e/ and /o/ respectively but lowering your tongue towards an /a/ sound. I say this because I pronounce the “Media” in “Edad Media” (“Middle Ages”) as /‘mɛ.ðja/, while the “media” in “edad media” (“average age”) I pronounce it as /‘me.ðja/.

This is totally irrelevant information to everyone, and I may be wrong about it, but I found it interesting.