WLLH to be sold.

[aaronread]

In terms of radio programming, would Brazilians be considered "Hispanic"? There's certainly a fairly large Brazilian community in Brighton. Boy did I learn that when Brazil won the World Cup in 2002...at like 3am. (cars screaming around the streets with horns blaring and big green flags trailing)

 

[DanStrassberg]

In terms of radio programming, would Brazilians be considered "Hispanic"?

AFAIK. "Hispanic" refers to people who speek Spanish. Although there may be some people in Brazil whose first language was Spanish, my understanding is that any such individuals would constitute a small minority of the population. Portuguese is the predominant language of Brazilians. Just because Portugal is smaller in area than Spain and abuts Spain on its (Portugal's) east and north sides doesn't mean that Spanish and Portuguese are the same language. I understand that if you can speak one of those languages, you have a pretty good shot at being able to understand the other, but I also understand that Portuguese speakers from Cape Verde and Portuguese speakers from Brazil cannot easily converse with each other because of the great difference in accents. Same problem with French speakers from France and French speakers from Quebec.

 

[MarcB]

A friend of my who's Sicilian told me that Italian and Spanish are closely related languages.

 

[DanStrassberg]

A friend of my who's Sicilian told me that Italian and Spanish are closely related languages.

French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and Rumanian (and I may have missed some others) are all called Romance Languages. The Romance Languages are all derived from Latin, the language of the Roman Empire, and have many similarities to each other. There are many other families of languages, that is, groups of languages that have strong resemblances to one-another. I'm sure that WikiPerdia can tell you a lot more, although I haven't checked.

 

[MAradio]

From a music and listener ship point of view it doesn't matter how close the languages are. Each country has it's own styles of music. It doesn't matter if someone can understand the language or not. Brazilians will not listen (with any frequency) to Portuguese music from Portugal, they understand most of what's said but it's not their style of music. Dominicans will not listen to Mexican music and on and on. Think of it like this, do you know someone that listens to classical music? What would happen if you put hard rock on and told that person to listen to it because it's in English?

There are styles of music that are attractive to different languages and cultures. It's sort of like baking a cake, there is a right way and a wrong way to do it.

Just an opinion from someone that speaks many of the languages being discussed here.

 

[aaronread]

Excellent point. And we have a good example of it right next to Boston with New Bedford and WJFD 97.3FM...one of the very few, if not only, full-time Portuguese-language radio stations in the US. But it's Portuguese because of the high number of immigrants (several generations' worth) from Portugal (largely because of the fishing industry, I imagine). But that's not a Brazilian enclave. Not that I'm aware of, anyways.

BTW, the romance languages include Catalan, too. And given their shared origin of Roman Latin, there are significant similarities between them all, especially in sentence structure (vocab is another story). If you speak Spanish fluently, and you've never heard Italian or English, you'll find that you probably recognize and understand a lot more Italian than English. But there's enough differences to drive you batty, too...my wife speaks pretty fluent French but spent a week in Spain a few years ago and was going bonkers because she almost could understand what people were saying...but not quite.

 

[DanStrassberg]

And given their shared origin of Roman Latin, there are significant similarities between them all, especially in sentence structure (vocab is another story).But there's enough differences to drive you batty, too

Accent is very important. Years ago, I met a young woman who grew up in France. She had just visited people in Quebec whom she had never previously met face-to-face but had corresponded with often enough that she considered them friends. She was shocked to discover that, although everyone in the group spoke French as their native tongue, she could not make herself understood when she spoke to the Quebecois and she could not understand what the Quebecois were saying to her. The end result was that, in order to converse with each other, everyone had to speak English! I find that quite humorous because neither the French nor the Quebocois want to admit that they can speak and understand English. Having to speak English hurts their French pride.

 

[The Original]

Today, perhaps, the dual transmitters are viewed as an asset, because the station will end-up going Spanish/Ethnic, but years ago, the areas outside Lowell and Lawrence were growing and the distortion on 'LLH between the two cities of license was annoying. Additionally, at the time, the overwhelming majority of 'LLH business was coming from Lowell. As I remember, it was near the time the Lowell transmitter was moved to the Merrimack that the idea of turning-off Lawrence was discussed. Believe me, previous owners discussed it for years, and while many would think having two cities of license is an asset, insiders at the time thought otherwise.

 

[chrish]

GPS technology tying the highly accurate oscillators together in use since the early 90's the problems are 99% eliminated.