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Spanish and Portuguese seem to be unusually close. Studying one helps me with the other. Portuguese and Japanese on the other hand...

• pushpop 8y ago
  The OP wasn’t talking about Japanese. They were talking about European languages- many of which share a common heritage
  • saagarjha 8y ago
    Not all of them do, but the ones mentioned were all very similar Romance languages.
    • pushpop 8y ago
      I’m aware not al of them do. This is why I said “many” and not “all”. There are roughly 3 main groups of European languages: Italic (or Romance as you described it) for Western Europe, Germanic which is predominantly Central Europe, Scandinavian countries and the UK; and Balto-Slavic for Eastern Europe. Generally speaking of course. However there is still a fair amount of cross pollination even with the Germanic and Italic languages, not to mention shared characteristics (not least of all a shared alphabet) that doesn’t exist with Japonic languages such as, well, Japanese.