6 ms·
Portuguese and Spanish are quite different languages.
by yeureka 13y ago
Portuguese and Spanish are quite different languages.
- diego_moita 13y agoNo, not "quite". They are actually very similar to each other. So much that, for non-native speakers, it becomes very hard to try to learn both at same time. Portuguese is just a modern version of Galician (Galego), a Spanish dialect from northwest Spain and northern Portugal. After the expulsion of the Moors invaders in the 8th century, it became Portugal's language. Castilian (Castellano), the root of modern Spanish, is a close sibling to Galician. Good and fluent speakers of Portuguese, Galician and Castilian can understand each other without too much effort.
- serans 13y agoI think it's more correct to say that Portuguese is a modern version of ancient Galician (usually known as Galician-Portuguese), just as modern Galician is.
- diego_moita 13y agoFair enough, thanks for correcting me.
- yeureka 13y agoI am Portuguese and I lived and worked in Spain for more than 3 years and to lump together Portuguese and Castellian as one language is very weird to me. I had to learn Castellian to be able to be understood in everyday situations, to attend classes and to be able work in an office with natives. Some words are spelled the same but the phonetics are completely different ( unless you speak Brazilian Portuguese which could be argued to be closer to Gallician-Portuguese ), and although Portuguese natives can understand a bit of Castillian ( not to the level of being able to read a newspaper though ), try to get two youths from the streets of Lisbon and Madrid to talk to each other and most likely they will sadly resort to speaking in broken English.
- mprovost 13y agoPortuguese has more distinct vowel sounds than Spanish, which means that for a Spanish speaker, two distinct words in Portuguese can sound the same. This makes it easier for a Portuguese speaker to understand Spanish, assuming the specific vocabulary is also similar enough. But it doesn't make for easy conversations when even one person is struggling to comprehend, as you've noticed.