Hence, the Spanish word casa, contrarily to its Portuguese cognate, produces approximately the same a-sound on both syllables. Portuguese words will render nasal vowel sounds whenever a vowel is followed by an n or an m, and when these, in turn, are followed by other consonants: Also, all Portuguese words with a tilde over an a or an o, for instance, irmã (sister) or limões (lemons), produce a nasalized vowel sound. Category 1: languages that are the most similar to English. Learning Spanish should be seen as an investment.. Not only will you speak this beautiful and ubiquitous language, but you will receive a deep discount on other fine languages from the Romance family:. At the end of the day, whether you choose to learn Spanish or Portuguese, give yourself a pat on the back (and optionally, a hug) for wanting to master a foreign language. Examples are Brazilian Portuguese, European Portuguese, the many varieties of Spanish spoken in the Americas, and Andalusian Spanish. The same goes for even simpler things, like verb conjugations or proper tense use. For instance, see here below how prepositions will contract with articles: Reading tips! If you’re just getting started learning Portuguese, I recommend this brief introduction to Portuguese grammar: Dabbling in Portuguese Grammar – First Impressions for Beginners. There is a good reason many people say ‘I have spent X-amount of time of my life studying this language and I can’t even say a word.’ Because you were never actually committed to learning it! While most people know that Spanish has a lot of loan-words from the Arabic language due to the multiple centuries when Arabic-speaking North-African Berbers ruled most of the Iberian Peninsula, not a lot of people are aware that Italy has a similar history. Although the two languages have many similarities, there are some distinct differences you should know if you’re interested in studying Portuguese. The language of Brazil is Portuguese; Portuguese is fairly similar to Spanish - and in particular, Brazilian Portuguese sounds a lot clearer to Spanish speakers than the Portuguese of Portugal. One of the first lessons to master is the proper way to express yourself in the … Learn more at privacy policy. This gives you an indication of the economic importance of the language group you enter by learning Portuguese. What to have a more comprensive understanding of the gender dimension in Portuguese? Luckily unl… But in Portuguese, it is more commonplace to use precisar, whereas in Spanish you’d rather use necesitar: (pt) Preciso de ajuda(sp) Necesito de ayuda (I need help). Unlike the other Romance languages, Portuguese weekdays don’t allude to celestial bodies. In European Portuguese, however, the object pronoun follows the verb: (Por) Ele deu-me um livro(Spa) Él me dio un libro(He gave me a book). Both Spanish and Italian have Arabic loan-words. Portuguese (Portuguese: português) is a Romance language. The lexical similarity between Spanish and Portuguese is close to 90%. There are about 240 million native speakers, ... Portuguese and English have words that mean the same and are similar as well. While the history of Portuguese and Spanish is similar, there are distinct differences between them. As the name hints, stress-timed languages will clearly stress one syllable per word, leaving the others unstressed –  that stressed syllable is, then, likely to render an open vowel sound. American variants such as Argentine or Colombian Spanishhave several features in common with Brazilian Portuguese that European Spanish does not. This r-sound is similar to the sound in lettuce (American pronunciation). Accordingly, there is, in Spanish, a nearly perfect one-to-one matching between the five vowel letters and their respective sounds. Secondly, Spanish is easier when it comes to pronunciation. Plus, research says bilingual people have a significantly lower chance of developing Alzheimer’s disease. All Rights Reserved. Of course not! There are other instances of Perfect tenses usage among the two languages when structure and meaning coincide: (Por) Eu tinha bebido muita água(Eng) I had drunk a lot of water, (Spa) Yo había bebido mucha agua (Eng) I had drunk a lot of water. While still close to the Portuguese lh-sound, it doesn’t sound exactly the same: You will often encounter Portuguese words spelled with lh whose Spanish cognates take a j instead, thus producing a distinct sound: Vowels are, in opposition to consonants, speech sounds articulated without any obstruction (caused by any speech articulator). For most native English speakers, Spanish is slightly easier to learn than Portuguese. In my experience, they are also very friendly and just generally really cool people to know, so language exchanges are definitely something worth trying out. These people live in different conditions, different communities, they even have different ethnicities (khm, native American people). That’s obvious, the Portuguese are more intelligent! Portuguese-Spanish Cognates and False Friends, English-Portuguese cognates – the words you already know (without knowing it). The word for “sea” is similar in both languages, but female in French (la mer), and male in Spanish (el mar). Also, Spanish does have reduced and nasal vowels, they are just more allophonic and dialectical, and therefore less predictable, than in Portuguese. The Spanish cognates of those Portuguese words tend to take the –ión ending: Portuguese and Spanish grammars are, overall, quite similar. Both verbs are the equivalent of the verb have that also plays the same auxiliary role in English. Open-ended: The English -tion/-sion and Portuguese-ção/-são. Another example would be the verbs dançar and danzar, Portuguese and Spanish respectively. Eu versus Yo and Me. For some reason, people keep asking about French and Spanish, or Italian and Spanish, but Portuguese? Learn more about it in this article: Portuguese Word Stress and Accent Marks. Some would say Portuguese sounds like drunken Spanish, and although I kind of find this comparison funny, this is not true either. In other words, these Latin languages are cousins. Here are a few examples of Portuguese-Spanish noun-cognates: A few more cognate examples, now concerning verbs and adjectives: Let’s now take a look at personal pronouns. About 89% of their vocabulary is similar. This helps to explain why there are more vowel sounds in Portuguese than in Spanish. Contrarily to Spanish, Portuguese also has nasal vowels, five of them. ** propina means bribery in Brazilian Portuguese, whereas in Portugal bribery is suborno. Which would you learn first — Spanish or Portuguese? As a foreigner, trying to sound native will be awfully awkward at first, but you will have to try. In Portuguese, it is the masculine singular o that performs that same task. Check out some examples of these below: These languages differ in the common usage of verb te… In other words, these Latin languages are cousins. The language people speak in the streets will always differ more. Portuguese grammar-Wikipedia And besides, call this a stereotype, but both Portuguese and Spanish people are very sociable, very party hard, and thus both languages have a rich and intricate slang. In Portuguese, however, you wouldn’t place the verb before the subject as you’d do in Spanish: (Por) Ela fala Inglês? Anyways, we got over it, or more like, I got used to it. But while dançar is widely used, its sibling danzar is not. Spanish and Portuguese languages are very similar to each other. (Spa) Habla ella inglés? What is more, both have different versions in different countries, to the point where Brasilian-Portuguese or Argentinian-Spanish can sound drastically different from what people speak in Portugal or Spain. Let the Spanish vs. Portuguese battle begin! For instance, in Spanish, you’d pronounce the b without completely closing your lips. False cognates, or false friends if you’d prefer, are words that look the same in either language but mean different things, potentially leading to misunderstandings. Portuguesepedia cares about your data privacy. He literally had to repeat every sentence a few times for me to understand. Even within the countries, there is a variety of accents and dialects, which can sometimes make comprehension…. Period. Either language has two genders, feminine and masculine. Short answer — a lot. This gives you an indication of the economic importance of the language group you enter by learning Portuguese. In words, vowel sounds are produced when the air is freely flowing out of your mouth or nose. Regional Differences. They even show in the examples he mentioned: that final 'a' is clearly reduced and all the vowels he used in the Spanish examples to contrast with Portuguese nasals sound nasal to me. That alone makes Portuguese pronunciation somehow more challenging than Spanish for those learning the language. Rocket Portuguese Review: What They Don’t Tell You, How to Prepare For Your Spanish Immersion Experience, Everything You Need to Know About Bullfighting in Madrid, How to Learn Turkish Online, And Have The Istanbul Trip Of a Lifetime, […] I’ve got enough young cousins who are still in high school, and let me tell you—those poor guys don’t have it easy these days. The same goes for the brave foreign girlfriends and boyfriends that are learning their significant other’s language. I'm presuming here that you already have a fluent level of Spanish. Both belong to a subset of the Romance languages known as West Iberian Romance, which also includes several other languages or dialects with fewer speakers, all of which are mutually intelligible to some degree. In this video I go deep with lots of examples! Both Portuguese and Spanish have four definite articles matching number and genus. That’s why if you speak Portuguese and try and read a text in Spanish, you can understand almost everything. -Brazilian Portuguese is 50% similar to Spanish and 35% to Italian; -Portugal's Portuguese is 65% similar to Spanish and 40% similar to Italian. Is Portuguese Similar to Spanish, and Which Should You Learn? Let’s look at what is different. This is why the word casa (see table above) has two letters a with a distinct vowel sound on each – the first a is stressed and open, while the last a is unstressed and therefore reduced, i.e. Sometimes, however, the gender of cognate words might be different. See how the verb beber (drink) is similarly conjugated in either language: *Notice that, in modern Portuguese, the second person plural form is becoming outdated, thus rarely used. In general, Spanish prepositions won’t contract with other words. There are many similar words, but check the ethnologue of world languages, and it will confirm that Portuguese and Spanish are the closest major Romance languages, and the lexical similarity between them is 89%. The reason might have to do with the fact that Portuguese phonology is somewhat more complex than the Spanish. A chance for women to show off to people who don’t matter. What’s more, the “going to” future is also identically expressed in both languages: (Por) Eu vou beber vinho(Spa) Eu voy a beber vino(I am going to drink wine). Contrarily, the vowel sounds of the remaining unstressed syllables are reduced, producing, therefore, closed sounds. In other words, there are more language sounds in Portuguese than in Spanish. Reading tips! Both have been derived from Latin, and both developed in the same Iberian peninsular region spoken by people having similar cultures. In general, diphthongs such as ei, ai, oi or ou are common in Portuguese and rare in Spanish. Let’s now analyse in greater detail how Portuguese and Spanish differ in pronunciation. In fact, Portuguese has more phonemes than Spanish and therefore it is sometimes more difficult for a Spanish speak to understand a Portuguese speak than it is the other way around. I had spent years studying, I had the certificates to prove my proficiency, and I even worked in Spain. One great option is Facebook groups for language exchange. Grammatically speaking, Portuguese is demonstrably similar to Spanish, Italian and French, though there are some Brazilian colloquial tendencies that in my opinion make proficiency more attainable in Portuguese (see bullets below). Portuguese grammar, the morphology and syntax of the Portuguese language, is similar to the grammar of most other Romance languages — especially that of Spanish (see comparison), and even more so to that of Galician. Reading tips! In the examples above, both sentences have the auxiliary verbs inflected in the same tense (Imperfect past tense), and express the same time aspect that is equivalent to the English  Past Perfect. In this case, you have two very similar endings with very similar patterns and Portuguese rules. Portuguese and Spanish use different auxiliary verbs to form perfect tenses: ter and haber respectively. This is actually one of the main reasons people say that Portuguese sounds like Russian. Start by finding some native speaking buddies — be it over the Internet or in person. Let’s translate each sentence into English: (Por) Eu tenho bebido muita água(Eng) I have been drinking a lot of water, (Spa) Yo he bebido mucha agua (En) I have drunk a lot of water. producing a closed sound. Almost every tense has an equivalent in the other language, only with slightly different conjugations. The words came from the same languages (usually Latin, Greek or French). The Expectations Of Modern Women Have Lost Touch With Reality And Common Decency, Your Quintessential Guide to Portuguese Culture - Speaking Abroad. While having the same structure –  both auxiliary verbs (ter/haber) are inflected in the present tense while preceding the past participle of the main verb (beber) – they mean different things. Fortunately, there are a million and one forums and online communities for you to join. But does this mean that both Portuguese and Spanish are just impossible to master because neither is just one uniform language? Portuguese is similar to Spanish, it is a fact. To begin this journey of understanding, we must first travel back to ancient Rome and their attempts at global domination. Tap into all that vocab you’ve been sitting on: English-Portuguese cognates – the words you already know (without knowing it). Well, if they could do it fully, we would not be talking about two different languages, right? Furthermore, in Spanish, Catalan, Occitan and Brazilian Portuguese, the use of digraphs containing u to signal the hard pronunciation before e, i, y means that a different spelling is also needed to signal the sounds /kw, ɡw/ before these vowels (Spanish cu, gü , Catalan, Occitan and Brazilian Portuguese qü, gü ). For a tongue that has over 215 million native speakers, there are too few foreigners that take it up as a second language. Conversely, being Spanish a syllable-timed language, it won’t produce the same stress/unstressed syllable dichotomy. * Note that the Portuguese language sounds mentioned in this section refer to the European standard. The words came from the same languages (usually Latin, Greek or French). Entre eles estão as alterações climáticas, a desflorestação, o esgotamento dos recursos naturais, a perda de biodiversidade, fortes desigualdades socioeconómicas e centenas de milhares de pessoas a viver sob pobreza extrema. And this is a very mild example of how real-life Spanish (or Portuguese) bursts your happy bubble of ‘I’ve got this’. Go deeper into European Portuguese phonology in this article: Portuguese Pronunciation: A Helpful Guide to Portuguese Basic Sounds and Spelling Patterns. The short answer to that being — probably plenty of them. I'm presuming here that you already have a fluent level of Spanish. The differences are subtle but still noticeable. If it’s for an upcoming trip, or if you’re moving to the respective country the answer should be obvious. So I am an Eastern European girl, dating a Spanish guy, right? But while the former means specifically exchange rate, the latter denotes change/shift in general and is therefore much more widely used in daily life. These closed forums tend to be better, as they are composed of people who are already committed to learning the language and constantly improving their skills. English is not uniform either, and people all over the world manage to learn it as a second language. The exception is prepositions de and a contracting with the masculine singular article el: Portuguese prepositions, on the other hand, are much more “contractible”. There are a few more vowel sounds in Portuguese than there are in Spanish. I don’t mean to come across as biased, trust me—I adore the Portuguese language and culture, but there are two important considerations here. And here we are talking about more technical vocabulary. /  Is Portuguese Similar to Spanish, and Which Should You Learn? If You Like Cabernet Sauvignon, Try Douro Reds. Accordingly, Portuguese words ending with –agem are normally feminine, whereas their Spanish cognates, ending with –aje, tend to be masculine, for instance,  a viagem respectively el viaje (travel). So when considering which one to study, first and foremost, consider where you would be using it. Reading tips! There’s even a Wikipedia page comparing the … It doesn’t have the lingua franca status of English, but it is still a very popular language, and a useful one, too. This sound is achieved by letting the tip of your tongue freely flutter as the air flows out of your mouth (neither sound is present in English): Fricatives are hushing and hissing sounds. Portuguese and Spanish are different enough to be considered separate languages, but they have nonetheless a similar grammar and lexicon that makes them closely related and, for the most part, mutually intelligible. Portuguese and Spanish languages are least similar in their spoken form. (Especially with the nasalisation and the tendency in Portugese to drop initial and final vowels - so that 'estupido' which looks like Spanish actually sounds more like French.) Portuguese grammar-Wikipedia Or in other words, can a Portuguese speaker understand Spanish and vice versa. For example: In the table below, the Portuguese demonstratives appear above the Spanish: Further reading! So yes, Portuguese is similar to Spanish, but how mutually intelligible are they? Yet, in text, all three languages are mutually intelligible (able to be understood with no formal studies in the other languages). In Spanish, the b, d and g sounds are somehow pronounced more softly than in Portuguese. However, the r-sound rendered in words initialized by the letter r will differ between the languages. Portuguese Pronunciation: A Helpful Guide to Portuguese Basic Sounds and Spelling Patterns, Here’s why Portuguese sounds like Russian (or Polish), Dabbling in Portuguese Grammar – First Impressions for Beginners, Disentangling Gender with Portuguese Masculine-to-Feminine Spelling Patterns, Basic Portuguese Prepositions and Contractions: An Inclusive Usage Rundown, Portuguese Verb Tenses and Moods Explained: A Usage Rundown Anchored to English. It is not just pronunciation, either, it is the vocabulary and sometimes even grammar, too. Portuguese isn't the same. In any case, knowing either language will help you to learn the other. PS: The best program to learn Spanish online is Rocket Spanish. Conversely, its Spanish cognate, libro, produces a more open /o/-sound by simply not having its last syllable reduced. How similar? Let’s take another example. About 89% of their vocabulary is similar. If you are passively listening to the three languages being spoken, they are similar enough to realize that they belong to the same language group. In Portuguese, fricative sounds are more frequent and more varied compared to Spanish. Touriga Nacional is the undisputed King of Portuguese … Spanish and Portuguese both h ave their origins in Latin and both originated in the Iberian Peninsula. How Similar Are Portuguese and Spanish? If you live in a bigger city, it is almost certain that you will find a native Spanish or Portuguese speaker in your area. Read the following article to learn more about how these two standards of Portuguese compare: European vs. Brazilian Portuguese – How Different Are They, Really? Where lexical similarity of Italian and Spanishis around 80%, Spanish and Portuguese is around 90%. But the other way around is even easier. As mentioned before, many daily life words look different on either side. Spanish is clearly a language spoken by more people than Portuguese and there’s also more people looking to learn Spanish. One, more people speak Spanish. Absurdly difficult. Portuguese (Portuguese: português) is a Romance language. Is Portuguese Spanish? That means that 9/10 of the two languages’ words are similar but that does not mean that they are necessarily mutually intelligible to native speakers due to additional differences in pronunciation and syntax. SHARE: Combined GDP times % similar vocabulary (see above). All these languages are mutually intelligible to a certain extent thanks to their common origins. Olá! With the exception of the formal second-person singular, they also look similar on both sides: The lexical resemblance also applies to demonstrative pronouns. In Spanish, however, only the b-sound is pronounced regardless of if the word is spelled with b or v. The Portuguese nh-sound, the so-called voiced palatal nasal, exists also in Spanish though denoted by a different spelling, namely ñ: What’s more, Portuguese words spelled with the digraph lh, for instance, telhado,  produce a sound technically called palatal lateral approximant. Spanish Home > languages > similarities > Spanish, for instance, see here below how prepositions will with! Origin, look alike and often mean nearly the same conjugation as the third person plural ( guys. Undeniably, native speakers from either language has two genders, feminine and masculine group you enter by Portuguese! When first I met them, I had spent years studying, I say... Cognates may share approximately the same conjugation as the third person ( they ) above the Spanish and Portuguese of... Spanish-Speaking humans out there and 260 million Portuguese speakers Spanish and Portuguese are more to... Either of the two languages, meaning they descend from a common:... 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