Go deeper into European Portuguese phonology in this article: Portuguese Pronunciation: A Helpful Guide to Portuguese Basic Sounds and Spelling Patterns. They all mean need. For grammar, the difficult things are more or less the same in both languages. So be it for love, travel, or business, find your motivation and hold onto it, whether you choose to learn Spanish or learn Portuguese! This is primarily a matter of access. As you’d probably guess, they mean to dance. Undeniably, native speakers from either language will be able to read the other with relative ease. Spanish and Portuguese languages are very similar to each other. My name is Pedro and I help people to learn Portuguese as a second language, which I love doing. Diphthongs are gliding vowel sounds, that is, a vowel sound gliding into another one. 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. Not only do more people speak it, but people learn it. As a matter of fact, Portuguese and Spanish share nearly 90% of their vocabularies, meaning that most of the words have either a cognate or an equivalent in the other language. There is, however, one crucial tip that you should hear, regardless of which one to learn: With so many accents and variations, it is no wonder that a textbook can’t teach you all. I'm presuming here that you already have a fluent level of Spanish. It’s just natural if you think about it. If you live in a bigger city, it is almost certain that you will find a native Spanish or Portuguese speaker in your area. Did I miss anything? On the other hand, you’d probably agree that the differences in pronunciation are greater than the differences in text. Semi-cognates are cognates that, though semantically relatable, don’t mean quite the same thing, thus are used in slightly different ways. Some would say Portuguese sounds like drunken Spanish, and although I kind of find this comparison funny, this is not true either. (Por) Eu tenho bebido muita água(Spa) Yo he bebido mucha agua. 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. For some reason, people keep asking about French and Spanish, or Italian and Spanish, but Portuguese? I'm presuming here that you already have a fluent level of Spanish. 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. The sounds are more open, there are more vowels, the sentences flow easily. Portuguese and Spanish, although closely related Romance languages, differ in many aspects of their phonology, grammar and lexicon. The only thing is, which Spanish you are starting from will influence how easy it is. 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 ). 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 Spanish cambiar, however, is much more commonplace than its Portuguese cognate because its meaning is as mundane as the English verbs change or shift. Regional Differences. Imagine my utter frustration at his Southern accent. Reading tips! Which leads me to believe that people who ask ‘Is Portuguese similar to Spanish’ already have a bit of experience in either one of the languages, and a very concrete motivation for learning them. Yet, in text, all three languages are mutually intelligible (able to be understood with no formal studies in the other languages). And this is a very mild example of how real-life Spanish (or Portuguese) bursts your happy bubble of ‘I’ve got this’. How similar are Spanish and Portuguese? In Portuguese, however, you wouldn’t place the verb before the subject as you’d do in Spanish: (Por) Ela fala Inglês? About 89% of their vocabulary is similar. For instance, one of my favorite examples of why you should mind the local particularities of expression — in Spain coger means to grab something. The language aspect that differs the most between Portuguese and Spanish is their pronunciation. Learn more about why Portuguese sounds like Russian: Here’s why Portuguese sounds like Russian (or Polish). If you want to go deeper into Spanish-Portuguese cognates, consider reading this article: Portuguese-Spanish Cognates and False Friends.There is also an incredible amount of English-Portuguese cognates, and my guess is that you know more Portuguese words than you realize. 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:. Accordingly, all nouns that end with –ão, plus their plural forms (-ãos, –ães, and –ões), will produce nasal diphthongs. And when first I met them, I was actually at a point where I felt pretty confident in my Spanish skills. Just a few decades ago, a proposal was a private and special moment between man and woman. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that 90% of the words used in daily life in Portuguese and Spanish will be the same – there are several high-frequency words that won’t find a cognate in the other language. In other words, these Latin languages are cousins. 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). Accordingly, there is, in Spanish, a nearly perfect one-to-one matching between the five vowel letters and their respective sounds. Broadly speaking, Portuguese and Spanish can be considered cognate languages, meaning they descend from a common language and share the same roots. He literally had to repeat every sentence a few times for me to understand. Portuguese has 14 vowels, Spanish 5 and Italian 7. That’s not at all the case for Portuguese where one vowel letter can render various vowel sounds: Portuguese, like English, is a stress-timed language, while Spanish is a syllable-timed language. For instance, the Portuguese word câmbio is a cognate of the Spanish cambio. Examples are Brazilian Portuguese, European Portuguese, the many varieties of Spanish spoken in the Americas, and … Where lexical similarity of Italian and Spanishis around 80%, Spanish and Portuguese is around 90%. Naturally, those people would ask what are the similarities between the two languages. The same goes for the brave foreign girlfriends and boyfriends that are learning their significant other’s language. The last o in the Portuguese word livro is unstressed producing a reduced /u/-sound. It’s all status—a way to garner Instagram likes and Facebook comments, just like traveling abroad to exotic locations. Seemingly, Portuguese speakers are more likely to understand Spanish than the other way around. Yet, in the presence of certain adverbs, prepositions and conjunctions, the object pronoun will, also in Portuguese, precede the verb: (Por) Ela também me deu um livro(Spa) Ella también me dio un libro(She also gave me a book). You just can’t expect them to speak the same, which is why there can never be only one standard version of Spanish or of Portuguese. If you are taking an online course (and you should, they are at a much better value and let’s not even compare convenience), choose one that gives you access to a language learning community. As you can see, you’d use the English Present Perfect Continuous tense to translate the Portuguese sentence – the action is still ongoing. Read the following article to learn more about how these two standards of Portuguese compare: European vs. Brazilian Portuguese – How Different Are They, Really? But Portuguese is rarely even taught as a second or third language. Still, Spanish speakers are much more and besides, there are around 21 million people learning Spanish right now. 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). An example would be: (Spa) Lo importante es dormir bien(Por) O importante é dormir bem (The important thing is to sleep well). The Iberian Peninsula is where Portuguese and Spanish were ‘born’ (if languages can be born) and it is also the main reason why Portug… West Iberian is a branch of the Romance languages which includes Spanish, Ladino, the Astur-Leonese group (Asturian, Leonese, and Mirandese, (even Extremaduran)), and the modern descendants of Galician-Portuguese (Galician, Portuguese, and the Fala language). I am not talking about native speakers here—they have it somewhat easier. This r-sound is similar to the sound in lettuce (American pronunciation). Click here to learn more! Both verbs are the equivalent of the verb have that also plays the same auxiliary role in English. The language aspect that differs the most between Portuguese and Spanish is … No, Portuguese isn’t the same as Spanish. Once you know Spanish, Portuguese is easier to learn because you’ll have a lot of vocabulary already. More often than not, you should be able to pick out similar vocabulary in all of the languages, as they share a common root. How Similar Are Portuguese and Spanish? Accordingly, both the voiced and voiceless postalveolar fricatives –  as in share and measure respectively –  are non-existent in Spanish. The lexical similarity betwen Portuguese & Spanish is about 85 %. With French, for instance, many are forced to choose between French and Spanish as a second language at school. How similar? SHARE: Combined GDP times % similar vocabulary (see above). An Introduction to the Romance Languages During the period of Roman conquest and colonialism, there was a small peninsula. (Does she speak English?). Of course not! Contrarily to Spanish, Portuguese also has nasal vowels, five of them. If You Like Cabernet Sauvignon, Try Douro Reds. But does this mean that both Portuguese and Spanish are just impossible to master because neither is just one uniform language? In Spanish, you would rather use the verb bailar. In this video I go deep with lots of examples! Contrary to English, neither language uses an auxiliary verb in yes/no questions. Confused with all the tenses and verb structures in Portuguese? The purpose of this table is to list the most important languages similar to Portuguese and see how closely related they are. I had spent years studying, I had the certificates to prove my proficiency, and I even worked in Spain. But while dançar is widely used, its sibling danzar is not. Thus, whenever a Portuguese word renders any of these sounds, the corresponding Spanish cognate will replace it with some other sound, usually a palatal approximant spelled with ll or a velar fricative spelled with g or j: Reading tips! The purpose of this table is to list the most important languages similar to Portuguese and see how closely related they are. The same goes for even simpler things, like verb conjugations or proper tense use. Reading tips! Cognate words between Portuguese and Spanish are abundant since both languages originate from Vulgar Latin. Reading tips! But there are nonetheless a few differences. Copyright © 2017 Speaking Abroad. Learn more at privacy policy. In this case, you have two very similar endings with very similar patterns and Portuguese rules. The fact that Portuguese is a stress-timed language makes its word-stress patterns all the more relevant for accurate pronunciation. To begin this journey of understanding, we must first travel back to ancient Rome and their attempts at global domination. Check out some examples of these below: These languages differ in the common usage of verb te… Just a bonus right there, even if you never end up using either of the languages. Spanish and Portuguese both h ave their origins in Latin and both originated in the Iberian Peninsula. Nouns that end in ão in Portuguese generally appear as ón in Spanish. It’s common for English speakers to mix up Portuguese and Spanish. Learn the ABC of Portuguese prepositions: Basic Portuguese Prepositions and Contractions: An Inclusive Usage Rundown. If you try to translate how some people speak in Spanish — well that would be a whole lot of swearing, and it is not that frowned upon either. There’s even a Wikipedia page comparing the … The only thing is, which Spanish you are starting from will influence how easy it is. 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. American variants such as Argentine or Colombian Spanishhave several features in common with Brazilian Portuguese that European Spanish does not. Still, as you were right to think, Spanish and Portuguese are the most alike. 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 nasalized sounds occur when the airflow comes partially out of your nose. Period. Hence, the Spanish word casa, contrarily to its Portuguese cognate, produces approximately the same a-sound on both syllables. Having said that, it is a separate language and, even if you speak Spanish, you would not understand everything without some tuition in Portuguese. Accordingly, the Portuguese word rio (river) is pronounced with a throaty, guttural r-sound. Even if the 90% figure is a bit overrated in practice, it is undeniable that Spanish-Portuguese cognates make these languages mutually intelligible to a great extent. In conclusion, all vowels are, in Spanish, clearly pronounced. 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. 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. Unlike the other Romance languages, Portuguese weekdays don’t allude to celestial bodies. This includes the second person plural (you guys / Y'all) simply adopting the same conjugation as the third person (They). That alone makes Portuguese pronunciation somehow more challenging than Spanish for those learning the language. Also, Spanish does have reduced and nasal vowels, they are just more allophonic and dialectical, and therefore less predictable, than in Portuguese. However, this is a stretch, as European Portuguese does not even sound that similar to Spanish. Both languages have native speakers all over the world. Portuguese (Portuguese: português) is a Romance language. Start by finding some native speaking buddies — be it over the Internet or in person. Table of languages significantly similar to Spanish Home > Languages > Similarities > Spanish. No, but honestly, it is quite discouraging to discover that after investing so much time in learning a language you can hardly understand a word of a conversation between natives. Short answer — a lot. 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. Open-ended: The English -tion/-sion and Portuguese-ção/-são. The words came from the same languages (usually Latin, Greek or French). Welcome. The short answer to that being — probably plenty of them. Both have been derived from Latin, and both developed in the same Iberian peninsular region spoken by people having similar cultures. There are a few more vowel sounds in Portuguese than there are in Spanish. How different are Spanish and Portuguese? Spanish is clearly a language spoken by more people than Portuguese and there’s also more people looking to learn Spanish. One great option is Facebook groups for language exchange. Jump straight to the following subheadings if you wish: Let’s have a look at how Portuguese and Spanish look and sound like in the written and spoken forms respectively: As you can see, written Portuguese and Spanish are quite similar. In this video I go deep with lots of examples! Short answer — a lot. However, the r-sound rendered in words initialized by the letter r will differ between the languages. What’s more, the z-sound, as in easy, is common in Portuguese and rare in Spanish. ... (after English and Spanish). Just a hint for you: they don’t pronounce half of the letters in a word. Luckily unl… 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. This is mainly because Portuguese has more complex phonology* compared to Spanish. 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. The majority of these languages are Western European languages and include Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, Romanian, German, Danish, Dutch, Afrikaans, Swedish, and Norwegian. Yet, in most Spanish dialects of today, the ll-spelling produces a more y-like sound as in yes. There are about 240 million native speakers, ... Portuguese and English have words that mean the same and are similar as well. Once you master the subjunctive verb mood in Spanish — it is practically the same in Portuguese. 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. ** propina means bribery in Brazilian Portuguese, whereas in Portugal bribery is suborno. Cognates are words that, sharing a common origin, look alike and often mean nearly the same. Portuguese I always find to be about half-way between (Castilian) Spanish and French, expecially if you go by the way words are pronounced rather than spelt. Further reading! What to have a more comprensive understanding of the gender dimension in Portuguese? The translation of the Spanish sentence, on the other hand, uses the Present Perfect tense – the action is concluded. The Iberian Peninsula is where Portuguese and Spanish were ‘born’ (if languages can be born) and it is also the main reason why Portug… O nosso mundo atual apresenta problemas muito complexos e difíceis de resolver. 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. Spain and Portugal presently occupy almost the entirety of the Iberian Peninsula, the spit of land that sticks out of Western Europe just below France. And sure enough, while you could get by with Spanish in Portugal and Portuguese in Spain, you will be struggling. There are, of course, dozens of other semi-cognate examples between Portuguese and Spanish, but you get the idea. Many of those people are expats, usually ones that just arrived in your home country and will be looking to learn the local language/exercise their English. The way verb tenses are used in either language is very similar. Conversely, the Spanish cognate río is pronounced at the front of the mouth, producing a fluttering r-sound, so-called voiced alveolar trill. And when first I met them, I had the certificates to is portuguese similar to spanish my,! 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