# Italian vs Portuguese



## angel101

Hi. I’ve just got my A-Level results (A-Levels are English qualifications you have to get in order to go to university). Fortunately, I was accepted into my first choice university to do Spanish!! I really want to take up a second language from scratch. I’ve narrowed it down to either Italian or Portuguese, as I have been told by many people that they are very similar to Spanish, thus making it easier for me to pick them up. Which language is easier to pronounce? For instance, I found French a lot harder to speak than Spanish. Which language has the most complex grammar?
Obviously, all languages are difficult, and I’m not trying to look for an “easy” option, but I would really appreciate any suggestions people could give me!!
Thanks  

Hola:
Acabo de recibir los resultados de mis ‘A-Levels’. (Los ‘A-Levels’ son los títulos académicos ingleses que se tiene que recibir para entrar en la universidad). Afortunadamente, dentro de tres semanas ¡voy a estudiar en la universidad que fue mi primera opción, para estudiar español! Quiero mucho empezar a estudiar una lengua segunda. Lo he limitado al italiano o el portugués porque varios me han dicho que las dos lenguas son muy parecidas al español, por lo tanto, para mí, sería más facíl aprenderlas. 
¿Cuál lengua se puede pronunciar con más facilidad? Por ejemplo, encontré el francés más difícil que el español. ¿Cuál lengua tiene la gramática más compleja?
Obviamente, todas las lenguas son dificiles, ¡no hay una lengua “facíl”! Agradecería mucho cualquier sugerencia.
Muchas gracias


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## la reine victoria

Congratulations Angel 101. I would opt for Italian.  It is such a beautiful language.  

Whichever you choose, GOOD LUCK! 






LRV


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## ronanpoirier

Well,
Pronunciation: Port - hard; Ita - easy
Grammar: Port - hard; Ita - kinda
Beauty: Port - kinda; Ita - beautiful
People who speak as first language: Port - lots (Portugal, Brazil, Angola); Ita - a few (Italy, Switzerland)
As a second language: I guess there are more Italian speaking people.

That was my opinion in a sight of a English speaker person. Although I might have been a little biased since I speak those languages (but Italian only the basics).


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## Tsoman

Portuguese is spoken by a lot more people than italian, and they say that Brazil is going to be a huge economic player in the near future


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## jazyk

> Pronunciation: Port - hard; Ita - easy
> Grammar: Port - hard; Ita - kinda
> Beauty: Port - kinda; Ita - beautiful


According to whom? I for one think Italian grammar is harder than Portuguese, and I speak both languages, and I don't see anything that makes Portuguese pronunciation hard (except for ão, maybe, but Italian has double consonants, which are hard for most foreigners to distinguish from single consonants, and let's not talk about s sonora, s sorda, z sonora, z sorda, and so on). English pronunciation is harder, you pretty much pronounce words one way and spell them another way.


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## MarcB

Angel congratulations on completing your A level.
I will start off by saying you should choose the one which you will have more opportunity to use and like best. On the world scene and economically Portuguese will probably be more important in the future. It is actually spoken in more than just three countries as Ronan mentioned, the population is in the top five languages in the world.
You are right Portuguese and Italian are both very similar to Spanish and either should be relatively easy to acquire. I speak all three and it does take work but it was not difficult.
The first think you will do is: learn words and expressions and then you can see the transition to Spanish. If one looks at old Spanish it is even closer to Portuguese than modern Spanish. As a comparison Spanish and Portuguese are closer in grammar and syntax than Italian. Italian is closer in pronunciation to Spanish than Portuguese. I would say that Portuguese represents a midlevel between Spanish and Italian. It is closer to both Spanish and Italian than they are to each other. Although the grammar in Italian is a bit different it does not take long to learn it since it is related to the Spanish grammar.
Both Italian and Portuguese have sounds that do not exist in Spanish but do in English.
Portuguese is nasal like French and Italian is not. I will give you some basic examples remember there are variations and I cannot put them all here.
Ej. yo hablo español, io parlo italiano, eu falo português. Piscina is the same in all three Sc is sh in P and I. S-hijo, I-figlo,P-filho the pron. Is the same in P and I.
Yo voy a casa, eu vou a casa, io vado a casa in P and I casa sounds like caza, English z. yo soy, eu sou, io sono. Thats it for now hope it helps.


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## ronanpoirier

jazyk said:
			
		

> Quote:
> Pronunciation: Port - hard; Ita - easy
> Grammar: Port - hard; Ita - kinda
> Beauty: Port - kinda; Ita - beautiful
> According to whom?





			
				ronanpoirier said:
			
		

> That was my opinion in a sight of a English speaker person.



I've talked to a lot of people (English speakers) who have learnt both languages and they said that Italian is so much easier to understand (spoken language) than Portuguese. Portuguese usually "eats" vowels and has nasal sounds, according to them. About grammar, they said both are close. But some of them already spoke French so they'd say the clitical pronouns are easy and stuff.


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## ronanpoirier

MarcB said:
			
		

> I would say that Portuguese represents a midlevel between Spanish and Italian.




We share the same thought!


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## jazyk

> I've talked to a lot of people (English speakers) who have learnt both languages and they said that Italian is so much easier to understand (spoken language) than Portuguese. Portuguese usually "eats" vowels and has nasal sounds, according to them. About grammar, they said both are close. But some of them already spoke French so they'd say the clitical pronouns are easy and stuff.


I don't eat any vowels. If by eating, you mean omitting, I certainly don't eat them.

And also what Portuguese is easier to understand: Portuguese Portuguese or Brazilian Portuguese? I agree Portuguese Portuguese is harder to understand, but Brazilian Portuguese is much clearer, with more open vowels and is much slower than Portuguese Portuguese.  The same can't be said about Italian.  They go 100 miles an hour.


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## jazyk

> Italian is closer in pronunciation to Spanish than Portuguese.


It depends on what aspects you take into consideration: Portuguese and Italian v sound the same, but Spanish doesn't; Portuguese and Italian hard g also sound the same, but Spanish not necessarily so; Portuguese and Italian b sound the same, but Spanish not necessarily so. Both Portuguese and Italian have a voiced s found between vowels (some exceptions exist in Italian, especially if one is to follow the Tuscan pronunciation), whereas Spanish s is voiceless (voiced in some dialects if it comes before voiced consonants). Portuguese and Italian d sound the same, but Spanish d between vowels is similar to an English voiced th. Both Portuguese and Italian have the sh sound in shoe, but general Spanish doesn't (a few dialects do, though). Neither Portuguese nor Italian has the Castilian Spanish z (or c before e or i) or the Spanish j, although Portuguese r can be somewhat close to it in some dialects.  Portuguese and Italian have open and closed e's and o's, and Spanish doesn't. Portuguese and Italian g before e and i sound similar (although not the same), but both sound very different from Spanish g under the same circumstances. So I say it all depends on how you look at it.


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## ronanpoirier

I guess they were talking about Portugal Portuguese because they were Europeans. 
My opinion, on the other hand,  maybe a little biased because here in the Brazil's south we "eat" vowels too and we've been around lots of Italian people, so we're used to the accent. They speak Portuguese with Italian accent, as matter of fact.


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## jazyk

> My opinion, on the other hand, maybe a little biased because here in the Brazil's south we "eat" vowels too and we've been around lots of Italian people, so we're used to the accent. They speak Portuguese with Italian accent, as matter of fact.


Then you're being contradictory, because Italian typically doesn't "eat" any vowels (if we're talking about standard Italian, of course). And I'm still not sure what you mean by "eat".


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## Chriszinho85

jazyk said:


> and I don't see anything that makes Portuguese pronunciation hard (except for ão, maybe


Well, for me personally, learning nasal vowels was a little difficult for me, like learning the exact way to produce a nasal sound with my mouth.  After you get the hang of it, I guess it's easy.  Learning how to pronounce certain dipthongs and tripthongs was a little difficult.  Also, learning rules about when a vowel is open or closed was, and still is a little confusing.  I don't know much about Italian, so I can't comment on that.


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## Alxmrphi

I've read that Italian is the closest to English, in pronunciation, compared with all other European languages, and I do agree, totally.
Spanish is quite different, as well as Portuguese, German is so different and French is different too.

For the grammar issue,  I can't really compare it to Portuguese because I don't know it, from what I have seen (comparing to French and Spanish), Italian grammar is quite difficult.

And people have then told me that it has to be, to be so beautiful, which I know makes no sense, but it makes it much more satisfying once completed.


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## Cnaeius

Alex_Murphy said:


> I've read that Italian is the closest to English, in pronunciation, compared with all other European languages, and I do agree, totally.


 
I cannot say the same thing.. What do you mean with "other European languages"? I think that Italian is very very distant from English in pronunciation


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## Dr. Quizá

Written Portuguese is much closer to Spanish than written Italian. I can pick a random post in Italian and understand most of it, but just wonder about the meaning of the rest of it. On the other hand, every time I read a Portuguese post I completely understood it and read it almost as fast as I read Spanish despite I've never studied nor written in Portuguese (I'm starting lessons in a couple of weeks, though). Of course, speech understanding is not so easy.


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## Outsider

Here are two threads that may be helpful: 

http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=209493
http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=204300


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## Outsider

MarcB said:


> Piscina is the same in all three


That varies with dialect. I do not pronounce it "pissina", for instance. And you forgot about the Castilian pronunciation of the soft "c".
Overall, though, I agree with what you wrote.



jazyk said:


> Portuguese and Italian v sound the same, but Spanish doesn't; Portuguese and Italian hard g also sound the same, but Spanish not necessarily so; Portuguese and Italian b sound the same, but Spanish not necessarily so.


Some people in Portugal pronounce the plosives as in Spanish (though I do not).


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## jazyk

> That varies with dialect. I do not pronounce it "pissina", for instance.


I do.


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## Outsider

Here's another useful thread:

http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=202977&highlight=Romance+languages


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## ForzaItalia

Definately learn Italian - without a doubt.


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## mirandolina

angel101 said:


> Fortunately, I was accepted into my first choice university to do Spanish!! I really want to take up a second language from scratch. I’ve narrowed it down to either Italian or Portuguese, as I have been told by many people that they are very similar to Spanish, thus making it easier for me to pick them up.
> 
> Why narrow it down? Be adventurous, you're young and should have no problem starting another language at this stage.
> I did French and Italian at University, married an Italian and now live in Italy working as a translator, so language is my daily bread.... my Italian is more than fluent and I have no problem understanding written Spanish or Portuguese (though having a conversation with a Brazilian may be a bit traumatic). If you want to stick to a Romance language, take French. Otherwise be daring and try German or Russian


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## angel101

Thank you all very much for the suggestions. I emailed the university and they said that many people find it difficult to choose, so they give you the opportunity to study two of the languages for two weeks. After studying them both very briefly, you then have to choose! It might turn out to be harder if you have grown to love them both!! I think, in the end, I will choose Italian. Thank you all very much!


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## ronanpoirier

jazyk said:
			
		

> Then you're being contradictory, because Italian typically doesn't "eat" any vowels (if we're talking about standard Italian, of course). And I'm still not sure what you mean by "eat".




I don't see why. I said in Brazil's south (to be more especific, in Porto Alegre area), we "eat"  the vowels too (chácara = chácra, pereira = preira (although you can hear a little "e" being pronounced) and that's a little hard to someone who's not used to it to understand the word. There are Italian people here who speak Portuguese in a Italian way (that means, they pronounce perfectly the vowels like in mostly Italian accents) but that is not in Porto Alegre accent, it's from Italian colonies. So, I'm used to both accents since there are a lot of people from Italian colonies who come to Porto Alegre to live and work and stuff.


And if I were you, angel101, I'd choose the language from the place you like at most, which you'd like to visit (or even live) and you could handle well tlaking to people.


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## andym

I speak Spanish and a bit of Italian and Portuguese.

Most of the arguments here are pretty unconvincing. Italian sounds better than Portuguese? Just personal prejudice. Italian is easier to pronounce than Portuguese - well maybe, but that's a pretty minor reason for learning one language as opposed to the other. And I'm sceptical about claims that one Romance language is more difficult than another.

The only really clear-cut argument is the population one.

My advice would be to think about which language you'd be most motivated to learn. to echo the previous post, if you were given the choice would you rather spend a summer in Italy or in Brazil? (I know, that's not easy to answer either. I'd want to do both). It sounds like you have made that choice already.

I have an interesting book _De una a cuatro lenguas_ by Jack Schmidely et al which is quite an interesting comparative study of Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and French.


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