# Portuguese so similar to Spanish?



## Juri

Unfortunately I never studied Spanish nor Portuguese; languages I practiced only as a turist.This interesting text of Camara municipal de Sintra in Portugal seems to be quite the same  in Spanish. Is it nearly true?
Cabo de Roca: " onde a terra se acaba e a mar comenca" e onde palpita o espirito da Fe e da Aventura, que levou las caravelas em busca de novos mundos para o mundo.


----------



## alienastarte

Quite but not the same, as there are striking similiarities and diffrences, such as same words for different meanings. 

I think it´s quite as Dutch and German, quite similar languages.

Best
A.


----------



## Jaén

Juri said:
			
		

> Cabo de Roca: " onde a terra se acaba e a mar comenca" e onde palpita o espirito da Fe e da Aventura, que levou las caravelas em busca de novos mundos para o mundo.


As Alienastarte said, there are striking similarities and differences, and that's what makes difficult to people from both languages to learn the other.

In Spanish, this text would be something like this:

Cabo de Roca: "Donde la tierra se acaba y el mar comienza" y donde palpita el espíritu de la Fe y de la Aventura, que llevó las *carabelas* en busca de nuevos mundos para el mundo.

Nice text, by the way!

I'm glad you are interested in learning/understanding Spanish and Portuguese!

Alberto.


----------



## diegodbs

> As Alienastarte said, there are striking similarities and differences


 
For instance: caravelas (Portuguese), carabelas (Spanish)


----------



## Juri

diegodbs said:
			
		

> For instance: caravelas (Portuguese), carabelas (Spanish)


It's well known that it is not very difficult to understand similar languages reading a text;but the main difficulties are disclosed in undestanding the spoken language.(Without a longer full immersion)


----------



## Juri

Jaén said:
			
		

> Nice text, by the way!
> 
> I'm glad you are interested in learning/understanding Spanish and Portuguese!
> 
> Alberto.


I'm familiar with 5 languages(Spanish could be the sixth)but I'm ashamed
remembering my father, who spoke 13.I can't read his remarks in books, written in Arabic and Russian Cyrillic.


----------



## moura

Juri said:
			
		

> Unfortunately I never studied Spanish nor Portuguese; languages I practiced only as a turist.This interesting text of Camara municipal de Sintra in Portugal seems to be quite the same in Spanish. Is it nearly true?
> Cabo de Roca: " onde a terra se acaba e a mar comenca" e onde palpita o espirito da Fe e da Aventura, que levou las caravelas em busca de novos mundos para o mundo.


 
Dear Juri,

The problem here is that not all available, public Portuguese information is correct. These text, if it was meant to be written in Portuguese, has some mistakes - that explains your appreciation. The Portuguese and Spanish are different, though there have many words in common.

O problema reside em que nem toda a informação disponível e pública em português está correcta. Este texto, se a intenção era escrevê-lo em português, tem alguns erros - o que justifica a sua apreciação. O português e o castelhano são diferentes, embora tenham muitas palavras comuns. 

Correct sentence: 
"onde a terra acaba e o mar começa e onde palpita o espírito da Fé e da Aventura, que levou as caravelas em busca de novos mundos para o mundo."


----------



## jester.

Hello Juri,

if you understand German, THIS might be helpful for you.

I have not checked whether the same information is available in the English translation of the article.


----------



## Juri

j3st3r said:
			
		

> Hello Juri,
> 
> if you understand German, THIS might be helpful for you.
> 
> Viel Dank!
> Der Satz aus Wikipedia, denn ich nicht vergessen werde:
> "Beherrscht man Portugiesisch nicht, sollte man zuvor Englisch ausprobieren."
> (If you don't rule with Port.,better try first with E.)


----------



## lazarus1907

Yesterday I went to a barbecue where everybody spoke Portuguese (and English), and I spent all day talking to them in Spanish, while they talked to me in Portuguese. Of course we miss a word or two every now and then, but we can communicate nearly perfectly.


----------



## jester.

Juri said:
			
		

> Viel*en* Dank!
> Der Satz aus Wikipedia, de*n* ich nicht vergessen werde:
> "Beherrscht man Portugiesisch nicht, sollte man zuvor Englisch ausprobieren."
> (If you don't rule with Port.,better try first with E.)



Gerngeschehen.

Ich hoffe du hast nichts dagegen, dass ich dir zwei kleine Fehler korrigiert habe.


----------



## Krümelmonster

I also use to chat with a Portuguese guy writing in Spanish and reading his answers in Portuguese without any problems. But I am afraid I don't get anything in spoken language... so the comparison between Portuguese-Spanish with German-Dutch/Norwegian is quite good: So similar when written, but some difficulties in understanding the spoken version.
(Or maybe better compared to Swiss German: they always understand me, but I often don't understand them... portuguese understand spanish a lot better than vice versa).


----------



## jester.

Krümelmonster said:
			
		

> I also use to chat with a Portuguese guy writing in Spanish and reading his answers in Portuguese without any problems. But I am afraid I don't get anything in spoken language... so the comparison between Portuguese-Spanish with German-Dutch/Norwegian is quite good: So similar when written, but some difficulties in understanding the spoken version.
> (Or maybe better compared to Swiss German: they always understand me, but I often don't understand them... portuguese understand spanish a lot better than vice versa).



I know what you mean.

_I do not wish to be offensive_ but to me Portuguese sounds somewhat more mumbled, Spanish is a lot "clearer" and "straighter". There are no nasal vowels and not so many sibilants in Spanish.


----------



## Juri

j3st3r said:
			
		

> Gerngeschehen.
> 
> Ich hoffe du hast nichts dagegen, dass ich dir zwei kleine Fehler korrigiert habe.


 
Im Gegentail, danke fuer die Korrektur.Mein Deutsch ist schon verlernt.
12Jahre alt, hat mich ein Verwandter nach der SS Kommandatur in Triest als Dolmetscher
mitgenommen!
Un saluto ad Aquisgrana!


----------



## Juri

lazarus1907 said:
			
		

> Yesterday I went to a barbecue where everybody spoke Portuguese (and English), and I spent all day talking to them in Spanish, while they talked to me in Portuguese. Of course we miss a word or two every now and then, but we can communicate nearly perfectly.


A pretty report about a moment of life, far off harassing rhythm of everyday life, nice to remember  for long time.But in such language situation isn't it really difficult to express delicate shadows(nuances) of meaning?
 A story of two "partizans"during the WarII. Because  false friends in similar languages (Croate and Slovenian )they could shoot each other in a noisy and crowded canteen.The first said "Izvini"(Excuse me!) but the second has understood "Izgini!"(Fuck off!)


----------



## moura

_"I do not wish to be offensive_ but to me Portuguese sounds somewhat more mumbled"

Perhaps here the "mumbled" sound is due to a frequent close vowels in the Portuguese regarding the frequency of open vowels in Spanish. I remember once asking a Spanish lady something about "Sevilha", saying it in the Portuguese way, "Se" as in "Se-vere" and only two or three times later she understood saying: "Oh, Sévilha!" like in "Se-ven".


----------



## Zézinha

Hello Juri! I'm a result from a spanish father an a portuguese mother, and speak both languages. I'm currently translating a book from portuguese to spanish, and though many similarities exist, they are certainly two different languages. We could say that they are false friends. It depends on how good you want to speak or write, on the degree of perfection you which to obtain.
If you want to learn spanish or portuguese, I would suggest you to choose only one, otherwise it can be a mess. Choose spanish, the pronounciation is much easier, you'll be able to understand it much quicker. Better forget the other one, though portuguese can be a beautiful language. We cannot have it all!
Good luck!


----------



## Outsider

j3st3r said:
			
		

> _I do not wish to be offensive_ but to me Portuguese sounds somewhat more mumbled, Spanish is a lot "clearer" and "straighter". There are no nasal vowels and not so many sibilants in Spanish.


In Spanish, each vowel is always pronounced the same way. In Portuguese, unstressed vowels usually have a different pronunciation from stressed vowels. That may be what gave you the impression of "mumbling". 
Although I have to say that some Portuguese speakers do speak in a mumbled way, even to my ears. Quite annoying when you're watching them speak on TV, or in a film.


----------



## markew

alienastarte said:
			
		

> Quite but not the same, as there are striking similiarities and diffrences, such as same words for different meanings.
> 
> I think it´s quite as Dutch and German, quite similar languages.
> 
> Best
> A.


 
Hi there...  My father is Dutch and he says that Dutch is closer to English than it is to German. Do you know Dutch or German, or was that a guess?

Nevertheless, I speak Portuguese and Spanish as second and third languages respectively, and it was a great challenge not to mix them up as a learnt them. 

Having said this, consider this: Portuguese in Brazil and Portuguese in Portugal are officially the same language and they have a huge difference in pronunciation and minor differences in writting.

Just my $0.02. Invest it wisely.

Regards to all!

Mark


----------



## rericri

To my Italian ears, Spanish sounds much more familiar than Portuguese, 'easier' and closer when spoken, but written Spanish and Portuguese do not seem so different.


----------



## Krümelmonster

@markew: I speak German and I find Dutch quite similar to German, not only in written form, but also spoken. Now German has some things in common with English, too, so you could probably say that the similarities are based on both languages having "copied" from English. 
But in fact I don't think that someone who only knows English could understand Dutch, while someone who only knows German probably could.


----------



## Maria Maya

i am brazilian, i agree with someone up here who said brazilian and portuguese pronunciations are very different, in fact we (brazilians) have some difficulty to understand portuguese from Portugal when watching portuguese tv, well, depending on the person. I tried to learn italian and gave up, because of the similarities with the two languages, and just as a curiosity i add that there is a language that is between portuguese and spanish, called galego (in portuguese) or gallego (in spanish) that is even closer to both, beautiful, but for me is impossible to learn, it would be a complete mess.


----------

