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Brazilian Portuguese | ||
Tags: Brazil | Portuguese | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| nicozerpa Triglot Senior Member Argentina Joined 4317 days ago 182 posts - 315 votes  Speaks: Spanish*, Portuguese, English Studies: Italian, German | Message 9 of 13 05 December 2013 at 4:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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Wow! Iguanamon's response above was amazing! :D
In my opinion, The basics of Portuguese are quite easy if you already speak Spanish. Actually, I've learned the language without any course, just using native materials. That's the only language I've learned this way. The problem starts once you've reached the famous "conversational level" and you want to perfect your skills. Even though the vocabulary are quite similar, there some are minor differences that are important if you don't want to speak "Portuñol" (mixing both languages). In this forum, I've read someone (I think it was Iguanamon too) saying that Portuguese and Spanish are 80% similar, but it's the other 20% that makes the difference. Those are the main challenges that you could find, all related to vocabulary: 1) False friends ("Aceitar": to oil in SP, to accept in PT) 2) Completely different words: (Black colour: Negro in SP, Preto in PT) 3) Partially different words: (Unnecessary: Innecesario in SP, Desnecessário in PT, note the different prefix) 4) Words with many meanings in a language, but with only a few of them in the other: "Padre" in SP means both father and priest, in PT it only means Priest. 5) Words with the same meaning in both languages, but are uncommon in one of them: In Brazilian media the word "estelionato" (larceny by fraud) is used quite often, but that words is unknown by most Spanish speaking people, even though that word exists and has the same meaning. Despite all this, I still think Spanish will be of a great help. Good luck! 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Luso Hexaglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 6052 days ago 819 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, French, EnglishC2, GermanB1, Italian, Spanish Studies: Sanskrit, Arabic (classical) | Message 10 of 13 05 December 2013 at 5:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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Portunhol is THE thing. Just the other day I was chatting with a girl in the US and said: here in Portugal and Spain we use Portunhol. She replied: I know Portuñol. I'm from Uruguay. :P
6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6588 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 11 of 13 05 December 2013 at 9:04pm | IP Logged | ||
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Seconding the recs for GLOSS and lyricstraining :) both can be done practically from scratch.
I'd also add Destinos - it will be easy, but enjoyable. At least for me it was :))) I also watched a looot of football and I read Diego Forlán's bio (he speaks awesome Portuguese, btw. And French and Italian and English). ^^That's basically where I learned all my Spanish, heh. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5253 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 12 of 13 05 December 2013 at 11:59pm | IP Logged | ||
There are subtle differences between Spanish and Portuguese that aren't glaringly obvious at first glance:
As can be seen, the two languages are very similar here but subtly different. The question is structured slighlty differently. "Ser" exists in Portuguese but is not used here. Instead "ter nascido" was chosen. The Portuguese cognate for "pasar", in the first sentence of the response, is "passar" but it isn't used here, "acontecer" is used instead. Neither is the Portuguese cognate for "mejor" ("melhor") used here and the grammar for "appreciate certain things more" is constructed differently in Portuguese. The Portuguese just wouldn't sound right or even be correct with a straight Spanish cognate and grammar translation for much of the text. That's the urge that Spanish-speakers have to try so hard to avoid. Almost any Spanish-speaker, native or second language, can understand the first Portuguese sentence reading it, but most likely wouldn't produce it in this way. Though the languages are 80% similar it is, indeed, that 20% that makes all the difference. Second language speakers of Spanish (non-romance natives) have a tougher time with the nuances of Spanish words and constructions than natives. That's why, for me, when I decided to learn Portuguese to a high level- engaging all facets of the language, my knowledge of Spanish was and is highly useful but using it as a blueprint was not. I needed to see that Portuguese does what it does because it just does, on its own merits without reference to Spanish. Now I think of Spanish as Spanish and Portuguese as Portuguese and not either in the context of the other. I tried the FSI "From Spanish to Portuguese" course, "Pois Não" and even had a look at the Assimil- "El nuevo português sin esfuerzo" (Iberian Portuguese). The similarity kept throwing me off. I thought the UT Austin "Tá falado" would help, but having the Spanish as a "crutch" became very off-putting. I dropped them like a wet fish. I think the "From Spanish to Portuguese" type courses are adequate to get a learner familiar with the differences and help one to passively understand Portuguese better. I don't feel that they provide a sufficient base for actively learning Portuguese and can lead to confusing both languages more than by approaching Portuguese on its own merits. That's why I started with listening to spoken Brazilian Portuguese first, using Pimsleur, DLI and reading a Mia Couto book even having to hit the dictionary like crazy. As a second language speaker of Spanish, that's what worked for me and why. Spanish has been my guide and a huge help in learning Portuguese, but it's been in the background and not at the forefront. Edited by iguanamon on 06 December 2013 at 2:25am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Hungringo Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 3979 days ago 168 posts - 329 votes Speaks: Hungarian*, English, Spanish Studies: French | Message 13 of 13 28 December 2013 at 11:25am | IP Logged | ||
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iguanamon, I find your advice about not using Spanish as a "crutch" very interesting. So far when I was thinking about learning Portuguese my biggest fear was confusing the two languages. I have purchased Assimil's "El nuevo portugués sin esfuerzo" and "El Portugués de Brasil" and also De Vecchi's "Aprende y mejora rápidamente tu portugués". I also have English-based learning materials (Colloquial, Teach Yourself). While I am going to keep your point in mind, I still believe that seeing Spanish and Portuguese contrasted would help me more to learn the differences and the peculiarities of Portuguese than studying it in English. (There are virtually no useful Portuguese materials in my native language.)
When I had a short romance with Italian using Hungarian-based materials, I eventually gave up, because every 10 minutes I had to look up something in the Spanish dictionary or reference grammar to create a "contrastive image" in my mind. Now, I have bought Spanish-based Italian learning materials (Assimil, De Vecchi, Avalardi) and I think learning Italian using Spanish would be much easier and constantly contrasting the two would create better reference points in my mind. Edited by Hungringo on 28 December 2013 at 11:26am 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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