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Aritaurus Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6575 days ago 197 posts - 204 votes Speaks: Cantonese, English*, Japanese, Mandarin Studies: Spanish
| Message 1 of 44 05 August 2008 at 12:18am | IP Logged |
I've noticed on the information section of this site, it said that Spanish and Portuguese are 85% similar for vocabulary. As I am learning Spanish now, I often get Spanish and Portuguese mixed up when I see them on television and I often catch many Portuguese words that are almost the same as their Spanish counterparts but pronounced a bit differently.
I plan to learn Portuguese so I can travel to Brazil after I get reasonably conversational in Spanish. My guess is that if I know Spanish well enough, Portuguese will much easier to pick up , is that right ?
Edited by Aritaurus on 05 August 2008 at 12:20am
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| patuco Diglot Moderator Gibraltar Joined 7016 days ago 3795 posts - 4268 votes Speaks: Spanish, English* Personal Language Map
| Message 2 of 44 05 August 2008 at 4:55am | IP Logged |
Aritaurus wrote:
My guess is that if I know Spanish well enough, Portuguese will much easier to pick up , is that right ? |
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Yes it will, although you should watch out for spelling and pronunciation variations. You'll get a "discount" from any Romance language to another, although the size of the discount will vary on the languages.
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| Felipe Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6031 days ago 451 posts - 501 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Italian, Dutch, Catalan
| Message 3 of 44 05 August 2008 at 10:18am | IP Logged |
There is a lot of transparency and Portuguese will be easier to pick up if you speak Spanish very well. In my own experience, when I started Portuguese I mixed a lot of Spanish into my speech, mainly because I didn't have a large enough Portuguese vocabulary. As I became more and more fluent in Portuguese I mixed in less and less Spanish. You will still have to work hard at it, but will save a lot of time due to the similarities between the two. However, don't think you can go to Brazil and speak Spanish to everyone and get by. Generally speaking, Spanish speakers really struggle to understand spoken Portuguese, inspite of how similar the vocabulary is, due to the pronunciation differences.
Edited by Felipe on 05 August 2008 at 10:19am
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| Alvinho Triglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 6235 days ago 828 posts - 832 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English, Spanish
| Message 4 of 44 05 August 2008 at 3:02pm | IP Logged |
huummm........indeed, both languages have huge similarities but watch out, pronounciation and grammar rules are a bit different....there are some foreigners who think is easier to learn Spanish because Portuguese grammar in their opinion is tougher......but it's up to you if you'll really be able to pick up Portuguese easily....try to work hard in order not to mix both languages , even though I'm aware it's not that easy to do so at first...if you need more information about my country, just PM me!
Edited by Alvinho on 05 August 2008 at 3:09pm
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| JW Hexaglot Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/egw Joined 6123 days ago 1802 posts - 2011 votes 22 sounds Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Ancient Greek, French, Biblical Hebrew Studies: Luxembourgish, Dutch, Greek, Italian
| Message 5 of 44 05 August 2008 at 6:34pm | IP Logged |
Here is something I think you will find interesting. It is for English speakers who also speak Spanish. The goal is to give you a little background in listening to spoken Portuguese by comparing it to it Spanish. It also has transcripts so you can compare the written languages. For me it is perfect as, while I definitely plan to learn Portuguese, I have several other language-related goals that I need to address first. It is hard to hold myself back from jumping into learning Portuguese full-bore, as I find it incredibly beautiful, so this at least gives me a little exposure. It is also a nice exercise in comparative linguistics which I love:
http://tltc.la.utexas.edu/brazilpod/tafalado/
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| Olympia Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5982 days ago 195 posts - 244 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Old English, French
| Message 6 of 44 07 August 2008 at 2:55pm | IP Logged |
I've been studying Spanish pretty much continuously for the past eight years, and about a year ago I decided I want
to learn Portuguese. I would love to travel to Brazil one day, but I don't want to do so until I can speak the
language. I was picking up Portuguese quickly, but I would often slip Portuguese into my Spanish conversations--
including with my Argentine Spanish teacher--who thought I was crazy. I didn't want to "ruin" my Spanish, so I
had to put it on hold for now. I've tried a couple of times since to pick it up again, but rather quickly the
Portuguese started invading my Spanish. Recently I've been slowly starting with the Portuguese again, and I've seen
that if I learn Portuguese through Spanish, I do less mixing. So I keep all my Portuguese lessons in my notebook in
Spanish rather than English. It's seeming to help.
1 person has voted this message useful
| JW Hexaglot Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/egw Joined 6123 days ago 1802 posts - 2011 votes 22 sounds Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Ancient Greek, French, Biblical Hebrew Studies: Luxembourgish, Dutch, Greek, Italian
| Message 7 of 44 07 August 2008 at 4:15pm | IP Logged |
Olympia wrote:
I've been studying Spanish pretty much continuously for the past eight years, and about a year ago I decided I want to learn Portuguese. I would love to travel to Brazil one day, but I don't want to do so until I can speak the
language. I was picking up Portuguese quickly, but I would often slip Portuguese into my Spanish conversations--including with my Argentine Spanish teacher--who thought I was crazy. I didn't want to "ruin" my Spanish, so I had to put it on hold for now. I've tried a couple of times since to pick it up again, but rather quickly the Portuguese started invading my Spanish. Recently I've been slowly starting with the Portuguese again, and I've seen that if I learn Portuguese through Spanish, I do less mixing. So I keep all my Portuguese lessons in my notebook in
Spanish rather than English. It's seeming to help. |
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To, me it seems inevitable that you will mix, at least a little, between Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese. The three are just too similar to totally avoid it. It seems that almost every time I have ever heard someone who speaks more than one of those languages speaking, they mix in at least a word or two from the other language. I do it with Spanish and Italian. If there are people who never mix these languages, I would love to hear how they avoid it.
That being said, I think the advantages of knowing more than one of these languages far outweighs the one disadvantage of sometimes mixing them up while speaking. For me, my ability in reading, writing, and understanding is much stronger knowing both languages.
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| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6440 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese
| Message 8 of 44 07 August 2008 at 4:27pm | IP Logged |
JW wrote:
To, me it seems inevitable that you will mix, at least a little, between Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese. The three are just too similar to totally avoid it. It seems that almost every time I have ever heard someone who speaks more than one of those languages speaking, they mix in at least a word or two from the other language. I do it with Spanish and Italian. If there are people who never mix these languages, I would love to hear how they avoid it.
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It is most certainly not inevitable to mix them, or similar Germanic languages. Examples: Furyou_gaijin (his Dutch was perfect, without the slightest trace of German, as was his English), Professor Arguelles (an interview with him on his experiences with leaving Lebanon due to the war was posted a couple of years ago, in English and Spanish, and his Spanish had no trace of Italian), and most native speakers of Italian I know who know any of another Romance language.
I don't know how they do it, but it's very clearly possible.
I don't mix Spanish or French into my Italian; I have to fish in my 'philological reserves' to attempt to speak the other two, so the converse doesn't hold.
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