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mjvanhuigenbos Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5753 days ago 1 posts - 1 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, French Studies: Mandarin, Russian
| Message 33 of 44 25 February 2009 at 7:58am | IP Logged |
One thing that I have found useful in separating Spanish and Portuguese is emphasizing pronunciation differences. For example, when I speak portuguese, I try my best to "imitate" a Brazilian from Rio de Janeiro in both my speech pattern and accentuation of individual words. This differs greatly from the Spanish accent I got learning Spanish in Mexico.
Over time I find that you began to associate each language with the accent and the flow in which you speak it.
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| jtmc18 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7247 days ago 119 posts - 140 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish
| Message 34 of 44 26 February 2009 at 7:59am | IP Logged |
Just out of curiosity, how much time does one save learning Portuguese compared to, say German or some other unrelated language, if one already knows considerable Spanish? I do not have the luxury to go to Brazil right now but I have a fairly strong command of Spanish thanks to several extended visits to Mexico. Is it possible to become quite proficient in Portuguese based upon one's knowledge of Spanish even without travel to a Portuguese-speaking country? I am debating whether to take advantage of my knowledge of Spanish to learn another romance language or to study a completely unrelated language to avoid mixing them up. I have a little knowledge of Portuguese already but Spanish is more comfortable for me.
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| jbbar Senior Member Belgium Joined 5802 days ago 192 posts - 210 votes Speaks: English
| Message 35 of 44 26 February 2009 at 11:45am | IP Logged |
jtmc18 wrote:
Just out of curiosity, how much time does one save learning Portuguese compared to, say German or some other unrelated language, if one already knows considerable Spanish? I do not have the luxury to go to Brazil right now but I have a fairly strong command of Spanish thanks to several extended visits to Mexico. Is it possible to become quite proficient in Portuguese based upon one's knowledge of Spanish even without travel to a Portuguese-speaking country? I am debating whether to take advantage of my knowledge of Spanish to learn another romance language or to study a completely unrelated language to avoid mixing them up. I have a little knowledge of Portuguese already but Spanish is more comfortable for me.
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This may be of interest to you.
jbbar
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| Ponape Pentaglot Groupie Spain Joined 5964 days ago 42 posts - 58 votes Speaks: Spanish*, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Greek, Basque, Swahili, Tagalog, Arabic (classical), Quechua, Vietnamese, Turkish, Korean, Serbo-Croatian, Hindi
| Message 37 of 44 08 March 2009 at 10:51am | IP Logged |
For me, it was easy to learn Portuguese. At the written level, they are very similar. When it comes to the spoken language, it is usually easier for Spanish people to understand the Portuguese from Brazil, as the variety from Portugal tends to reduce more vowels. Even some Brazilian people told me that for them it was sometimes easier to understand a Spanish-speaking person than a person from Portugal.
Interestingly, the Foreign Language Service published a handbook with the title "Portuguese from Spanish" or something like that, downloadable through the FSI language courses web page, which might be interesting for you.
¡Saludos!
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| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6274 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French
| Message 38 of 44 08 March 2009 at 11:34am | IP Logged |
When I have watched Brazilian movies, the Portuguese spoken in them seems relatively close to Spanish. But the language of Portuguese films sounds quite different from Spanish.
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| sprachefin Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5748 days ago 300 posts - 317 votes Speaks: German*, English, Spanish Studies: French, Turkish, Mandarin, Bulgarian, Persian, Dutch
| Message 39 of 44 16 March 2009 at 12:18am | IP Logged |
Portuguese seems like an interesting language. I have spent some time in Spain and have picked up SOME Spanish,
but mind you, I'm not fluent. I have the urge to learn Portuguese, but it seems very hard. I find that when I listen to
the Portuguese speak, that there is not a lot of similarity with my limited Spanish. When I met a few Brazilians a
year or two ago, I found that I could understand them a lot easier, but I still couldn't get past the pronunciation.
Again, it was probably just my limited Spanish, but since starting French, I may start to learn Portuguese. Portugal
and Brazil= great vacation destinations.
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| ChiaBrain Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5810 days ago 402 posts - 512 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish* Studies: Portuguese, Italian, French Studies: German
| Message 40 of 44 16 March 2009 at 6:29am | IP Logged |
Wow, I love this thread.
I speak Spanish, study Italian and want to study Portuguese more but have been
concerned with the confusion factor.
Confusion seems to happen, like others have said, when I'm unsure of a word in the
target language and accidentally use one from another.
Tadeo wrote:
I would still use an Italian or French word, wrongly thinking that my
Spanish was tricking me! With time, as my P got better, words from the other
languages slipped in less frequently. As simple as that. |
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The same thing was happening to me! I kept saying "s'il vous plait" instead of "per
favore" (so close to "por favor")! And I haven't studied French since high-school!
I think this is less of a problem the more familiar you get with the target language.
To give the challenge some perspective: its probably easier to learn to keep similar
languages apart than to learn entirely different ones. My main concern now is time. I
feel it takes a good deal of exposure to get good.
Also...
Does anyone else feel they can hear the Gaelic influence in European Portuguese?
This used to baffle me as theres a large Brazilian population in my area and I didn't
think their Portuguese sounded anything like Gaelic. But when I finally heard European
Portuguese it did seem to have some Gaelic sounds.
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