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Spanish speakers, do you understand Portuguese? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4950 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes  Speaks: Spanish*, English*, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean | Message 17 of 24 28 May 2011 at 3:54am | IP Logged | |||||
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Spanish has pure vowels, while Portuguese has open, closed and nasal vowels. That is a major difference and why Portuguese speakers in general can understand Spanish much better than Spanish to Portuguese.
I would use this very crude analogy: imagine two people looking at images of something (landmarks, famous people, animals), through glasses that has been painted over with a pattern of black circles, stripes, or checkered squares, whatever, leaving a pattern on the lenses with some areas still clear and others black where you can't see through (I hope everyone gets what I'm describing). Now imagine you give the two people two different kinds of glasses: one with a pattern that has twice the clear areas compared to the other. They put it on and look at the picture... most likely the one with the least clear vision will have a harder time recongnizing the images. Spanish has only 5 vowels, and is extremely regular in spelling. Portuguese has 10. That has an effect in the spoken language of muddling things for the Spanish native speaker, as words do not sound as crisp or sharp. Make sense? The portuguese speaker has all Spanish vowel sounds in his/her language, the Spanish speaker does not (though in many Spanish countries there are nasals that have developed in the regional accents). So while a Portuguese speaker has the glasses with the more clear pattern and therefore will catch on to Spanish much quicker, the Spanish speaker has the more obscured one and will take longer. However, it is mostly a matter of training your ear an not an inherent difficulty in the sounds of Portuguese. If you spend a couple of weeks just hearing Portuguese, your brain will start catching patterns and the muddled words will start becoming clearer and eventually the image will become clear. I'm am learning Portuguese and took me about three weeks of hearing Portuguese every day to start understanding clearly Brazilian tv. Now I have no problems in understanding, except when unknown vocabulary is introduced to me. Edited by outcast on 28 May 2011 at 3:55am 8 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5263 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 18 of 24 28 May 2011 at 4:23am | IP Logged | |||||
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Spot on, outcast! I have found the same thing to be true for me as well. I find my reading level outpaces my listening level but the more I listen the better I understand. Luciano Pires of Café Brasil has helped me a lot with his podcasts. His voice is quite clear and clean.
It does take a while to get used to hearing many of the same or similar words pronounced in such an unexpected (to a Spanish speaker) way. I also listen to Deutsche Welle's Portuguese podcast to Africa and RPT. The continental/African pronunciation is harder for me to understand than the Brazilian, but, the more I listen to it, the better I get with comprehension. Portuguese speakers have told me that it is easier for them to understand spoken Spanish than for Spanish speakers to understand spoken Portuguese and I have found that to be so true since I've started learning Portuguese. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4669 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 19 of 24 22 July 2012 at 2:00pm | IP Logged | |||||
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It seems that business deals between Argentina and Brazil are made without an interpreter:
''Después del “amague” de la minera brasileña Vale do Rio Doce sobre la posible retracción de sus inversiones en la Argentina tras la renacionalización de YPF, finalmente ayer la presidenta Cristina Kirchner anunció el comienzo del proyecto minero de potasio en Malargüe, Mendoza, donde la empresa brasileña invertirá un total de 29.500 millones de pesos . En un acto en la Casa Rosada, la mandataria –junto al vice Amado Boudou, el gabinete y gobernadores de las provincias productoras, además de Daniel Scioli– firmó además el acuerdo para la construcción de una línea ferroviaria de 350 kilómetros, entre Río Negro y Neuquén, junto con un tendido eléctrico de 120 kilómetros sobre el río Colorado, que forman parte del megaemprendimiento. La obra permitirá la producción de unas 4,3 millones de toneladas anuales de potasio , “uno de los tres nutrientes indispensables para la agricultura”, según describió la Presidenta. El anuncio llegó a pesar de que la expropiación de YPF, en abril, generó críticas entre empresarios brasileños de distintos rubros. Entre ellos, el titular de Vale, Murilo Ferreira, había dicho en una declaración pública: “ Estamos revisando el proceso de inversión en la Argentina debido a la preocupación por la inflación y la incertidumbre política en el marco de la expropiación de YPF”. Las dudas parecen haberse disipado a juzgar por el entusiasmo del empresario durante su breve alocución en “portuñol” en la Casa Rosada y sin hacer uso de la traductora, por pedido de Cristina. En el acto se hizo hincapié en los 12 mil puestos de trabajo que va a generar la obra. La inversión también es estratégica para Brasil, ya que el potasio extraído en el mercado local le servirá para la producción de fertilizantes y podrá apuntar, así, a su crecimiento como productor de alimentos. '' Source: http://www.ieco.clarin.com/economia/dudas-confirmaron-invers ion-minera-Brasil_0_740326027.html 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| caam_imt Triglot Senior Member Mexico Joined 4863 days ago 232 posts - 357 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2, Finnish Studies: German, Swedish | Message 20 of 24 22 July 2012 at 3:47pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Some time ago I tried to understand tv-news in Portuguese (from Brazil) and Italian, and
I understood a bit more of Italian, but I got the point in both broadcasts. I fully agree with outcast's analogy about the vowels. Both written languages seem quite transparent to me, but of course not 100% of the time. Edited by caam_imt on 22 July 2012 at 3:50pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| MarcusOdim Groupie Brazil Joined 4848 days ago 91 posts - 142 votes | Message 21 of 24 22 July 2012 at 4:26pm | IP Logged | |||||
Well, Galician is just as tough as European Portuguese I can't watch EP stand up comedy, it takes too much effort to understand what they say...I mean, the language is the same, but their pronunciation is too unclear. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Dagane Triglot Senior Member SpainRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4512 days ago 259 posts - 324 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishB2, Galician Studies: German Studies: Czech | Message 22 of 24 22 July 2012 at 5:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Well, written Portuguese is very easy to understand. Personally, I've been once traveling around Northern and Central Portugal and I could understand some things... but not others, since the speaking language is more tricky. When I had to convey something, I spoke my mistaken Galician, and I was well understood... but it was the same when I spoke Spanish.
About Galician, it's different from Portuguese. I've been living for 6 years in a Galician city. Galician is not too much spoken in the cities, but I could learn a bit. The main difference between these two languages is the pronunciation, and I think it's the main obstacle between Portuguese and Spanish as well. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Jappy58 Bilingual Super Polyglot Senior Member United States Joined 4639 days ago 200 posts - 413 votes Speaks: Spanish*, Guarani*, Arabic (Levantine), Arabic (Egyptian), Arabic (Maghribi), Arabic (Written), French, English, Persian, Quechua, Portuguese Studies: Modern Hebrew | Message 23 of 24 22 July 2012 at 8:30pm | IP Logged | |||||
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As others have already mentioned, it depends on whether it's written or spoken Portuguese.
Before I started studying Portuguese about five months ago, I could understand 80%+ of written Portuguese. I could understand large portions of texts, but there would always be some unfamiliar words or sentence structures that would keep me from truly "enjoying" or fully understanding the meaning of it all. Now that I have studied Portuguese for some time, I've realized that I wasn't actually accurate in some of my understanding of written Portuguese: I realized that there were several false friends and that certain sentence structures worked differently than in Spanish. That being said, I had only been correct about 65% of the written Portuguese. :D Spoken Portuguese was/is another issue, however. I would understand some phrases here and then, I'd catch a few words, and that was it. Overall, I did not understand what was being spoken about. This was especially true of news broadcasts (in both European and Brazilian Portuguese) and everyday spoke conversations. If there was a less fast narration of certain topics, I could understand a little more, but it still never went beyond 50% comprehension. In all, I only understood 30%-40% of spoken Portuguese before. In many cases, it is certainly pronunciation that throws me off. I felt almost the same about Spanish vs. Portuguese as I felt with Middle Eastern Arabic dialects vs. Western dialects: with my knowledge of MSA and Egyptian, I would understand some phrases once in a while, several words, but not anything substantial, at least not until I started actively studying Moroccan. In all, I wouldn't consider the languages mutually intelligible - yes, native Portuguese speakers understand a good amount of spoken Spanish, but it's not as common the other way around. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4950 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English*, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean | Message 24 of 24 22 July 2012 at 9:21pm | IP Logged | |||||
Well, but there was a translator present. Just because some symbolic announcement had a moment where the president told the foreign guest to go ahead in "portunhol", doesn't mean the rest of the proceeding was performed in that fashion, and MUCH less the behind-the-scene negotations PRIOR to the pomp and circumstance of political announcements. Besides, Sra. Cristina Kirchner has lost the script a bit of late, she is simply not in the same league of politician as her husband (who was part Croatian, oddly enough I believe). 1 person has voted this message useful |
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