Mandira Triglot Newbie Norway Joined 4874 days ago 8 posts - 8 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, German Studies: Mandarin
| Message 1 of 8 24 July 2011 at 3:09am | IP Logged |
Some time back I took a Spanish course in which we had a teacher from Venezuela. Reading a lot about intelligibility between Spanish and Portuguese on this forum made me think about her answer when I questioned her about this.
She said that she found Brazilian Portuguese much easier to comprehend than European Spanish (much due the the plurality of accents found on the Iberian peninsula).
Is anyone able to confirm or challenge this statement? Further comments?
Edited by Mandira on 25 July 2011 at 2:59am
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Saim Pentaglot Senior Member AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5083 days ago 124 posts - 215 votes Speaks: Serbo-Croatian, English*, Catalan, Spanish, Polish Studies: Dutch, Portuguese, Italian, Occitan, Punjabi, Urdu, Arabic (Maghribi), French, Modern Hebrew, Ukrainian, Slovenian
| Message 2 of 8 24 July 2011 at 11:20pm | IP Logged |
I don't believe that for one second... I'm a second-language learner who focuses on
Latino Spanish, and European Spanish is easy to understand. It is after all, the same
language.
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KimG Diglot Groupie Norway Joined 4977 days ago 88 posts - 104 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: Portuguese, Swahili
| Message 3 of 8 25 July 2011 at 2:50pm | IP Logged |
My impression is it's simpler for brazilians to understand their neighbours than for the other South Americans to understand them, but there is no hard limits between languages in real life, a lot of brazilians from time to time uses a few words i find in Spanish dictionaries, and south americans probably like samba music from brazil, picking up bits of their language, etc.
But, I know it's been stated it is supposed to be no problems for Spanish speakers to speak to each other, even if they are from South America and Spain.
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Al3 Tetraglot Newbie Mexico Joined 5548 days ago 3 posts - 4 votes Speaks: Spanish*, Portuguese, English, French Studies: Italian
| Message 4 of 8 25 July 2011 at 9:50pm | IP Logged |
No, I don't think that's true at all. I speak both languages being Spanish my mother tongue and what I can tell you is that for us who live in the american continent Portuguese from Brazil is usually easier than Portuguese from Portugal, but not in a million years easier than Spanish from Spain. I'm talking about Spanish of course, not Galego, Catalan, Andaluz etc., that's another story.
Greetings
Edited by Al3 on 25 July 2011 at 9:54pm
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Juаn Senior Member Colombia Joined 5345 days ago 727 posts - 1830 votes Speaks: Spanish*
| Message 5 of 8 25 July 2011 at 11:01pm | IP Logged |
Totally false. Spanish from Spain is completely intelligible to me and I venture to say, any other native Spanish speaker. Portuguese on the other hand is a closely related but still separate language.
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iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5262 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French)
| Message 6 of 8 26 July 2011 at 1:14am | IP Logged |
As one who is learning Portuguese after having learned Spanish, I can second Juan's post.
Portuguese is indeed a different though similar language. I live in the Caribbean and am exposed daily to Puerto Rican and Dominican accented Spanish. I also have traveled extensively in Spain and listen to Radio Nacional de España on-line regularly- no problem. Portuguese takes effort and you must be familiar with the pronunciation. Portuguese has way more vowel sounds than Spanish and many different words and some similar with completely different meanings. It isn't as hard as learning say, German from an English base, but it is also not a "walk in the park" either. It does take effort to learn Portuguese after Spanish. You soon find out that it is indeed a separate language.
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Mandira Triglot Newbie Norway Joined 4874 days ago 8 posts - 8 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, German Studies: Mandarin
| Message 7 of 8 26 July 2011 at 3:55am | IP Logged |
There seems to be a wide consensus against the aforementioned statement in here. What about Brazilian Portuguese vs. Spanish dialects/languages different from the standard language as mentioned by Al3?
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Carlucio Triglot Groupie BrazilRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4858 days ago 70 posts - 113 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishC1, Spanish Studies: Mandarin
| Message 8 of 8 07 August 2011 at 5:10am | IP Logged |
I think the hardest thing about Spanish and portuguese are the vocabulary, both are official languages of coutries all over the world and the vocabulary changes a lot, even inside Brazil it happens.
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