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European vs. Brazilian Portuguese | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Merv Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5274 days ago 414 posts - 749 votes  Speaks: English*, Serbo-Croatian* Studies: Spanish, French | Message 1 of 16 02 January 2011 at 9:19pm | IP Logged | |||||
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If anyone could shed some light on the intelligibility situation for Brazilian and European Portuguese, that would be
great. I'm finding it hard to get a straight answer on this. I understand that the difference is greater than between British and American English or Latin American and Castilian Spanish, but I would not want to learn European Portuguese (which has a much smaller number of speakers, of course) if it's not almost completely understandable to Brazilians (the way I, as an American, understand British speakers). Also, is Brazilian Portuguese almost totally understandable to European Portuguese speakers? Thanks. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| marcelobrasil Diglot Groupie Brazil acantoneseblog. Joined 5076 days ago 44 posts - 65 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English Studies: French, Cantonese | Message 2 of 16 02 January 2011 at 10:01pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Well, I think you will get many different answers according to whom you ask. It really depends on the person. Some Brazilians , and I myself am one, will tell you there's not such a great difference. If one is just a little bit used to hear the other, there won't be much difficulties and communication barriers.
That being said,the most obvious difference is the pronunciation. This is not a scientific explanation and is based solely on my observation as a Brazilian, but I feel that the pronunciation in European Portuguese is usually not articulated that clearly and the words are often mumbled. A foreigner learning Portuguese would probably have an easier timer understanding the Brazilian pronunciation.But perhaps a Portuguese would the same about Brazilians... Second, there a few constructions that are commonly used in European Portuguese that are somewhat formal and would sound odd to the avarege Brazilian, such as '' Estou a fazer'' , as opposed to '' Estou fazendo'', the former used in Brazil and the latter in Portugal.In Brazilian Portuguese there's also a bigger gap between the spoken and written language, which lead many people to conclude that Europeans speak Portuguese better than Brazilians. Lastly, there are slang terms and expressions peculiar to each country that are mutually unintelligible. Now, I think it's important to make a few considerations : you will often bump into a Brazilian who says he went to Portugal and could not understand a thing. And maybe some Portuguese people would say the same thing too... But really, if you are just a little bit used to hearing Portuguese people or Brazilians speaking you won't have much trouble understanding them. I remember the first time I watched a Portuguese tv show I had to pay a lot of attention to understand what they were saying. It's not that I didn't understand them, but I had to focus and concentrate. But if you're used to their speak, or to ours,this sort of thing won't happen. Of course there are sometimes when we will simply not understand each other. But , at least as I see it, that's an exception, not a rule. Besides, this type of thing can happen even when you travel to a different region in your country. 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Merv Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5274 days ago 414 posts - 749 votes Speaks: English*, Serbo-Croatian* Studies: Spanish, French | Message 3 of 16 02 January 2011 at 10:28pm | IP Logged | |||||
Thank you. Just what I was looking for. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| marcelobrasil Diglot Groupie Brazil acantoneseblog. Joined 5076 days ago 44 posts - 65 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English Studies: French, Cantonese | Message 4 of 16 03 January 2011 at 1:13am | IP Logged | |||||
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Just correcting a few typos I made :
*time * some times * I remember that If you have any other questions regarding Portuguese feel free to ask. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Merv Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5274 days ago 414 posts - 749 votes Speaks: English*, Serbo-Croatian* Studies: Spanish, French | Message 5 of 16 03 January 2011 at 2:50am | IP Logged | |||||
Many Anglophone learners have difficulties initially with Spanish por/para, ser/estar, and subjunctive, to give a few examples of phenomena pretty much absent in English. Does Portuguese have a ~1:1 mapping in usage with Spanish or are there, e.g. cases in which a Spanish subjunctive would have a corresponding Portuguese indicative, or a para becomes por, etc.? Thanks. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6143 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 6 of 16 03 January 2011 at 3:02am | IP Logged | |||||
I think they match up fairly well in all of these respects, although you should note that Portuguese makes use of the future subjunctive (which is now archaic in Spanish) and the personal infinitive. I think those were the most difficult grammatical concepts for me to understand coming from a Spanish background. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sun_Wukong Newbie China Joined 5080 days ago 34 posts - 46 votes Speaks: Portuguese* | Message 7 of 16 03 January 2011 at 4:50am | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm a brazilian from Rio. Lately I've been in touch with speakers of two varieties of
african portuguese and one guy from Lisbon. And I have obviously been exposed to a european portuguese before. The idea of communicative issues is, to me, ludicrous. I find it very much as we are on the same page all the time. But there are, of course, different slangs and vocabulary. Those I can easily understand from context and they are not that many. I should point that I can draw from extensive reading in portuguese literature, but it wouldn't make a difference if I couldn't. Also, people in the portuguese diaspora suffer massive exposure to brazilian portuguese through tv and music. I woud be even more surprised if they had the slightest trouble understanding me. In theory, european portuguese sounds more archaic and formal to our ears, syntax included. In practice, in the everyday speech, not so much. It's indeed very similar to American vs. British English and I would advice you to take it as an analogue. Apparently uneducated brazilians might have a hard time understanding european portuguese because of phonetics and the archaizing features, but I personally find that more myth than truth, as everything else related with this issue. When you put the actual people facing each other, any of the supposed problems inexist. I don't think sociolects play a part in this. Everyone in Brazil is exposed to that strange soap opera portuguese with its conventional phonetics anyway. I should also add that this is for the more well-known varieties. I have no idea as to how a speaker from the depths of the brazilian northeast might interact with someone from the depths of the Açores. (In this particular instance I think they would do fine because of some features of the history of the language, but I digress.) Your hear those stories, but I've never seen a real case of communicative breakdown... In my college there were several africans from almost all of the portuguese-speaking countries and a couple of portuguese from outside of Lisbon. One of them had a thicker accent and all she had to do was to slow down just a bit from time to time for other students to understand it. (The prosody is, indeed, different, and it's what causes most of the strangeness people ascribe to phonetics.) I've also seen recent immigrants from more than one region of Portugal in Rio etc. My guess for learners is that since they will be learning more standard forms from textbooks, this should be a non-issue. Edited by Sun_Wukong on 03 January 2011 at 5:04am 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Merv Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5274 days ago 414 posts - 749 votes Speaks: English*, Serbo-Croatian* Studies: Spanish, French | Message 8 of 16 03 January 2011 at 5:01am | IP Logged | |||||
Thank you very much, this really clarifies a lot. I searched on google and kept on seeing people saying how they couldn't understand each other, so I was rather wary of going down one route or the other if they were effectively different languages. Seems they are not so different as I had thought afterall. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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