spanish & portuguese?

Question

are spanish and portuguese similiar? Brazilians speak portuguese and they are Latin America/South america.

Answer 1

Yes, they are similar, like German and Dutch for example, but having said that they are very different as well.
The two countries (Spain and Portugal) are neighbors on the same Iberian peninsula and the languages have mutually influenced each other. On the other hand there has always been a lot of political strife and animosity between the two cultures and I have found that Spanish is still not popular in Portugal.
Brazilian Portuguese is much more like Latin-American Spanish than peninsular Portuguese is to Castillian Spanish. Especially the pronunciation of Brazilian Portuguese is much softer and more pleasing to the ear. That's my personal opinion, of course.

Answer 2

The term Latin America was created by the French when they invaded Mexico in the mid eighteenth century... But also every language derived from the original Latin spoken by the Romans is so called a Latin language. French, Portuguese, Italian and Spanish are the main examples. Even though now used to refer mainly to Portuguese and Spanish speaking peoples of North, Central, South America and the Caribean, it intially also included the French speaking peoples of Haiti, French Guyana, Haiti and many other Caribean islands like Martinique.

Answer 3

Spanish and Portuguese speakers can read each other's language without difficulty. As far as the oral language is concerned it's another story, although I can tell you that Brazilian form of Portuguese is easily understood by Spanish speakers, but not Portuguese from Portugal.

Answer 4

No, they don´t.
We have similar words, and the structure of the sentences are equal. That is because both come from Romance languages,

The Romance languages, a major branch of the Indo-European language family, comprise all languages that descended from Latin, the language of the Roman Empire.

All Romance languages (sometimes referred to as Romanic) descend from Vulgar Latin.

Despite multiple influences from pre-Roman languages and from later invasions, the phonology, morphology, lexicon, and syntax of all Romance languages are predominantly derived from Vulgar Latin. As a result, the group shares a number of linguistic features that set it apart from other Indo-European branches. In particular, with only one or two exceptions, Romance languages have lost the declension system of Classical Latin and, as a result, have a relatively rigid SVO sentence structure and make extensive use of prepositions.

Answer 5

Well, when my argentine friend came to Brasil, she said she could understand nothing, watching TV. Its necessary concentration to understand spanish language, for me. Portuguese and Spanish sound very different.

Answer 6

Yes, you're right.