Is it true that Portuguese was at first a Spanish dialect that with time evolved into a whole new language?

Question

That's what I heard. I heard that Portugal was founded by people who wanted to breakaway from Spain and to distance themselves invented the Portuguese language. Is this true?

Answer 1

Well, not really. The Iberian area was, after the fall of the Roman Empire, a hot house for new Romance languages - Catalan, Navarese, Aragonese, Asturian, Castilian, and more - including one now called Galician-Portuguese. That was spoken in the NW quadrant of the Iberian Peninsula. When Portugal became a separate country (in 1128) its northern border divided the area where this language was spoken into two roughly equal parts. At that time, Portugal was only about half its present size - the southern part was occupied by the Moors.

Over the years, Galician-Portuguese continued to evolve, but differently in the Poruguese area and the Spanish area. Today, we have either two languages - Portuguese in Portugal and Galego in NW Spain, or still one language, Galician-Portuguese, with two dialects. The authorities differ on this point.

Spain recognizes Galego as an 'official' language, but it is not mutually intelligible with Castellano, the main language of Spain and the one most of the world calls 'Spanish".

All that to say there is some truth in what you wrote, but it's not the real story. The source of Portuguese was a language of what is now Spain, but it was not Spanish, and the Portuguese did not invent it - they already had it, and, according to some language experts, it may not yet be a whole new language.

Answer 2

Portuguese is the eighth most spoken language and the third most spoken European language in the world (after English and Spanish) and, together with Spanish, French, Italian and Romanian, comprise the five modern Romance languages.

While the Portuguese language has its roots firmly in Europe, most of the world's 210+ million Portuguese speaking people live elsewhere. In fact, non European speakers of the language outnumber their European cousins by over twenty to one. Many are surprised to learn that there are more Portuguese speaking people in South America than those who speak Spanish. But this is understandable when one realizes that Brazil is larger than the continental United States and has the largest population of any country in South America. There are different regional dialects spoken in Brazil.

Because there are some similarities between Spanish and Portuguese–and both are a product of the Iberian peninsula–many erroneously believe that Portuguese is merely a dialect of Spanish. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Check this page to get more information about Portuguese Language origins. http://www.deltatranslator.com/port_lang.htm
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Answer 3

Portuguese is the language of the city Lisbon, and Spanish from Castilla. Most cities had it's own dialect at those times.

Answer 4

The are telling you lies.

Portuguese (português (help·info), also língua portuguesa) is a Romance language that originated in what is today Galicia (Spain) and northern Portugal. It is the official language of Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Portugal and São Tomé and Príncipe, and co-official with Chinese in the Chinese S.A.R. of Macau and Tetum in East Timor.

Portuguese is a major world language, being ranked sixth among the world's languages in number of native speakers (over 200 million), and first in South America (186 million, over 51% of the population). It is also a major lingua franca in Africa. It spread worldwide in the 15th and 16th century as Portugal set up a vast colonial and commercial empire (1415–1999), spanning from Brazil in the Americas to Macau in China. In that colonial period, many Portuguese creoles appeared around the world, especially in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean.

Answer 5

My Grandfather used to say that Portuguese was just Spanish with hot soup in your mouth! but of course he was joking, the answer is No not true!

Answer 6

no, that isn't true.