Can a spanish-speaking person understand portuguese?

Question

These two languages are so alike. However, spanish-speaking people say they can't understand portuguese. is this true?

Answer 1

Yes it is true, they can't understand portuguese perfectly, though they can understand it to some degree. It is more likely for a portuguese speaker to understand spanish than the other way around, mostly because portuguese is spoken in a murmur manner, with a lot of celtic elements in the pronunciation, like french.

These languages are very much alike since they originated from a common parent language, and at some point was considered a single language.

BTW, I speak spanish fluently but couldn't converse in portuguese. I can get the gist of what they're talkin about, though.

Answer 2

Yes, a Spanish speaking person can understand Portuguese with difficulty. Only people not truly familiar with either language say that they are so alike. Actually, they are not that much alike. The modulation is different and many Portuguese words are totally alien to Spanish speakers. Of course, over long-term exposure a Spanish speaker will pick Portuguese up quicker than a non-Spanish quicker. The same is true for Italian and French, though.

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Answer 3

I speak Spanish and can understand Italian, but I don't understand a bit of Portuguese.

Answer 4

Spanish-speakers understand a lot of Portuguese but not everything. They can get a grasp of the conversation but usually not enough to join in. They also do use a lot of the same actual words but the words have different meanings so there has to be caution used.

Answer 5

well i speak portuguese and i can understand spanish fairly well, although i can understand the essence of the sentence, not word by word. and i have never had spanish lessons. i can definately read in spanish, but understanding someone talking is more dificult. and people, stop thinking english is latin language!! it isn't!! the structure of the english language has nothing to do with french, nor any other latin language!! spanish is thousands of times more similar to french than english. english has added some french word to its vocabulary, but saying they are similar is like saying arabic and spanish are similar, and descend from the same language, just because the arabians have invaded spain in the past. people that say that french and english are similar languages don'tk know much about languages. look: in english there are female, male, and neutral. in french (like all latin languages) there's only male and female. the verbal tenses can be anything but similar. look the verbs in spanish and french to check it. they are very similar. while english uses another structure. english uses auxiliar verbs and such... is all diferent. on the other hand german is similar to english. analyse the structure of these 2 languages and look at the similarity on the words. portuguese and spanish are similar, but english and french have nothing to do with each other.

Answer 6

When I was in Spain I lived with some Portuguese students and I could understand some of what they said. I could also understand a lot of French while I was in Paris.

You can understand the things that are similar, but the languages are not completely similar, so of course you can't understand all of it.

Answer 7

I speak English, French and Spanish. I do understand a bit of Portuguese on TV because it is similar to Spanish, but then Spanish is similar to French.

I took Latin for 5 years, and it all comes back to Latin.

Answer 8

i guess it depends on what Spanish you speak. i am from Argentina, and a lot of us can pretty much understand everything if it's spoken a little slower. We are next to Brazil, and so we are very used to hear people speak this language. i can imagine that this is the case in Spain too, i know there are regions of this country where people mix the two languages.

Answer 9

I'm a Venezuelan and I understand maybe 60% when Brazilian people speak. Still there is that 40% that I go huh? But I get the general idea :)

Answer 10

I am a Spanish speaker that grew up in Spain. I am able to understand about 60% of what they say. i just have to pay extra attention and i am not able to answer back