Portuguese and Spanish OR Spanish and Italian?

Question

My family is Portuguese and I was having a discussion with an Italian friend. I told him my opinion that I believe Portuguese and Spanish are very close languages and that I have actually had a conversation with a spanish person; they spoke in Spanish and I spoke in Portuguese and we completely understood each other. Then my Italian friend said that he finds Spanish and Italian more similar then Portuguese and Spanish. What is your take on this?

Answer 1

I speak all 3 and I find that all 3 are very similar. I agree with both of you that you can hold a conversation with someone that speaks either, not fluently, but enough to get the gist of the conversation.

Answer 2

Hi, I'm Mexican but live in IItaly. I would agree with you. I think Portuguese and Spanish are more closely related, but Italian comes a very close third place. My parents are always telling me they met an Italian or a Portuguese and talked to them for half an hour with no or little difficulty. I think if you speak one of these languages fluently, you will have few problems understanding the other person.

Answer 3

Although ALL three languages originated from Latin, Spanish IS more similar to Italian than Portuguese is to English. One day at work, I was speaking to some customers in Spanish because I thought they were speaking Spanish, but they told me they were speaking Italian.

Answer 4

I'm a mexican guy living in Italy, and therefore, I speak both spanish and italian (and english obviously) and... it's definitely hard to decide, 'cause all 3 are really much alike, but I'd say spanish and portuguese are more similar to each other, but italian is really really close too, all three are very similar, in grammar, vocabulary, everything. Once you speak one, learning any of the other two comes really easy, I didn't find it any hard to learn italian! took me a couple of months only.

Answer 5

Well I'm studying like where do languages come from...they all 3 come from the same part...(India-Europe) but i have friends that speak Portuguese and friends that speak Italian and i speak Spanish, but in my opinion I find it easier to talk to my friends in Portuguese than talking to my friends in Italian it's very close.

Answer 6

Both are close to Spanish, although Portuguese tends to have a french accent. due to the R an J pronunciation.
In this case Italian has the same pronunciation to Spanish

Answer 7

Well, Italian and Spanish ARE very close languages as Spanish is very close to Portoguese. Italian and Romanian are also very close languages so, say, Italian and Romanian are as close as Spanish and Portoguese are. An Italian could easily understand a text in Romanian OR Spanish but not one in Portoguese. The fact is that Italian and Spanish DO have the same grammatical and linguistical roots. Portogues and Romanian are indeed contaminations of the two languages above with other influences like French, Basque (Portoguese) and Slavic languages (Romanian). So I'd say Spanish and Italian.

Answer 8

I'm Brazilian, and I speak italian, spanish and portuguese.

Portuguese is much closer to Spanish, in vocabulary and grammar.

however, Italian has an easier pronunciation for an spanish speaker.

Answer 9

Spanish & portuguese are closer. Italian would come in next.

Answer 10

well im latina and i saw an italian movie once and i understood , alot of thier words are said and ment the same thing to ours, like for example kitchen is the same for them as it is for us, and ive read e-mails in portuguese and i understood it but the spelling is sometimes hard to understand, and ive heard singing in portuguese and i understood it, so thats really a tuff question but i would have to say it depends where u live because portuguese from brazil is really close to a lot of other south american countries so it sometimes uses it in thier vocab. but italians our closer to spain and they are speaking the proper form of spanish.