Are the Spanish and Portugese languages very similar?

Question

Could a Spaniard and a Portuguese understand each others language?

Answer 1

Perhaps. Portuguese sounds like Spanish spoken by somebody who had a stroke and cannot articulate clearly.
( before somebody complains, let me say that I have read here very harsh opinions from people who speak Portuguese concerning Spanish )

Answer 2

Both of the languages have the same roots (Latin).(Many of the words of those languages sound quite alike). It can be confusing, but on the other hand help you if you know one of the languages.
I speak Spanish and when I was visiting Brazil, where Portuguese is spoken, they understood my Spanish and I could understand almost everything of what they said.
The main thing is to learn one of the languages really well and then if you feel up to it, start to learn the other. It´s true that it´s a little bit difficult for a Spaniard (Spain) to understand his neighbour country man from Portugal (and vice verse).
My advice to you is however, learn one of the two languages well first (and then the other, if you want to). Spanish is by the way one of the most spoken languages in the world (there is a clue for you). Good luck!

Answer 3

Yes they are very similiar. But they are also similar to Italian and French...all being 'romance' languages derived from Latin. But, not everything is the same. In fact much of Portuguese can be likened to some French as well in that some words are not like Spanish. It's easy though to understand Portuguese once you learn Spanish. Spanish is easiest of all languages mentioned. Even if you don't know what the words mean, as long as you know how to pronounce the alphabet you can pronounce any word. From there, it's easy to learn the other languages too.

Answer 4

Yes, these languages are very similar. Portuguese speakers (like me) can read very well any text in spanish. At the University I used to study with spanish books, and had no problems. We can understand also what we hear, but not so well. But it's difficult to write and speak. I live in Brazil. Last year I visited Argentina. It was easy for me to comunicate to the people in restaurants, bars, supermarkets, etc. But it seems that the spanish speakers don't understand so easy portuguese as we understand spanish.

Answer 5

Yes, these 2 are the most similar romanic languages around.

A Portuguese (from Portugal or from Brazil) can understand as much as 90% spoken Spaniard Spanish

A Spaniard Spanish can understand Brazilian quite well, but not European Portuguese (which has a somewhat closed accent).

In written form they are REAL similar, often sharing labelling in some food products (here in Spain), and I can tell you I understand 99% of written Portuguese.

Answer 6

Spanish, Portuguese and Italian are very much linked by history, by origin, and by territory.

For example: the verb do-
Portuguese - para fazer
Spanish - hacer
Italian - fare

However, in medieval Spanish "hacer" was written as "fazer", and just like this other words that have evolved from Spanish.

I speak Spanish (mother tongue), Italian (third), and Portuguese (scholastic), and have found easier to relate from Spanish to Italian, than from Spanish to Portuguese.
Spanish continues to evolve.

If you are interesting on this the website for the "Real Academia de la Lengua Española" offers more than 4 million resources about the history of Spanish from Spain as well as the Americas.

Finally, to answer your question...I do understand Portuguese (across), written and spoken. Although I can't really speak the language.

Answer 7

As mentioned, it's easier for a Spaniard understand what's written. The same happens to a Portuguese native speaker.

Answer 8

no at all!! about pronunciation... who get one can get the other one easily, but most of times spanish speaker doesnt understand what a portuguese speaker says, although sometimes it is easy to portuguese speaker to understand spanish! well, they sound to close, but there r many particular things of the language that r hard to each other to understand...

Answer 9

Yes, we understand each other (I'm Spanish), but learn to speak the other language correctly is as difficult as learning any other different because our grammars are quite different.

Answer 10

yes...

when i go to Lisbon, people can understand me in spanish.