Question for BRAZILIANS!?

Question

I noticed that when u read instructions to use something you usually find them in portuguese from Portugal, and portuguese from Brazil, however, it isn´t written in spanish from latinamerica and spain, english from england and the us... my question is, is it so different that they have to put them both? wouldn´t u people understand the portugal portuguese?.
Thanks.

Answer 1

Actually there's no problem on understanding normal literature between both versions of the language. The real issue here ist that for technical instructions sometimes you can't afford ambiguity - and in order to avoid problems, some companies take the decision of translating in both. Anyway this isn't a general rule.

In any case, you may consider that, differently from Spanish, the portuguese language doesn't have a strong unification entity that rules the useage of the language in the whole world.
As a matter of fact, the CPLP, nothing more than a simple nations forum constituted by the countries that have Portuguese as official language, is trying these times to impose for the first time in history the orthography unification.
Portuguese is the last western language that still doesn't have it!
They will most probably get this through, but yet the vocabulary differences will remain.

Answer 2

This is not true. In Brazil we speak the same language as in Portugal. There are some difrerence in pronunciation, and some differences in spelling, the same as in british and american english, and european spanish and south american spanish, but it is not necessary to write both. There is only one portuguese language. I visited Portugal twice, I have relatives and friends there, we use to talk on telephone, and no problems with communications.

Answer 3

Actually, what we find the most is brazilian portuguese. Brazilian portuguese has a bigger publicity than european. However, it's extremely rare a part of a text we cannot understand in european portuguese.
Anyway, when they speak sometimes it not easy to understand.
They always understand us.

Answer 4

Yes dear, some words are very different. People from all Portuguese-speaking countries can talk without any problem, but some difficults can appear. Exemplis gratis:
-Bus:
*Brazil: ônibus
*Potugal, Macao, São Tomé and Príncipe, Mozambique, Angola and other: Autocarro.
-Actor
Brazil: ator
*Portugal and other: actor
(the increase of letter "C" happens in many other words)
-Egypt:
*Brazil: Egito
*Portugal and other: Egipto
Do you understand me? There's a project among the Portuguese-speaking countries (a Organization named CPLP - Portuguese Speaking Contries Community - Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa) to equal at the most the wrote of the Language in our contries. The most famous Portuguese is the one spoken in Brazil. The mark of the birth of the language appear with work of Luís Vaz de Camões, the book "Os Lusíadas", wich separated Portuguese from Spanish. Moreover there's another factor to this difference: the accent. The accent of Brzil is very different from the one in other contries. So, it is, mny times, difficult to talk. I hope I helped! So long!

Answer 5

I think it's way more different than Britain and US english. Lots of words have different meanings. What I mean is... I could understand something written in portugal portuguese, but there isn't any guarantee.
For example "o miúdo é muito giro" means in portugal portuguese "the boy is very handsome" and in brazilian portuguese it has no meaning, it would be "the small is very spin"...

Answer 6

Well i guess that's how they do it LOL
Good luck =)