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Buy studying Portuguese, it becomes quite easy to pick up Spanish, and to a lesser extent, Italian. A lot of words are similar-looking on paper, but with a more clear, phonetic, easier way to hear and speak them in Spanish.
Studying any other Romance language, doesn't seem to help to much with understanding Portuguese though. Portuguese just is so vowel-oriented. A lot of contouring the mouth to pronounce the unusual vowels, and Portuguese isn't nearly as phonetic either as Spanish. Meaning, you can't really just guess how to say it or hear it, you really have to hear the words being spoken a lot to get an idea of how to say it yourself.
Yes, dialects can be a little tricky sometimes.
For example in my valley three different dialects are spoken: Piemontese, Occitan and Franco-Provençal (all classified as romance languages/dialects). With Piemontese I don't have any problem, but of the other two I can understand just a few words.
For example in the Franco-Provençal patois of my village "vin ahai" means "come toward me " (in italian it's "vieni verso di me"), "dzeleunna" means "chicken" ("gallina" in italian), "DZÔRNAIË" means "day" ("giornata" in Italian) and so on. And when spoken it sounds even more difficult and also quite "harsh".
So that my relatives rarely speak this language (they prefer piemontese or Italian) in practice I don't understand it at all.
In general, when someone is speaking seriously in a dialect different from my I understand really few words. I rarely see a text written in dialect, but it is true that in written form is easier to understand something.
Franco-provencal was the language spoken in my region of France until about the 19th century, when Parisian centralism started to destroy most dialects in France.
I have to say that before starting to learn Italian I didn't understand any other romance language aside few words here and there. French sounds too different.
Now that I speak italian though, I find it easier to understand Spanish for example, when I go there I would say that I can grasp the general meaning of a conversation much more easily, even though I could not really speak.
I have a hard time understanding some Italian accents though. It all depends on how much dialect they use when they speak, also. A Friend from Naples always uses dialect without realizing it and speaks in a way that questions sound like affirmations and vice-versa, that's very confusing to me.
Also, sometimes on the radio I hear someone speaking and I think.... "this is so clear... that must be some French speaking Italian ! Even the "r" sounds like French !", then my girlfriend turns to me and says... "No, this is standard Italian... the one that you can only hear on the radio..."
On the contrary, I can't understand French and Portuguese, just a word here and there but often not the entire sentence. Portuguese seems more difficult for an Italian than Spanish, and French even more. I can't understand anything of spoken French.
Romanian sometimes sounds like a odd Italian, but it's not understandable to me.
Sometimes they show French movies on TV here. I don't understand hardly anything, but when I read the Portuguese subtitles, I often think to myself, gee, you really should have recognized those words. But when those French words are part of a sentence, that continuous stream of sounds, I just don't recognize their stems most of the time, not even where they begin and end.
Hi, I'm Italian and I've studied a little bit of Spanish, a language that I like very much and whose grammar is very similar, almost identical to our; also most of the words are very similar too, with various exception of course. Before I started studying, I was already able to understand most of written Spanish, but I wasn't able to speak Spanish (which is much more difficult).
Sometimes I meet people from South America that speak Spanish or Italian mixed with Spanish word. It's natural to understand them, unless they speak too fast, and Italians generally like the Spanish accent.
On the contrary, I can't understand French and Portuguese, just a word here and there but often not the entire sentence. Portuguese seems more difficult for an Italian than Spanish, and French even more. I can't understand anything of spoken French.
Romanian sometimes sounds like a odd Italian, but it's not understandable to me.
Portuguese is impossible to understand except when you hear TV News or some scientific documentary.
Italians can get by in Spanish or with what they think it's Spanish, and Spanish do the same in Italy.
There was a feature on an Italian paper that asked Spanish tourists to stop inventing Italian words!!!
French is very similar to Spanish, but phonetics is different except in Occitania, Provence, etc.
Since northern French invaded provence and occitania during the cathar's crusade, they imposed their dialect.
As long as people speak the official "high" versions of their languages, understanding each other is easier, but as soon as people speak their dialects, a conversation is almost impossible across different languages, sometimes even within the same language. A Portuguese speaking the dialect from the Azores just can't have a reasonable conversation with a Spaniard speaking the dialect from Andalusia.
Each island in the Azores has a different accent and with variations within each island the accent that is often referred to by the Continental Portuguese as being from the Azores is from the island of Sao Miguel it deviates the most from the standard Portuguese accent from Lisbon. There are areas of the island of Sao Miguel that I cannot understand. The general accent from the island I was born on in the Azores is not recognized as being an Azorean accent on the Mainland because it is completely different from what you hear on Sao Miguel in fact when people travel on the Mainland they frequently are asked what region they are from.
I have grown up in an area of California where you find Portuguese and Spanish speakers. It is not possible for a Native Portuguese and Spanish speaker to carry on a conversation exclusively in their native language if neither of the two people has any knowledge of the other language but it is possibly to communicate a few simple ideas very basic. I have cousins that are married to Italians I can understand a few basic words in Italian, that is it one word here and there. French speakers and Portuguese speakers cannot understand each other if neither has had some exposure to the others language.
Well, being a native speaker of Brazilian Portuguese, I galician understand very well, I would say perfectly if not for the "spanish accent". Some comparisions between portuguese, galician and spanish: (PT, GL and ES)
(I was very sick these days.)
PT: Eu estive muito doente nesses dias.
GL: Eu estiven moi doente neses dÃas.
ES: Yo estaba muy enfermo estos dÃas.
(I just found an old friend on the street!)
PT: Acabei de encontrar um velho amigo meu na rua!
GL: Acabei de atopar un vello amigo meu na rúa!
ES: Acabo de encontrar un viejo amigo en la calle!
(All the information was transmitted.)
PT: As informações foram transmitidas.
GL: As informacións foron transmitidas.
ES: Las informaciones fueron transmitidas.
As seen, Galician is very similar to Portuguese, I would say about 90%. The Spanish about 70 to 80%. And the similarity from Spanish to Galician would be about 85%. But in the act of speaking, the spanish language is closer to the galician.
Well, being a native speaker of Brazilian Portuguese, I galician understand very well, I would say perfectly if not for the "spanish accent". Some comparisions between portuguese, galician and spanish: (PT, GL and ES)
(I was very sick these days.)
PT: Eu estive muito doente nesses dias.
GL: Eu estiven moi doente neses dÃas.
ES: Yo estaba muy enfermo estos dÃas.
(I just found an old friend on the street!)
PT: Acabei de encontrar um velho amigo meu na rua!
GL: Acabei de atopar un vello amigo meu na rúa!
ES: Acabo de encontrar un viejo amigo en la calle!
(All the information was transmitted.)
PT: As informações foram transmitidas.
GL: As informacións foron transmitidas.
ES: Las informaciones fueron transmitidas.
As seen, Galician is very similar to Portuguese, I would say about 90%. The Spanish about 70 to 80%. And the similarity from Spanish to Galician would be about 85%. But in the act of speaking, the spanish language is closer to the galician.
Interesting!
If you don't mind, I would use your examples for another comment.
My first language is Italian, andmore or less I can understand what those sentences mean (at least seeing them written). But italian for them is quite different.
PT: Eu estive muito doente nesses dias.
GL: Eu estiven moi doente neses dÃas.
ES: Yo estaba muy enfermo estos dÃas.
ITA: Sono stato molto male in questi giorni
In practice only the word for "very" looks similar, right? But I can still understand the sentence because "doente" sounds like "dolente", while "enfermo" sounds like "infermo". Both those words are more or less more formal synonymous of "ill", that no one uses in everyday life but that are known by the most of people. Instead "dias" sounds similar to "dì", which is a less common way to say "day".
PT: Acabei de encontrar um velho amigo meu na rua!
GL: Acabei de atopar un vello amigo meu na rúa!
ES: Acabo de encontrar un viejo amigo en la calle!
ITA: Ho appena incontrato un mio vecchio amico per strada!
In this case the words for "found", "old" and "friend" are quite similar, but the first word (acabei/acabo) and the words for "street" are completely different from any italian word I can think of ("calle" is used only in Venice to name narrow streets. And it is also a flower name). So this sentence would be kinda difficult to translate for us.
PT: As informações foram transmitidas.
GL: As informacións foron transmitidas.
ES: Las informaciones fueron transmitidas.
ITA: Le informazioni furono trasmesse (or, even better, "le informazioni sono state trasmesse")
This one is really easy to understand, even if we are more likely to use a different verb tense the more literal translation has a nearly complete correspondence with Italian.
So, trying to translate from those languages to Italian we are often able to reconstruct the meaning of the sentence (sometimes completely, more likely only partially). Usually for us Spanish is the easiest one, but there is not such a big difference (I'm still talking about the written form only).
Sometimes, when we found a false friends, we can also give a completely wrong interpretation to the sentence.
This is about a written text, instead the spoken language would be much more difficult to understand. I usually get only few random words.
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