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Portuguese there are a lot with English because the heave influence from French and Latin in the English.
It is estimated there are 1000 words similar for both language. Read in English is not difficult for us the difficult is understand the pronounce.
1000 Words You Already Know in Portuguese
Posted on 20. Sep, 2007 by Transparent Language in Learning
Did you know that you can use a large swath of your English vocabulary in Portuguese?
It is no secret that Portuguese is a Romance Language and that it shares many cognates with languages such as French, Italian, Spanish and English. Since this blog focuses on helping English speakers learn Portuguese, let’s dive into an examination of some different categories of English/Portuguese cognates. [I will save the caveats for the end of the article]
1. Nouns of Quality – Words ending in ‘TY’
Take an English noun ending in ‘TY’ replace the ‘TY’ with ‘DADE‘ to form (in many cases) the correct Portuguese word. It is worth noting that these resulting Portuguese nouns are generally female.
• CIDADE = CITY
• VELOCIDADE = VELOCITY
• SIMPLICIDADE = SIMPLICITY
• NATURALIDADE = NATURALITY
• CAPACIDADE = CAPACITY
2. Words ending in ‘TION’
Following a similar method as in 1. simply replace the ‘TION’ with ‘ÇÃO’ to form the Portuguese correspondent.
• SIMPLIFICAÇÃO = SIMPLIFICATION
• NAÇÃO = NATION
• OBSERVAÇÃO = OBSERVATION
• NATURALIZAÇÃO = NATURALIZATION
• SENSAÇÃO = SENSATION
Again as in 1. these Portuguese nouns are typically female in gender.
3. Common Adverbs – Words Ending in ‘LY’
Using the English root, one can formt he Portuguese equivalent by replacing ‘LY’ with ‘MENTE.’
• NATURALMENTE = NATURALLY
• GENETICAMENTE = GENETICALLY
• ORALMENTE = ORALLY
4. Words Ending in ‘ENCE’
In these cases, it is possible to switch ‘ENCE’ with ‘ÊNCIA.’
• ESSÊNCIA = ESSENCE
• REVERÊNCIA = REVERENCE
• FREQÜÊNCIA = FREQUENCE
• ELOQÜÊNCIA = ELOQUENCE
5. The Grand Finale – Words that do not change
Many words that end in ‘AL’ in English are exactly the same in Portuguese. Since you already know these words, take all that time you saved by not having to memorize them, and practice the sound of the terminal ‘AL’ in Portuguese. Remember, do not pronounce the final ‘L,’ favoring a sound more like the ‘AU’ dipthong in English.
• NATURAL = NATURAL
• TOTAL = TOTAL
• GENERAL = GENERAL
• FATAL = FATAL
• SENSUAL = SENSUAL
Caveats: Okay… so nothing in life is that easy. As you might imagine, there are many many exceptions to these rules, and it is imperative that one memorize the exceptions in order to use these categories properly. For example: geralmente is cognate with generally, and is used much as English speakers use the word typically. Another example: capacidade is the correct word to use to say ability; as far as I know (and my dictionary agrees) there is no such word as abilidade in Portuguese.
Finnish is a peculiar language for the reasons that it isn't Indo-European but is older than many of other modern languages, like English, German or Swedish.
Nevertheless the Finnish word for cat is Germanic in origin too, it has just gone trough a very long evolution (katz - kass- kiss - kissa). The Estonian word for cat is closer to the Germanic origin; kass. But note that in Hungarian the word is macska, identical to the South Slavic mačka and Albanian macja.
The numbers in Finnish from 1 to 10 are extremely old remnants from the proto-Uralic languages and have been us since the proto-Uralic languages arrived to Finland. But what happens with larger numbers?
Tusina - douzaine, dozen
Tiu - Tio (Swedish 10), later Finnish 20
sata (100) proto-Uralic, might be from Sanskrit
tuhat (1000), tuksant (proto-Baltic)... hmm tuksant... thousand...
miljoona - million
The numbers in Finnish from 1 to 10 are extremely old remnants from the proto-Uralic languages and have been us since the proto-Uralic languages arrived to Finland. But what happens with larger numbers?
Tusina - douzaine, dozen
Tiu - Tio (Swedish 10), later Finnish 20
sata (100) proto-Uralic, might be from Sanskrit
tuhat (1000), tuksant (proto-Baltic)... hmm tuksant... thousand...
miljoona - million
The larger numbers were no doubt borrowed at a much later date. This is not unusual, actually. For example, Japanese still uses indigenous numbers for 1 through 10. Beyond that, all numbers are Chinese loanwords. If there were once native Japanese numbers beyond 10, they have been lost.
The word for "mother" begins with M in almost every language. (Or else, N- in some)
But in Georgian, "mama" means father, and "deda" means mother.
This is another interesting feature in Finnish too.
Äiti is the current word for mother, but it is supposedly from proto-Uralic ämä. That word and mama obviously are very close to each other, while mother, madre and mutter are a bit different. This word might have a common origin, but have changed along the way in different languages. And again, in Hungarian mother is anya, referring to a different evolution, (in Turkish anne).
Isä is the word for father in Finnish. This is straightly from proto-Uralic isha, and hasn't evolved at all. Instead, vater, father, fader are all from a proto-Germanic origin (or bastardised Latin), while papa, père, padre are from Latin.
Many linguists have noted the prevalence of M- sounds in words for "mother," and, to a lesser extent, stops such as P-, T-, and D- in words for "father," and suggested that this has been influenced by baby talk; e.g. the tendency of very young children to prefer simple nasals and stops and reduplication---e.g. Mama, Papa.
The Finnish words seem to be outliers in this regard. Are äiti and isä the words Finnish children actually use to refer to mother and father, or are there other terms? Few English-speaking children actually call their parents "Mother" and "Father," they use the childish words Mama/Mommy and Dad(dy).
German has a unique penchant for refusing to accept ISV words from modern science. "Television", with minor phonetic adjustments, is the same in every language in the world except German, who call it "Fernsehen". All other Germanic languages are perfectly happy with variations on "television".
"Police" (phonetically respelled if necessary) is another word that seems to be universal, except in Ireland, where it says "Garda" on the sides of patrol cars.
One bizarre connection is the word "night", which is the word "eight" preceded with an N in both Romance and Germanic languages. Here they are in English, German, French, Italian, Spanish:
Yet, the Romance and Germanic languages usually have very few cognates.
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Another oddity, in Greek the word for Yes sounds a lot like Nay and the word for No sounds a lot like Okay: ναι, οχι (nai, okhi)
In Italian it's "notte" by the way.
These similarities generally are related either to a common Indo-European origin or to a cognate from an ancient language (usually Greek or Latin but also an old Germanic language).
A cognate in Chinese to Indo European due to Tocharian contact.
蜜=mi4
So what's so special? Lets go back to the bronze age:
"mjit" in Old Chinese, remove the tone and insert the final consonant stop and add a glide.
This is from mJet from proto-tocharian. What is the cognate in English? "Mead", have a cup my dears.
Looking at Thai numerals, I noticed they are very regular, like the Chinese numerals, and the Thai language has not been isolating long enough for a breakdown to occur. Thai dialects have pronouns for plural and dual that are portmanteau compared to modern ones which are just words meaning "servant" "master" and so on, which to pluralize have the word "puak" meaning "group" added before. Chinese underwent a similar situation, some dialects just have 3 pronouns with no plural equivalent, many modern varieties had to innovate by using words for "house/group/ground/lot" in front, some have contracted them. So why were the numerals so regular despite having been old enough to be fused? The answer was they were borrowed: https://www.into-asia.com/thai_langu...ce/numbers.php
It does tug at one's head, why does one numeral system have inconsistencies such as Russian yet we have something so crystalline like Vietnamese? Well Vietnamese borrowed them but why not keep the original? Then there is Korean with two sets, one native and one Chinese and a learner must use both for different words?
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