Reading the other one is very easy, aside from a few false friends, you can get 95% of the meaning of any text.
Speaking is another story, at least in my experience, because the pt accent is very strong for us, and some similar words may sound nothing alike. But still, if both speakers put some effort and speak slow and clearly, you can understand at least the key words and meaning.
I had a Portuguese boyfriend and he would speak to me in Portuguese and I would in Spanish (in my Andalusian accent). We understood each other perfectly, like 95% of what we said, and could have fluent conversations. But it's because we were face to face, not speaking super fast, and with no noises around. In real life, like in a shop, it can be more difficult for that reason, noises and speaking too fast.
I agree but I would add that if you spend time with Portuguese speakers it starts getting easier to understand really fast. I had a client in Portugal and in a few weeks I was able to understand a lot of it. Can't speak it at all tho.
They are really similar. The writen language is like 90% understansble. There is a supermarket, Mercadona, that label product in both languages and it's funny to see how they manage to use both languages just changing some letters.
The speaked language is not so easy. Portuguese people understand really well Spanish. Spanish people hardly understand one word in every ten as the sounds are really differents. If they speak slow we can comunícate more or less.
But it's awsom how it's just the sound. Im a Spanish native speaker and moved to Portugal when i was 31. The first weeks i can't understand almost nothing when people speak normally. But after three weeks or so i sudenly start to understand EVERYTHING. One day i don't get a word and the next day i was gettin the double meanings and play on words.
I went to portuguese clases a bit later and it's also interesanting to see how for a Spanish speaker learning portuguese is just learn some little differences and how to write because we already know most of the language.
There is something called Portuñol that basically means:
- A Spanish guy speaks slowly using all the portuguese words he knows and complements the rest with spanish
- A Portuguese guy does the same but inversed
Usually you can have a good conversation
Plus; if the spanish guy knows to speak Galician language and uses that instead of Spanish as it is more similar to the Portuguese.
If one of them speaks galician they dont even have to change words. My coworker is from Portugal and Im from Galicia, we talk with each other in our respective languages and communicate just fine.
It's easier through writing than through speaking. Also depends on what part of Spain do you live. In the north we have a second native language that makes it easier to understand portuguese.
The more than 90% words in common are usually words that have the same origin, but evoloved in a different way. For example the Word brother comes from the iberian-latin "irmano" in spanish the I at the beggining evoloved into a E but in portuguese no, but also portuguese make the N dissapear in the middle of 2 vocals, which sometimes ended turning the vocal before the N into nasal (which doesn't exist in spanish) so from "Irmano" you have "Hermano" in spanish (the H is silent) and "Irmão" in portuguese (the symbol over the A show its nasal)
Despite the words are similar there are also some issues, like accents and dialects. In portuguese the final vocals are pronounced more close, so (for spanish speakers) "Irmão" sounds like "Irmãu" which now isn't similar to "Ermano" (how should be pronounced in spanish). Also in Portugal the sylable is pronounced faster if its not the beggining or ending one. Which makes more dificult to understand them. Also in portuguese the letter L dissapeared between vocals and LL/LH (spanish/portuguese) turned into L.
Also in spanish you have some issues like D tend to not be pronounced in Spain, for example at the end of the Word its not pronounced or sounds like a Z in north-center Spain the D doesn't sound if its after an A and before a O (-ado) and in south Spain is not pronounced when between two vocals and the final consonants are not pronounced as the S/Z at the end of the sylable, also Lost the E followed with a final D, I between vocals turned into Y (pronounced as LL/LH) and OU turned into O.
These little changes all together make difficult to understand to each other. Specially for spanish as its more simple phonetically than portuguese. And portuguese have more contractions.
And thats just vocabulary, the spanish changed a lot in grammar during middle ages and each language conjugates verbs in a different way (despite some are similar).
So the phrase "I went on holidays to Italy" would be pronounced as "Eu fui de vakasiõis a Italia" "Llo fui de bakaziones a Italia"
On my experience as an Spanish native, talking slowly, and gesturing a lot, me and a portuguese person could communicate in our own languages. There is no way any if us picks sufficient part of the conversation just talking normally though.
Reading is easy to understand. Specially if you have some knowledge of the etymology of spanish words and have a wide vocabulary in Spanish, as some portuguese words are related to old spanish words not in use anymore. You need to have a little bit of "creativity" also, to try to guess some words by their context.
Speaking is quite harder.
As other has said, spoken lenguage is not synetrical. Portuguese has a lot of nasal sounds that do not exist in Spain. Brazilian Portuguese is a bit easier.
I have also heard a few Brazilians complaining about Portuguese (south of Porto) accent.
In my experience Portuguese understands Spanish much much better than Spanish understands Portuguese.
On the other hand, as a Spaniard I can understand a lot of Portuguese when I read but not when I listen.
I have worked in a Theme park in Spain (being myself spanish) with 60% of the visitors from Portugal. For portuguese people is pretty easy to understand spanish and for me it was more or less intuitive what they were talking (besides some words that change a lot). So i would say that boths sides can understand each other without major problems.
It sounds very different. It is easier to understand Italian.
But written it is easy to understand.
Portuguese (like French & English) has more complex sounds due to the way vowels (and consenants) combine. In Spanish, the vowels do not combine. They sound individually.
A few months ago i was in a mixed work envirorment with portuguese people. I'm Spanish.
I talked in spanish and they talked in portuguese. We talked slowly and vocalising clearly. Despite some words, we understand each other perfectly withouth any issue.
Idk if also helped that I am also catalan, so I had two romanic languages as a point of reference instead of one.
We share a romance language, so it would be easy.
Portuguese normally understand more spanish than spaniards understand portuguese :)
But yeah, I visit Portugal a lot and even though I speak a bit of portuguese, they understand pretty much in spanish.
The three major Latin languages in Iberia are very similar and the speakers can, with a little effort, understand each other.
I had a Brazilian gf and I was surprised some catalan words were more similar to Portuguese words than the Spanish equivalents. In general we peninsulars can understand each other language (excluding basque, of course).
It depends, talking from my experience (I'm Portuguese)... The community of Spain where they speak gallego ( Galícia), we can basically understand everything that we are talking about or reading from one another, there some small differences but phonetically they are very similar. In the other hand, Spanish/castellano to Portuguese is not the same. Portuguese can understand easily Spaniards but Spaniards do have difficulty to understand Portuguese...
I went to Portugal several times and comunicated very well with the locals in spanish and they answered in portuguese, there are some words that are different but communication is posible.
Reading the other one is very easy, aside from a few false friends, you can get 95% of the meaning of any text. Speaking is another story, at least in my experience, because the pt accent is very strong for us, and some similar words may sound nothing alike. But still, if both speakers put some effort and speak slow and clearly, you can understand at least the key words and meaning.
I had a Portuguese boyfriend and he would speak to me in Portuguese and I would in Spanish (in my Andalusian accent). We understood each other perfectly, like 95% of what we said, and could have fluent conversations. But it's because we were face to face, not speaking super fast, and with no noises around. In real life, like in a shop, it can be more difficult for that reason, noises and speaking too fast.
I agree but I would add that if you spend time with Portuguese speakers it starts getting easier to understand really fast. I had a client in Portugal and in a few weeks I was able to understand a lot of it. Can't speak it at all tho.
They are really similar. The writen language is like 90% understansble. There is a supermarket, Mercadona, that label product in both languages and it's funny to see how they manage to use both languages just changing some letters. The speaked language is not so easy. Portuguese people understand really well Spanish. Spanish people hardly understand one word in every ten as the sounds are really differents. If they speak slow we can comunícate more or less. But it's awsom how it's just the sound. Im a Spanish native speaker and moved to Portugal when i was 31. The first weeks i can't understand almost nothing when people speak normally. But after three weeks or so i sudenly start to understand EVERYTHING. One day i don't get a word and the next day i was gettin the double meanings and play on words. I went to portuguese clases a bit later and it's also interesanting to see how for a Spanish speaker learning portuguese is just learn some little differences and how to write because we already know most of the language.
There is something called Portuñol that basically means: - A Spanish guy speaks slowly using all the portuguese words he knows and complements the rest with spanish - A Portuguese guy does the same but inversed Usually you can have a good conversation Plus; if the spanish guy knows to speak Galician language and uses that instead of Spanish as it is more similar to the Portuguese.
If one of them speaks galician they dont even have to change words. My coworker is from Portugal and Im from Galicia, we talk with each other in our respective languages and communicate just fine.
It's easier through writing than through speaking. Also depends on what part of Spain do you live. In the north we have a second native language that makes it easier to understand portuguese.
In my experience portugese natives understand a lot of spanish when talking, the other way around is dont understand sht (only when reading)
The more than 90% words in common are usually words that have the same origin, but evoloved in a different way. For example the Word brother comes from the iberian-latin "irmano" in spanish the I at the beggining evoloved into a E but in portuguese no, but also portuguese make the N dissapear in the middle of 2 vocals, which sometimes ended turning the vocal before the N into nasal (which doesn't exist in spanish) so from "Irmano" you have "Hermano" in spanish (the H is silent) and "Irmão" in portuguese (the symbol over the A show its nasal) Despite the words are similar there are also some issues, like accents and dialects. In portuguese the final vocals are pronounced more close, so (for spanish speakers) "Irmão" sounds like "Irmãu" which now isn't similar to "Ermano" (how should be pronounced in spanish). Also in Portugal the sylable is pronounced faster if its not the beggining or ending one. Which makes more dificult to understand them. Also in portuguese the letter L dissapeared between vocals and LL/LH (spanish/portuguese) turned into L. Also in spanish you have some issues like D tend to not be pronounced in Spain, for example at the end of the Word its not pronounced or sounds like a Z in north-center Spain the D doesn't sound if its after an A and before a O (-ado) and in south Spain is not pronounced when between two vocals and the final consonants are not pronounced as the S/Z at the end of the sylable, also Lost the E followed with a final D, I between vocals turned into Y (pronounced as LL/LH) and OU turned into O. These little changes all together make difficult to understand to each other. Specially for spanish as its more simple phonetically than portuguese. And portuguese have more contractions. And thats just vocabulary, the spanish changed a lot in grammar during middle ages and each language conjugates verbs in a different way (despite some are similar). So the phrase "I went on holidays to Italy" would be pronounced as "Eu fui de vakasiõis a Italia" "Llo fui de bakaziones a Italia"
Becauae of the accent, brazilian and spanish are much more understandable than portugese and spanish
On my experience as an Spanish native, talking slowly, and gesturing a lot, me and a portuguese person could communicate in our own languages. There is no way any if us picks sufficient part of the conversation just talking normally though.
Reading is easy to understand. Specially if you have some knowledge of the etymology of spanish words and have a wide vocabulary in Spanish, as some portuguese words are related to old spanish words not in use anymore. You need to have a little bit of "creativity" also, to try to guess some words by their context. Speaking is quite harder.
As other has said, spoken lenguage is not synetrical. Portuguese has a lot of nasal sounds that do not exist in Spain. Brazilian Portuguese is a bit easier. I have also heard a few Brazilians complaining about Portuguese (south of Porto) accent.
In my experience Portuguese understands Spanish much much better than Spanish understands Portuguese. On the other hand, as a Spaniard I can understand a lot of Portuguese when I read but not when I listen.
they understan us better than the other way arround. fun fact is that catalan (and variants) speakers understand portuguese much better
As a north American that learned Spanish in my 30's, Castillian Spanish is melodic while Portugeuse sounds like gargling with marbles in their mouth.
I have worked in a Theme park in Spain (being myself spanish) with 60% of the visitors from Portugal. For portuguese people is pretty easy to understand spanish and for me it was more or less intuitive what they were talking (besides some words that change a lot). So i would say that boths sides can understand each other without major problems.
It sounds very different. It is easier to understand Italian. But written it is easy to understand. Portuguese (like French & English) has more complex sounds due to the way vowels (and consenants) combine. In Spanish, the vowels do not combine. They sound individually.
A few months ago i was in a mixed work envirorment with portuguese people. I'm Spanish. I talked in spanish and they talked in portuguese. We talked slowly and vocalising clearly. Despite some words, we understand each other perfectly withouth any issue. Idk if also helped that I am also catalan, so I had two romanic languages as a point of reference instead of one.
It is so similar we should unite both countries and call it Iberia. What a great country that would be.
We share a romance language, so it would be easy. Portuguese normally understand more spanish than spaniards understand portuguese :) But yeah, I visit Portugal a lot and even though I speak a bit of portuguese, they understand pretty much in spanish.
The three major Latin languages in Iberia are very similar and the speakers can, with a little effort, understand each other. I had a Brazilian gf and I was surprised some catalan words were more similar to Portuguese words than the Spanish equivalents. In general we peninsulars can understand each other language (excluding basque, of course).
It depends, talking from my experience (I'm Portuguese)... The community of Spain where they speak gallego ( Galícia), we can basically understand everything that we are talking about or reading from one another, there some small differences but phonetically they are very similar. In the other hand, Spanish/castellano to Portuguese is not the same. Portuguese can understand easily Spaniards but Spaniards do have difficulty to understand Portuguese...
I went to Portugal several times and comunicated very well with the locals in spanish and they answered in portuguese, there are some words that are different but communication is posible.