How Similar are Spanish and Portuguese? (UPDATED!!)

mmm today I think I'll compare Portuguese with a special dialect of Portuguese called Spanish [Applause] [Music] hello everyone welcome to the Laing focused Channel and my name is Paul today's topic is how similar or Spanish and Portuguese as you probably know Spanish and Portuguese are both Ibero Romance languages that share a common origin they are different enough that they are definitely considered different languages but they're also closely related and quite similar in many ways on paper the two languages look very similar and speakers of either language can generally read the other language without too much trouble the spoken languages however are more different from each other and less mutually intelligible than the written forms and Portuguese speakers typically understand spoken Spanish better than Spanish speakers understand Portuguese well actually it's mostly because of the difference in pronunciation between the two languages but we'll get into that a little later Spanish and Portuguese share about 89% lexical similarity meaning that 89% of the words have a cognate or an equivalent in the other language now that doesn't always mean that 89% of the words will be the same because some of the different words are very basic and common words and even though cognate words often look and sound quite similar there are other cognates that have developed quite differently and now sound and look quite different for instance this pair of cognates clearly resemble each other in Spanish mundo and in Portuguese mood and these words mean earth or world now here's a less obvious pair of cognates in Spanish Beth and in Portuguese but these words mean fish so you can see the connection but it's not quite so obvious there are some very common everyday words that are different in the two languages for example in Spanish there's yo piensa from the verb been sorry and yo creo from the verb gray which both mean I think these words have cognates in Portuguese but it's also very common to say you wash from the verb Ishod there is a Spanish cognate of this word I yet but it only means to find not to think in Spanish there's the verb meeteth meaning to look at or to watch in Portuguese the common verb is we learn there is a Portuguese for me Tod but it's not commonly used personal pronouns the personal pronouns in the two languages are generally similar but with slightly different forms for example yo ill nosotros no sh but also the formal way of saying you is normally different in Spanish it's instead in Portuguese there's a word for C but instead people generally say who stood and isnora which is like saying sir or madam these are equivalent of Senor and Senora in Spanish but in Spanish they're not used as pronouns false friends you will constantly encounter cognates in Spanish and Portuguese but you'll also encounter lots of false friends words that look and sound the same and might share a common origin but their meaning is actually different and some of these could potentially cause some crazy misunderstandings pelado in Spanish it means skinned or peeled but colloquially it also means someone with a shaved head or a new haircut glove in Portuguese it has the same basic meaning of skinned or peeled but in Brazilian Portuguese it also means naked in Portuguese the word for octopus is both in Spanish the word for octopus is full book and Porterville means dust but it also means something sexual and kids don't Google it in Spanish una senex casita means a delicious dinner in Portuguese maecenas Zita means a weird scene and sena is also a slang word for thing so this could mean a weird thing Robina in spanish means tip like a tip for a waiter poopie mu means tuition fees like for University and in Brazilian Portuguese it means bribe so even though lots of words are pretty much the same in either language it might be a little dangerous to assume that they mean the same thing pronunciation the main reason that the spoken forms of the two languages are less intelligible than the written forms is because they differ significantly in phonology Portuguese has much more complex phonology than Spanish with many extra sounds and this is one reason that Portuguese speakers have an easier time understanding spoken Spanish than vice-versa consonants in Spanish the B D and G consonants have soft pronunciations that occur for example between vowels the way those soft sounds work is different in Portuguese European Portuguese has the soft D sound while some Brazilian accents don't for example in Spanish nada in Portuguese Nava and in Brazilian Portuguese nada Portuguese doesn't have the soft B in Spanish solare in Portuguese Seville next the rolled R sound of Spanish corresponds to a rather different sound in Portuguese when it's at the beginning of a word or if it's doubled in Spanish rapido in Portuguese choppy in Spanish da-rae in Portuguese - next the sound represented by a double L in Spanish has a corresponding sound in Portuguese represented by LH for example in Spanish there's saya and in Portuguese there's fuller meaning fail and Portuguese has some consonants that don't have an equivalent in Spanish first a sure sound spelled with ch or with X so in Spanish we have yella but in Portuguese [ __ ] meaning arrives a sure sound in Spanish we have a hence eeeh and in Portuguese we have this is assumed this is another example of a difference in soft consonants in both languages the letter G represents a soft G sound rather than a go when it's followed by an e or an i but the soft sound is different in either language listen again hence eeeh this is here next of sound Spanish doesn't really have a V sound it does have the soft B which kind of sounds similar to a V but Portuguese has a distinct V sound so in Spanish we have BC tap and in Portuguese we have visited in Spanish we have Libra and in Portuguese we have leave and one more as sound the sound zip is not found in many Spanish words but in Portuguese it's very common so in Spanish we have precisa and in Portuguese we have season this sound is often found between vowels and at the beginning of words vowels there are quite a few more vowel sounds in Portuguese than there are in Spanish Spanish has five pure vowels while Portuguese has all of those plus seven additional ones Spanish has just one a sound which sounds like a Portuguese has this and an additional one like the app inset in Portuguese it's difficult to predict which one to use in any given word these ones are different in Spanish meadow in Portuguese mil but these ones are the same in Spanish Missa and in Portuguese Missa when a word has the diphthong ei in Spanish it usually corresponds to an open e in Portuguese for example in Spanish siete and in Portuguese sit Spanish also has just one o sound like in the word go but shorter but Portuguese has an additional open o which sounds like the O and pot in Spanish a bill in Portuguese of view and sometimes the diphthong web in Spanish corresponds to the open o in Portuguese so in Spanish we have escuela and at Portuguese we have Cola now this might not seem like major differences so far but there are lots of differences like that reduced vowels vowels in Spanish are quite clearly pronounced in their full form but vowels and Portuguese often become reduced especially when they are unstressed at the end of a word so in Spanish we have casa but in Portuguese we have Gaza in Spanish we have leave it and in portuguese we have leave in spanish we have a bidet which means it opens and in portuguese we have up nasal vowels portuguese also has five nasal vowels that don't occur in spanish a nasal vowel means that some air is released through your nose which creates a distinct sound vowels become nasalized when they are followed by a nasal consonant an EMA or an N in Spanish can't add and in Portuguese can tell in Spanish in Suunto and in Portuguese immigrant this also happens when there is a tilde over a vowel like in this Portuguese word Alma meaning sister because of the extra vowels in Portuguese there are also more diphthong meaning two vowels that blend together in one syllable this includes some nasal diphthongs for example in Spanish we have sexy own but in Portuguese it's six so in Spanish we have lemonis and in Portuguese lamu ish little differences like these add up to make Portuguese and Spanish sound rather different grammar Spanish and Portuguese grammar are generally very similar but they do have numerous differences as well gender both languages basically have two genders masculine and feminine but sometimes the gender of cognate words is different for example words in Spanish ending with FA are masculine and their equivalents in Portuguese ending in Audrey are feminine so in Spanish we have el viaje which is masculine but in Portuguese we have a Viagem which is feminine both languages have for definite articles for the two genders in singular and plural but notice that Spanish also has the neuter singular definite article though it's not used with nouns but with adjectives or possessive pronouns in order to use them like nouns for example lo importante es el amor which means the important thing is love in Portuguese it would be we pretend our mood with all being the masculine singular definite article verbs the wave verb tenses work in the two languages is very similar almost all verb tenses have an exact equivalent in the other language just with slightly too rent conjugations so in Spanish we have nosotros comemos pescado which means we eat fish and in Portuguese that would be north rim space so the present tense form is the same and next the past tense sentence in Spanish a uske Miren pescado they ate fish and in Portuguese ill squirrel fish in this case the conjugations aren't exactly the same but they are equivalent now a future sentence in Spanish yo chlamydia biscuit which means I will eat fish and in Portuguese it's ill Cumbre page but without any context given for the simple future tense here this might sound kind of stiff and people often use the going to future form instead in Portuguese it would be ill vocal push and in Spanish it would be yo voy a comer pescado one difference in the verb system is that the perfect tense is formed with a different auxiliary verb Spanish uses of F as the auxiliary verb which means to have but only as an auxiliary verb the main verb for to have in Spanish is tener Portuguese has a verb oval but instead the verb did is used as the auxiliary verb which means to have it is a cognate of Spanish tener in Spanish we have yo la the liberal which means I have read the book and in Portuguese we have LLL tell you leave leave which means I have been reading the book so notice that the auxiliary verbs are different and notice that the past participle of the verb meaning read is almost the same but more importantly note that this type of sentence means something different in either language in Spanish it means I have read the book in Portuguese it means I have been reading the book in other words the past action is still continuing in order to say I have read the book in Portuguese you would use the preterite tense instead like this le livre I believe that Latin American Spanish is more like Portuguese in this regard and that difference is only in the present perfect the past perfect doesn't have that kind of difference so if we want to express they had read the book in Spanish we would say a VN later liberal and in Portuguese we would say ill stimuli the main difference between these two is just the auxiliary verb word order the word order is generally quite similar between the two languages as you've probably noticed already but there are some differences too in yes-or-no questions in Spanish the subject can come either before or after the verb like this habla English or a Java English but in Portuguese it must come before the verb like this LF a linguist the placement of object pronouns in Spanish the object pronoun normally comes before the verb for example el Musa which means he helped me in Portuguese it comes after the verb like this llll is doomed another example in Spanish let's say you that okay which means are you gonna help me or what and in Portuguese buzz wrists are okay or visors dharm okay actually the location of the pronoun in the first sentence is something that comes from Brazilian Portuguese but it's sometimes used in Portugal too because of the influence of Brazilian Portuguese through Brazilian TV shows and the like some people consider the second sentence to be more proper in European Portuguese contractions with prepositions in Spanish prepositions mostly function as individual units with just these exceptions the preposition de plus the definite article L becomes del meaning from that the preposition a plus L becomes L meaning to the there are just those two in Spanish but in Portuguese prepositions form all sorts of contractions so in Spanish we have an elevator which means in the book but in Portuguese we have new leave in Spanish we have de una Senora which means from a lady but in Portuguese we have Dumas Laura in Spanish we have de aqui meaning from here but in Portuguese we have the key these sentences mean Portuguese is a sister language of Spanish in Spanish el / - this is my language man Adela spaniel and in Portuguese put Kish emmeline will match panel word for words the Portuguese is a language sister of the Spanish these sentences consists entirely of cognates and have identical grammar the main difference is the different definite articles and the words for sister take a somewhat different form and mana ilmu this pair of words is a good example of how Spanish and Portuguese cognates can sometimes look and sound quite different let's look at one more sentence and see what we find these mean very few countries in the world take pride in having so many different styles of music and dance in Spanish muy poco spices en el mundo están algunos de tener tanto sestinas diferentes de musica a ballet word-for-word it's very few countries in the world are proud of having so many styles different of music and dance and then there's the Portuguese sentence wind box Paisley moon stones their intent steals differenced musica dancer word-for-word very few countries in the world are proud of having so many styles different of music and dance again these sentences are similar but there are a few differences the way of expressing very few is slightly different but the words are cognates next notice that in Portuguese the preposition and definite article contract together into one word while in Spanish there are separate words next we see the verb corresponding to to be in each language a staff in Spanish and also star in Portuguese they are both conjugated in the third-person plural present tense but you can see that the conjugated forms are different in either language next the words here are a bit different the Spanish word is an infinitive form while the Portuguese is a personal infinitive the infinitive by itself is tit and also notice that the word for dance is different but also notice that it sounds like the English word balle viley hmm there's also a cognate word in Portuguese bile but in Portuguese it refers to an event like a ball or a prom and in Spanish there's also the word danfa which refers to specific types of artistic dance as opposed to dancing in general very often there are possible cognates for every word in a sentence but they sometimes have a somewhat different usage or frequency of use in either language in these two similar sentences we see how similar the two languages can be with the biggest difference simply lying in pronunciation but things are often said more differently for example a somewhat more natural sentence in Portuguese might be wint box please remand spotty or large tent stills differenced musica des in this variation rather than to be plus an adjective here we have can plus the infinitive of a verb meaning to be proud so as you can see Spanish and Portuguese are indeed sister languages that have a lot in common they do have a lot of little differences that altogether make them distinct languages but knowing either language would definitely help you learn the other one relatively quickly so the question of the day for speakers of either Spanish or Portuguese who have studied the other language did you find it easy to learn what was easy and what was challenging also feel free to share other examples of their similarities and differences in the comments down below be sure to subscribe to this channel and also check out lang focus on Facebook Twitter and Instagram and a big special thanks to all of my patreon supporters especially these magnificent people right here on the screen for their monthly pledges thank you for watching and have a nice day [Music]

Channel: Langfocus

Views: 511,030

Rating: 4.9416409 out of 5

Keywords: language study, polyglot, foreign language, fluent, travel, phrases, linguist, linguistics, phonology, pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, verbs, How different are Spanish and Portuguese?, Are Spanish and Portuguese Similar?, Are Spanish and Portuguese dialects?, Are Spanish and Portuguese mutually intelligible?, Spanish language, Portuguese language, Romance languages, Latin, Spain, Latin America, Portugal, Brazil, Europe, Spanish Portuguese comparison, compare, Español, Português, Espanhol

Id: 82FgZEOn89k

Length: 19min 1sec (1141 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 10 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

Part of the Reddit community is hateful towards disempowered people, while claiming to fight for free speech, as if those people were less important than other human beings.

Another part mocks free speech while claiming to fight against hate, as if free speech was unimportant, engaging in shady behaviour (as if means justified ends).

The administrators of Reddit are fully aware of this division and use it to their own benefit, censoring non-hateful content under the claim it's hate, while still allowing hate when profitable. Their primary and only goal is not to nurture a healthy community, but to ensure the investors' pockets are full of gold.

Because of that, as someone who cares about both things (free speech and the fight against hate), I do not wish to associate myself with Reddit anymore. So I'm replacing my comments with this message, and leaving to Ruqqus.

As a side note thank you for the r/linguistics and r/conlangs communities, including their moderator teams. You are an oasis of sanity in this madness, and I wish the best for your lives.

[u/cOOlaide117]

Ironic that his example of mero for how Spanish lacks /ɛ/ actually has the Spanish speaker say [ɛ], because Spanish /e/ is [ɛ] in contact with /r/. I know when he calls Spanish phonology simple he's talking about phonemes only, but Spanish actually has up to 11 allophones for its cardinal vowels, though they're pretty predictable. Would a native Spanish speaker like to chime in and say whether it's a noticeable feature of a foreign accent to fail to use these allophones?

[u/WarblingMarble2]

Both languages are very similar, as much or more so than Dutch and German. Learning to read the other would take you about a month or two of dedicated study at most, and only slightly longer if you don’t study regularly.

Learning to understand the pronunciation of the other language is the hard part, though. Brazilians tend to have an easier time understanding standard Spanish varieties since it’ll seem like Portuguese pronounced as written to them. For Spanish speakers, the various accents of Brazil and Portugal can go from “I can understand practically everything” (for me, these are the coastal Brazilian and northern European accents) to “Are you sure this ain’t French/Russian?” (for me, the Minas Gerais and Interior dialects of Brazil; and the Lisbon, Insular, and some Southern European dialects). Even then, though, it took me about four months of listening to radio stations and watching shows from both Portugal and Brazil, with PT subtitles, to be able to understand the main accents (standard and popular dialects).

[u/PlutoISaPlanet]

Brazilian Portuguese is my first language but I was never alphabetized in it. I took Spanish in high school in the US and found it very easy. What trips me up the most with Spanish is Portuguese's use of the verb "ficar" which means "stay" and which is "quedar" in Spanish afaik. We use "ficar" for everything.
"Ja ficou pronto?"/"Is it ready"
"Ela ficou maluca"/"She went crazy"
"Sempre fica"/"She always does"
"Fica de olho nele"/"Keep an eye on him"
"Esse bolo ficou muito melhor"/"This cake turned out much better"

Also I don't know anyone in my family that conjugates "nós" for anything. Instead we just use "a gente"...

"A gente vai ver o filme"/"We're going to see the movie"
"A gente pescou no rio"/"We fished in the river"
"A gente nao sabe aonde fica"/"We don't know where that is"

[u/friguron]

Spaniard here.

They're 95% similar (if not more), and only some funny :) vocabulary differences and small grammar ones arise.

Any everyday Spaniard used to modern times can read and understand 98% read portuguese (no idea the other way back, but I would guess the same numbers might be valid).

The most difficult part for a Spaniard person is understanding Iberian Portuguese: Their consonantic and "dark" and "ambiguous" vowel repertory is really defying if you don't concentrate. Anyway, listening carefully (and speaking slowly) I can't imagine how Portuguese can be difficult for us, it isn't really :) I would say Portuguese is like "dark" Galician, which is 99,9% the same language as Portuguese (grammar I mean), but with Spanish "fresh and clear" phonology.

Spanish vs Portuguese would be aproximately like comparing Czech and Slovakian.

PS: Brazilian Portuguese is a strange beast which amazingly is MUCH CLEARER to understand for Spaniard ears. Really... Somehow their phonology is not "that dark and ambiguous" and you don't have to concentrate as much as with Iberian Portuguese.

PS2: It's said that no portuguese has never had a problem understanding Spanish, even the spoken variety, as Spanish sounds are much less ambiguous. But I have no idea about it, except some friends from Lisbon that told me that.

PS3: In the last decades in Spain/Portugal everyday goods (Shampoo, food, etc...) have been historically labelled in both languages, so when you're in the WC you get free Portuguese/Spanish lessons when dealing with stuff, just by reading shampoo labels :) That could be a funny fact, but it's probably an additional (meaningful) reason why Iberians know each other languages so easily.

[u/DalekWho]

I learned learned some Spanish in school, and learned Portuguese living in Rio.

I understand Spanish fairly well, but can’t speak it hardly at all, I know the words, but sound ridiculous.

I can read both fairly comfortably though.

[u/hconfiance]

Didn’t he do a video where he said English wasn’t really a Germanic language because it had so many French/Latin vocabulary?