How hard will it be to learn Portuguese coming from Spanish?
I'm a native English speaker who is in the middle of learning Spanish, I would say that I'm in the higher intermediate levels right now but I want to get into Portuguese in a couple of years. How hard is the jump from Spanish to Brazilian Portuguese. From what I've seen the writing is similar but the spoken language sounds different.
Anybody gone from Spanish to Portuguese?
Home | Contact | About | Privacy Policy | Sitemap
Filed under: Spanish Lessons
Yes. Let’s just say, you’re in a good position. Actually they’re very similar. By learning Portuguese I’m assuming you mean Brazilian Portuguese which is by far the most popular form of Portuguese spoken in the world and used in the large country of Brazil with over 190 million speakers.
Portuguese the language is very similar to Spanish, in fact it’s the most similar language to Spanish. They share much vocabulary, I would estimate somewhere between 55-70% of the words are very similar or the same. That being said, the sound of the language is very different. The pronunciation rule in Spanish is very easy. In Brazilian Portuguese you do NOT pronounce the words the way they are written. It has a separate rule of pronunciation which makes Brazilian Portuguese pretty much incomprehensible to any Spanish speaker. As well as having plenty of new words and slight grammar alterations. Like I said, it is the closest language to Spanish, so you will be in familiar territory.
The most important thing to remember is that Brazilian Portuguese has a different set of pronunciation rules and you’ll have to relearn new patterns and ways of saying and doing things. It’ll take a while, but what’s excellent is that you have a great foundation already and it’s just a matter of tweaking and learning new rules and once you get down to studying it, you will start to see very consistent patterns and that’s the biggest hurdle to overcome. Once you’re able to get past that threshold and you finally learn the Portuguese way of doing things, then you finally gain a lot of understandability.
Learn as much Spanish as you can, because it will get you accustomed to a lot of the things that they do in Portuguese as well. At the same time, when you finally get down to learning some Portuguese, remember that it’s a different language and so you’ll quickly see the similarities and also the differences that exists among them.
If you are going to learn a 3rd language, Brazilian Portuguese is definitely the easiest 3rd language for you to acquire, because it is similar enough to Spanish that you won’t be lost, but still challenging enough that it introduces to a lot of new vocabulary words and ways of expressing and saying things and of course a totally new way of pronouncing things.
You have the basics of the language.
Go to http://www.fsi-language-courses.org for a free course that you can download. There is also a program that contrasts Spanish and Portuguese.
learn portuguese to talk like everyone it`s easy. i can help you too. just gimme your messenger
My Spanish teacher says if you just go to the market and buy some vegetables you can just understand it, but not for technical discuss.