Comments on: Should I study Spanish or Portuguese?

By: Adolphus

Adolphus — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 18:22:01 +0000

“a big hump for a lot of people because Spanish has more verb conjugations than any other romance language”

That’s not true. Portuguese has the most. It has the Personal Infinitive, which does not exist in Spanish, and it still employs the Future Subjunctive– necessary in everyday speech and writing– which is archaic and not used in modern spanish. With that said, I am a fluent reader of Portuguese and a good speaker. My Brazilian friends say I have an accent, and I still speak using English sayings– that is, I don’t know the `way`, instinctively, that a native speaker would say something.

With all that said it took me around 6 months to get some conversational fluency, and around 8 months to be comfortable hearing and understanding lectures, reading complicated novels and poetry, and to be able to hold conversations and express myself without having to use a dictionary. It helps that I am an English student, have a huge vocabulary, lots of freetime, and enjoy reading and studying 5-8 hours a day.

For me, reading Spanish with my knowledge of portuguese is easy. It has less verb conjugations, material is more widely available, and the amount of cognates make reading and listening easy. If you learn portuguese first spanish will be easier: portuguese has more verbs, more sounds, and less available learning material. I would recommend a membership to a University library– for grammar books and dictionaries– and a Kindle–because they’re are thousands of free books in portuguese available for download.

In the day to day, Spanish is more useful, and the literature more widely available. You’ll have more chances to hear and practice, and it will be more beneficial in your work (depending on what you do).

I do think Portuguese is prettier, and I enjoy speaking it more, and moreover authors like Machado de Assis, Eça de Queiroz, Eugenio de Andrade, José Cardoso Pirés, Luis de Camões etc. make it worth the trouble to learn. Plus, Brasilian girls are beautiful.

By: leire

leire — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 03:06:57 +0000

i’m spanish and i can understand a portuguese person. if i don’t be wrong, theportuguese is from the galician-portuguese(a dialect of the spanish). the both languages are very similar like all the romanic languages. the portuguese was a dialect of the latin that changed. the spanish was the same. so you can stand a portuguese if you speak spanish and vice versa.

By: Tonia!

Tonia! — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 03:06:57 +0000

I am somebody who can be deemed as fluent in Spanish since I speak the language quite well.
Yesterday, I decided that I would start learning Portuguese aswell and have already started using various websites to aid me. I would suggest that you learn Spanish first because in my opinion (not necessarily true), I think that it can be deemed as the ‘centre language’ to all romance languages since once you know it, you’d be able to understand and possibly read others, including Portuguese quite well.
Also, with Spanish and Portugese, there are many linguistic links so it shouldn’t be much of a problem in learning the two.

Hope that helped!

By: Fromafar

Fromafar — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 03:06:57 +0000

There is no technical reason why it would be easier or harder to study one before the other. Portuguese speaking people tend to understand Spanish more than the other way around because they are forced to more frequently since they are outnumbered. Spanish speaking people might never have to deal with Portuguese speaking people or Portuguese literature. That is not so for Portuguese speaking people.

By: refugiotrans

refugiotrans — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 03:06:57 +0000

You heard wrong. A Spanish-speaking person can certainly understand Portuguese!

Spanish is not only more widely spoken than Portuguese, but it is also more of a core language for learning other romance languages such as French and Italian.

By: V for Vendetta ♪

V for Vendetta ♪ — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 03:06:57 +0000

Spanish would be much more effeciant with regards to your career, however, portuguese might sound more romantic.!

By: PartyAnimal21

PartyAnimal21 — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 03:06:57 +0000

I think that you should speak Portuguese becuause there are alot of ppl that know spanish so they got you covered. Portuguese sounds rlly cool anyways!!

By: Tommy

Tommy — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 03:06:57 +0000

If learning a language is easy for you it probably makes no big difference which of these you learn first. I suggest, from reading the answers, that it boils down to what you feel like doing.

Since you plan to do both, start with the language that has the most verb forms.

In case you missed it; you might enjoy this non-profit site http://www.verbix.com

By: short2stuff1922

short2stuff1922 — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 03:06:57 +0000

Spanish is mostly used in many parts of the world than Portugese. I suggest Spanish it is easier.

By: Haruka

Haruka — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 03:06:57 +0000

umm NO, im spanish and i can understand portuguese very well really, and i dont speak it
learn spanish, only cuz its mostly spoken than portuguese, honestly