How Similar Is Spanish To Portuguese?
Portuguese and Spanish are the most closely-related Romance languages, with approximately 89% of their vocabulary either over-lapping or close enough to be mutually intelligible in both languages. Both Spanish and Portuguese are members of the West Iberian language group, until a few centuries ago a dialect-continuum from the Pyrenees mountains on the border of France and Spain to the Portuguese Atlantic coast. Because of their shared ancestry, the two languages share extensive similarities and speakers of Spanish should be able to learn Portuguese with moderate ease. Interestingly, it is usually much easier for Portuguese speakers to learn Spanish than Spanish speakers to learn Portuguese. Experts still aren’t quite sure why that is.
Significant Differences
- Othography: Many similarly-pronounced words are spelled differently e.x. Spanish mayor and Portuguese maior.
- Foreign Influences: The Portuguese language was more influenced by French and African languages than was Spanish, which was more insular. Thus, many Portuguese words borrowed from non-romance languages will sound completely foreign to speakers of Spanish.
- Arabic Substratum: Spanish has been strongly influenced by Arabic due to centuries of Moorish rule and has largely retained most of the medieval Mozarabic vocabulary. Portugal, on the other hand, was never under Moorish rule to the extent that Spain was and thus retains few Mozarabic influences today.
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Portuguese shares almost as many of the same words of Arabic origin as Spanish does. By contrast, the other Romance languages were hardly influenced by Arabic vocabulary. In any case, Portuguese and Spanish are by far the closest major Romance languages today. They are remarkably close to each other in terms of vocabulary, grammar and structure. Educated speakers of Portuguese and Spanish can understand each other almost perfectly.
Hi i believe that Italian is closer to Spanish that Portuguese my grandad speaks all three and i asked him and he said Italian is much more closer to Spanish
I’m from Spain, and I assure you that here, and in Latin America, Portuguese is thought of as being the closest major romance language to Spanish by far in terms of vocabulary, grammar and structure – there is an 89% lexical similarity between Portuguese and Spanish. Between Italian and Spanish it is 82%.
Italian being 7% less lexically similar than Portuguese makes a huge difference, and ultimately makes Italian less understandable to Spanish speakers. Our accents sound similar but so what.
On the other hand educated Portuguese and Spanish speakers can converse with each other speaking their own languages and understand one another almost perfectly.
That is not the case between Italian and Spanish, because conversations always end up getting confused because of significant vocabulary, grammar and sentence structure differences.
From the beginning, the Portuguese and Spanish languages and culture have been remarkably close, like brothers, even if at times in past history there were some political tensions. Nowadays we respect each other totally and have a special Iberian relationship.
We were both great former colonial powers and today our languages are spoken by hundreds of millions of people in the world. For the longest time Portugal and Spain were one country. Portuguese and Spanish speakers are very close neighbours here in Europe, South America and Africa.
Spanish speakers are tired of Italians who claim to be the closest linguistically and culturally to us when they are not. It is the Portuguese and Brazilians who are.
That’s not true Jonathan. I agree with John’s position completely.
I’m of Argentinian background and I speak Spanish fluently. Although Italian resembles Spanish is some respects, mainly in accent and some vocabulary, it is not that close to Spanish as many people wrongly believe.
Portuguese on the other hand, is a language that is almost totally compatible with Spanish. Apart from a slightly different accent, Portuguese vocabulary is almost the same as in Spanish. Portuguese grammar is very, very similar to Spanish too.
When I hear Portuguese I always sense a very close proximity to Spanish, a shared same Iberian origin as evidenced in shared expressions, way of sayings things, things only Portuguese and Spanish speakers would understand among themselves. It’s hard to explain. I don’t get this sense when I hear Italian apart from the obvious Latin origin of the languages.
I can’t tell you how many times Italian speakers have tried to engage with me in discussions and only to get confused. A similar accent only goes so far. This is where Portuguese wins the day.
Almost any word that exists in the Spanish dictionary, also exists in the Portuguese one. Some times when we have different word preferences for the same thing we simply introduce another that means the exact same thing. Otherwise, almost all our words are the same. Sometimes they are spelled a tiny bit differently i.e., mangueira vs. manguera (hose) but identically pronounced, or a little differently pronounced but spelled the same i.e., Domingo (Sunday). The order in which we construct our sentences parallel as well: i.e.,
Spanish: yo quiero comer una naranja cinco veces por semana.
Portuguese: eu quero comer uma laranja cinco vezes por semana.
Italian: Voglio mangiare un’arancia cinque volte la settimana.
English: I want to eat an orange five times a week.