this post was submitted on 18 Dec 2023
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As a Romanian I can understand a lot of Italian and Spanish, but I really can't understand how Portuguese is related to these languages. I can't understand a single word. (French is different too, but I've heard it enough to pick up on it). On the other hand, my wife just naturally understands all romance languages, including Portuguese, so maybe it's just me.
How odd. I can speak a bit of Spanish. I used to be able to hold casual conversations (after a few drinks) but was nowhere near fluent. I was able to understand just a bit of Portuguese such that I was able to watch some Brazilian shows on Netflix and get the gist of about every third sentence.
I’ve been told that Portuguese speakers can understand Spanish pretty well, but that the reverse isn’t always true, and that both can muddle by in Italian with short phrases. French, on the other hand, is a whole different animal for me.
Portuguese from Portugal and from Brazil are extremely similar languages but not from a phonetic POV. Portuguese people sound like Russian people where as Brazilian people sound more like Italian people if that makes any sense.
That being said I very much disagree with the initial comment. Portuguese people will understand Spanish people somewhat well (depending on their age and education) but Italian and French is a bit of a stretch and it definitely isn’t the other way around. My theory for the main reason is that in Portugal almost no TV Shows are dubbed except the ones for kids and even then not always (I’m Portuguese and I watched many cartoons in Spanish on TV). This isn’t the case in the other European countries so they don’t really get used to hearing other languages often.