The truth is, If an average Spanish speaker pays close attention and makes an effort, they will see that Portuguese is much easier to understand than Italian, as Portuguese shares a lot more words in common with our language than Italian and the grammar is a lot more identical. I suspect this is mostly a problem for native English speakers who have learned Spanish as a second language, rather than for native Spanish speakers.I don’t own this book, but I’ve had it recommended to me by Spanish speakers as a great introduction to Portuguese.You already have a vast knowledge of vocabulary and will recognize the many cognates easily, so reading will be a piece of cake.Many, many words are almost identical once you learn how to translate the different endings:Spanish often uses dipthongs where Portuguese doesn’t:Then again, sometimes Portuguese uses dipthongs where Spanish doesn’t:The vast majority of Spanish words are either identical or recognizably similar in Portuguese, once you learn the substitutions above. And the odd word that differs has a predictable cognate in either language. We can have lengthy conversations in our own languages, about most things, and understand each other remarkably well. If you haven't begun studying yet that probably all sounds like nonsense but there are just some small differences in the use of conjunctions and prepositions that could cause a large-ish difference in interpretation if you were unaware.Furthermore, would I understand my friends if I could speak Portuguese and they were speaking Spanish?You would be able to get the basic idea of the conversation more frequently than a native Spanish speaker could in listening to PT, but by no means would you fully grasp what was being discussed.As others have said, PT speakers usually can understand Spanish just a little better because Spanish generally speaking has less complicated sounds - or at least less unique sounds overall. The languages are not so similar as to make it easy for all Brazilians and their Spanish-speaking neighbours to understand each other easily. And when we have just a superficial relationship with the person who we are talking to?
(And what a shame, and how UNBELIEVABLE, that the native speakers recording the lessons never told anyone at Pimsleur that, “Hey, we would never say that” – and refuse to take part in this misleading project. Growing up, I still refer to elderly people as “senhor(a)” never as “você”, but I use “você” to everybody else. Most of the portuguese understand spanish and 100% of brazilian variant, and the other way doesn't happen.That said, if I started with Brazillian Portuguese, would I still have an advantage in learning Spanish.Also is it any easier for Spanish speakers to understand Brazillian Portuguese rather than European Portufuese?For the Portuguese (in Portugal) they'd say it's easier for them to understand Spanish than an average Spanish would understand Portuguese. I find I can understand quite a bit of spoken Brazilian Portuguese, while Peninsular Portuguese has a very different accent. THE FIRST LESSON BEGAN USING O SENHOR AND NOT VOCE. Maybe you should note thatI just learned more from this one page than from 60 lessons on Pimsleur. There’s even a Wikipedia page comparing … How much more similar can 2 peoples and countries be? )The course is not totally off. It may have to due with intelligence, focus, effort, or maybe the fact that they don’t give a crap about trying to understand. Isa, I agree – I lived in the DR for a year and noticed the same thingI think the pronounciation of “nh” is wrong , we brazilians dont pronounce like italians and portuguse people do , we pronounce these words nasalizedI’m a speech language pathologist (audiofonologa?) The Pimsleur course, incidentally, was specifically titled “Brazilian Portuguese”. Good luck!A common sentence by spanish tourist in Portugal is "no te entiendo" (I don't understand you). The guy in the video has a terrible country accent, with a terrible retroflex R that hurts in my ears (without prejudice but I … The Portuguese usage of já for present perfect is not totally absent from Spanish. In customer service contexts, employees will usually address customers this way, similar to the polite use of “sir” or “ma’am” in English. “Você” is used and uderstood by everyone, but it’s not very commonly used this way, in the singular. I respect you’re opinion but I can’t relate. There will always be people who will choose to deny the plain, hard facts, but I have pretty much given you the close language situation between Portuguese and Spanish in a nutshell.ter is TENER in Spanish not tengar.