Can A Spanish Speaker Understand Portuguese

Can A Spanish Speaker Understand Portuguese Youtube A spanish speaker and a portuguese speaker that have never been exposed to each other’s languages will understand around 45% of what the other says. in real life, of course, this is not that common. The two are fairly mutually intelligible but the relationship is pretty asymmetric. so, portuguese speakers can understand spanish better than spanish speakers can understand portuguese. for more info read the empirical study "mutual intelligibility between closely related languages in europe" by gooskens et al. (2017).

Can A Spanish Speaker Understand Portuguese Can a spanish person understand a portuguese person? while spanish and portuguese are closely related, the languages are not totally mutually intelligible. spanish speakers may be able to understand written portuguese to some extent but understanding spoken portuguese can be more challenging due to differences in pronunciation and vocabulary. Short answer — a lot. about 89% of their vocabulary is similar. that’s why if you speak portuguese and try and read a text in spanish, you can understand almost everything. and here we are talking about more technical vocabulary. the language people speak in the streets will always differ more. Comprehension might be easier for a portuguese speaker reading or hearing spanish, but they won’t be able to understand everything. how long does it take to learn portuguese and spanish? according to the foreign service institute (fsi), an agency tasked with educating diplomats, it takes around 24 weeks to learn both spanish and portuguese. Because portuguese speakers are used to more complicated sounds, it’s easier for them to understand the spaniards than the other way round. learn more about the history of spanish . portuguese started functioning as a separate language in northern galicia where it evolved from the vulgar latin that was spoken there.