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The similarities and differences between Portuguese and Spanish

Are you ready?????

Map of the age of enlightenment period of Europe

So how did this split the balance of power between the languages and cultures?

Spain was not yet Spain

The average person nowadays has no idea that Portugal and Spain were actually where Spanish and Portuguese spread so vastly from. If you asked most people, they’d assume the two were Mexico and Brazil. The influence that two extremely small countries like Spain and Portugal, have had on the world is far unlike their size; it’s massive.

To learn about how Spanish and Portuguese are the two closest modern languages in the world?

Well how did Portugal become a country?

There are two main ways to say Spanish. Castellano which simply means “Spanish”, but is only used in certain parts, and Español which is used in Spain and other various other countries. Dialects vary with the largest range coming from Mexico. This because many speakers live in Mexico, so it is bound to get the largest regional differences. However, Spain is still considered the standard, even among Mexicans; Spain’s Spanish frequently appears on television. This is an interesting concept considering the history just mentioned above. Spain despite being less than half the size of Mexico in population, still directly affects the rest of the Spanish speaking world with its dialectal difference.

Throughout history there is so much to be said for how countries relations effect the population. From how they act, dress, and even their language, where countries are located has a huge impact on the later effects of said countries. This can be seen in Europe, as many of the Scandinavian languages such as Swedish, Finnish, and Norwegian; which are all countries located relatively close to each other, have the similar languages. YET, they don’t have the SAME language.

In, 1139 Portugal became an independent nation from a collection countries that would later be named as Spain. So Portugal and Portuguese are literally a spawn of Spanish. The Spanish influence is further seen as in 15th century when the Age of Enlightenment period was in full effect the country Spain led the charge in the expansion of the countries regimes.

Just how big is spanish?

Spanish is spoken in 20 countries and its influence is one of the biggest topics talked about in the world today. It’s currently the most studied second language in the United States, and because of this influence on the United States, it’s become the most common spoken second language in the country. While Spanish has also taken over most of South America and even parts of AFRICA!

So what about Portugues?

Portuguese is spoken primarily in Brazil and Portugal with other communities in Cape Verde, Uruguay, and surprisingly Macau China. Macau is a former Portuguese colony that Portuguese settles first found in the late 1500s. It was then a trading port for over 300 years while the Portuguese took up administration with Chinese authority. Then it officially became a Portuguese colony in 1887 and wasn’t transferred back to the Chinese until very recently in 1999. It is now the countries official co-language along with Cantonese.

In Equitorial Guinea, they have almost one million speakers, and this is in an African state. Many people did not know Spanish has had this type of impact on the world. Spanish was even an official language in the Philippines until a change in the Constitution in 1973. So even Asia has had a slight impact of Spanish culture and language, even though it’s relatively devoid today. Spanish has proven its right in the world by having a huge impact on the world and almost on every continent on the Earth. Its sister Portuguese has been less influential, but is still a major language.

Elica from travelengua.com states explicitly, “My first taste of Portuguese came from my first formal class in college. I decided it was a good idea, because I would be able to fine-tune what I had already learned, in addition to actually learning how to speak it. I’m going to tell you; about ninety-nine percent of my class had knowledge of Spanish, if they weren’t already fluent in it. The largest difficulty (from personal experience) is if you’re going to learn Portuguese after you’ve learned Spanish, is learning how to speak it—correctly. My Brazilian Portuguese teacher would never fail to remind us that, either.” This is a good quote that explain the difference from a native Spanish speaker on trying to acquire Portuguese.

However, Portuguese is spoken most famously in its country of Portugal and its main former colony Brazil. The number of speakers worldwide is currently listed as 250 million speakers making it the 6th most popular language in the entire world. The language has been growing and its countries influence has been as well. Brazil currently has the 7th GDP in the entire world, which makes Portuguese one of the most important up and coming languages to learn in the entire world.

Despite being similar, the languages are pronounced and written completely different. This allows for a lot of confusion, which is usually seem by second language learners doing something called, “mixing languages”. Where they may be speaking one languages and then accidently mix the other into it. This can happen to anyone learning similar languages, but happens more frequently with Spanish and Portuguese.

Finally, from the history of the two countries, to how they have affected the world up until today, Portuguese and Spanish have cemented themselves as two of the most important languages in the world. It’s no debate, Spanish and Portuguese have taken over almost a third of the world collectively. In the past, even Spain and Portugal had no idea they’d be such an important factor in the world today.

This makes them extremely important for business, trade, and commerce!

As for similarities and differences in the actual spoken speech, there are lots of examples. Many people who speak Spanish don’t have a hard time learning Spanish, and vice versa. This is because they both devolved from Vulgar Latin and have now many similar vocabulary and grammatical points. They also have a lot of common vocal similarities such as rolling r’s, un voiced consonants and more!!

That's where the similarities end however. Now to talk about the differences..

So how about language comparisons?

Thanks for listening

Those empires colonizing those countries has dramatically shaped the world to what it is today. We also talked about how the languages are similar and how they are different. How even though they are the most similar languages in the world, they have major differences and it’s possible to mix them up in everyday speech. Learning about cultures is the way we grow as people, and learning about two of the most dominant countries in the world’s past and how their languages shaped the future can be a great learning point for anyone wishing to study the history of linguistics.

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