Have any of you gringos managed to successfully learn both Spanish AND Portuguese as an adult?

Any advice on this? Is it best to master one first and then the other or do both at the same time? Does the similarity mess with your brain enough to make it not worth it? Is it a plus or a minus that some words and grammar are similar? (Would it be easier to learn Spanish and Japanese because they are so different?) What's a reasonable timeframe for attempting this?

I am about 50% of the way thru conquering Spanish but am in Brazil right now so thinking of giving Portuguese a crack.

I just got frustrated in DR since I've invested a lot of time in Portuguese and they don't speak it there (or in Colombia, which recent trip reports have put at the top of my destination list--but I think I'd want to learn Spanish first).

Any advice?

I did OK with both languages; Portuguese is more of an accent than a separate language. Normally, it would be considered a dialect of Spanish, but the official definition of a language (as opposed to a dialect) is that a language is a dialect with an army, navy and air force.

Explorer:

As a half-brazilian, I object to that statement (I think).. by your criteria, English and American are two seperate languages. Then again, I always thought that "man" and "woman" should be classified as two seperate languages (and psychoses) too. Seriously, I think of Port. as a mixture of Spanish and French, there's also some Celtic and Arabic thrown in (thanks to various invasions of Portugal) and in Brazil, plenty of Tupi-Guarani ("Indian") and African words, rythms, and constructs. Spanish is Portuguese without all the fun!

Khoofoo: For what it's worth, I've spoken Port. since I was a baby and went thru learning Spanish as an adult. Not a formal course, just by struggling thru reading some Garcia Marques and Vargas Llosa in Spanish and also what I've picked up while travelling around or talking to chicas here in the US. The fact that I could learn passable Spanish via "absorption" bolsters Explorer's argument - two dialects - but I understand that vice-versa (spanish to port.) is MUCH harder to do, dunno why. Lost of false cognates to watch out for (words that sound/look the same but mean completely different). My favorite - "comedor" - means "dining room" in Spanish, means (more or less) "Sandman" in Portuguese. "Tapas" is food in Spain, a spanking in Brazil, "biscoito", Brazil - cookie, "biscocho", Mexico - pussy, etc, etc... But the basic grammar is the same, the verbs are pretty much the same and for the nouns you can just poitn at things. I do pretty well just speaking portuguese with a "spanish accent", but as I said before, vice-versa is harder. Also, I don't think that you can just "fake" spanish unless you are a native speaker of another romance language.

Dunno if this helps, my only real advice to give you is to READ. Read novels, spanish with the english translation side-by-side, spanish and port. side by side... Vargas Llosa writes, to my eyes, a very clear easy tounderstand Spanish and it's been translated to a million languages ("Pantaleon e las visitadoras" is a classic), in Port, anything by Erico Verisimo, or try Jose Soares' "A Samba for Sherlock" (not the best Sherlock story, but available in both languages and very clear prose). Beware that Jorge Amado (Brazil's most famous novelist) writes a very dense, very idiomatic Port, hell *I* find it to be heavy going. Likewise, nothing wrong with getting an English-language novel and the Spanish or Port translation, I like spy-novel trash, you can find Ian Ludlum and Kenn Follet translated all over South America. Once you feel comfortable, read newspapers, read online, just READ. It's the best way to build vocaublary and familiarity with the language.

Boa Sorte/Buena Suerte!

BS

I also have to disagree with the idea that Portuguese is an "accent" or a simple variation on Spanish. Linguists regard Spanish as a fairly simple language to learn and Portuguese as a very complex and difficult language to learn. Both are romance languages, but have as many dissimilarities as similiarities.

Some of the best advice I ever received about learning Portuguese came from a work colleague of mine who lives in Rio. He was a fluent Spanish speaker before coming to Brazil, and had a hard time learning Portuguese because he tried to treat as a variant of Spanish. His advice to me was: respect Portuguese as a language in its own right. Don't try to go from English to Spanish to Portuguese and vice versa. This was excellent advice, and while I've now forgotten much of my Spanish, my Portuguese has improved substantially.

Agree with BS on reading as a great way to learn. One book I'd recommend is "Onze Minutos" by Paulo Coelho. In addition to its fairly straightforward use of BP, its central character is a Brasilian prostitute (this book was given to me by a garota de programa as "must reading"). I read it in Portuguese (very slowly, with dictionary in hand) and then when it came out in the US a few weeks ago I read it again, with the two copies side-by-side.

As always, I will throw out my rebuttal .......

Before I went to Brazil, a couple of years before I had traveled to Venezuela. In that country, the accent is different, but the vocabulary is very different from Mexican Spanish, even more than British English differs from the President's English. After that, going to Brazil, and finding that the big issue between the languages was pronunciation and some different vocabulary, well, it just didn't seem that much different from my experience in Venezuela.

Now, Italian is a big stretch from Spanish, and the Russian I am working on now is incredibly different from English or Spanish; but the the small differences between Spanish and Portuguese just don't seem so great.

BTW, what is your take on Andalucian and Catalon as separate languages from Spanish?

One remark. There is a significance difference between learning one of the languages when the other is a mother tongue, in which case it will help a lot and the risk of confusion is almost non-existent because the first language is "hardwired", as opposed to learning both as foreign languages in which case confusion is a serious byproduct.

BS-"Comedor" means Sandman in Portugues? (yeah, no extra "E" here in Portugues). Thanks buddy.

I have spoken to several people about this subject. All advise never try to learn two languages at once especially if they are similar in nature like Spanish and Portugues. (There is French, Italian, lots of Spanish and several other sounds involved)

As testament to this fact, I was in BA last weekend and their Castillian Spanish was blowing me away. Kind of like the Americans speaking to the English; The French Canadians speaking to the French; or, the Brasilians trying to communicate with people from Portugal.

Learn one at a time. Become comfortable in speaking, reading and writing then move to another language.

Comedor means "cocksman" in portugues, Sandman was just a handy illustration of the concept....

Portuguese and Spanish are kind of liek German and Swedish or Dutch.. enough common roots to totally screw you up. Learning both at once is probably near impossible, learn one then the other.. but learning one will definetly help learn the other. Besides, once you learn a 2nd language, learnign a 3rd, 4th, etc is much easier. You have to get your brain "wired" to accept that their is more than one way of vocalizing things.. once you jump that barrier, extra languages just become more of the same.

BS

I learned Castillian Spanish so I've never understood much of what the mestizos from this hemisphere say, be they Mexicans or Salvadorans or Bolivians.

When I first started hitting Mexico and Central America, I got a lot of stares because of the Castillian. I thought it was because my pronunciation was bad until I started going to Spain in the late 90's. My pronunciation was great there!

Now, I'm not too familiar with Continental Portuguese, but it seems from Baron's and some other stuff that I've read that Continental Portuguese and Castillian are less similar than Cont. Portuguese is to Central American Spanish, particularly on the T's and C's. Castillian and Brasilain Portuguese, particularly our favorite style, carioca, are alike in the fact that quite a few consonants are slurred all to hell.

If you're unfamiliar with Castillian, it is quite "lispy" if that is a word. Z's, C's and a few others are all pronounced "th" but kinda in an Elmer Fudd kinda way. Castillian is crisper than Central American Spanish - you can actually hear a little silence between words. Not nearly as much as English - we probably enunciate more syllables than any other language on the planet - but still, easier to follow.

I really enjoy studing languages. I've been around so much that I've picked up bits and pieces of quite a few - German, French, Canadian French, Hangul (Korean), some Japanese, a little Russian. I dated a Lufthansa flight attendent who was Spanish - but from Barcelona (Barth-ay-loh-na) so then I got Catalin Spanish mixed into the Castillian. Then, I became friends with a few Galicians, who of course spoke the Galician dialect of Spanish, and so on and so forth.

Catocony

Galician and Catalan are considered both by linguistic consensus and the government of Spain to be separate Romance languages from Spanish.

(Message edited by Reytj on August 18, 2004)

First off, I really don't think a person knows a language unless they have lived for a number of years in a culture where that language is spoken. About 7 years ago I decided to spend a few months learning Spanish. I am still at it. I think in English and always will. Compared to most Gringos, I speak fair Spanish and I can get by in Portuguese. It was much easier learning one first and then the other. Spanish is the easier of the two languages because it is based on consistent phonetics (unlike English or Portuguese) and Spanish is made up of less sounds than Portuguese. This is also true of verb tenses/moods.



(Message edited by Gitano on August 20, 2004)

Here's a Brazilian website worth checking out for two reasons if you are studying the language/culture. The first is that it is HUGE a la MSN with all sorts of opportunities to do everything from listen to numerous styles of local music to watching news videos (good luck understanding them) to getting advice on sex, love, home, work etc. The second reason is to check out their music section called Radio The Girl which not only allows you to hear full songs of umpteen number of groups but also has lots and lots of gorgeous women with little or no clothes on. Here's the link and here's a picture to get you started. Going back to the news videos, they all include a page with a written section which you can follow as the announcer speaks. Watch, or listen, to how they eat half the endings of the words. Spanish is a cinch compared to this. Anyway, give it a shot, check out the pictures, and definitely listen to the different styles of music in the country. Gaucho must be an acquired taste.

http://radio.terra.com.br/

In my last post I said I speak better Spanish than most Gringos, and then I notice that I am sandwiched in between TF and ReyTJ, either of whom can kick my ass without looking up from their bowl of Wheaties.

Anyway if you do know Spanish already there are some decent materials out there to learn Portuguese. I went this route and made progress pretty quickly. First off there is this book.

Com Licencia!: Brazilian Portuguese for Spanish Speakers

Also there is a web-site that explains the phonetic differences between the two languages. Once you learn these you can guess a lot of words. I tried explianing this to TF in Solarium one afternoon, but he seemed distracted at the time.

Can't find the web-site right now. I will look later. Nice web-site TF.

"I tried explianing this to TF in Solarium one afternoon, but he seemed distracted at the time."

No way! I remember EVERYTHING about that afternoon. There were women everywhere. Cute, pretty, hot, beautiful, gorgeous. You name it. I was surprised at how intimate the place was as I somehow was expecting something much larger. And the lighting was not dim as I had expected either. The music was too loud but that's the norm everywhere I suppose. So what else happened? Were you really telling me about phonetic differences? You know, next time we run into each other I promise not to let the girl on my other side distract me by slowly storking me under the robe. That's probably why I don't remember our conversation. And I'll tell her no kissing either.

HaHa. Gitano, I don't remember squat except that I was in heaven. In theory I had planned on returning this very month but, since I haven't called the airline, I guess that's out. Maybe next month. I am almost upon a birthday that spells certain masculine death so it might be nice to have dysfunctional problems somewhere besides here. Both American and United owe me a trip so it's time to get moving.

Good luck TF. I am making several trips to LOS over the next year. This should kill whatever remains of my Portuguese abilities.

Anyway to reiterate my conversations from Solarium and PAY attention this time.

Spanish and Portuguese have a 70% cognate rate. And you will never recognize half of them by ear. If you read Spanish well, you can pick your way thru a Rio newspapaer.

Portuguese does not stem change the verbs and gustarle* is English like in it's usage. Eu gosto ...

Words in Spanish that ..... become in Portuguese

end in N .... end in M
ie changes to just e

first example bien - bem
second example tambien - tambem

words that start with LL change to CH

llamar - chamar
llave - chave

oh, and the V is pronounced as in English.

words that begin with H change to F
words that contain j change to lh (like a Spanish ll)

hijo - filho

ñ = nh
ll = lh

an L often becomes an R

playa = praia
blanco - branco

Spanish strong R is pronounced as an H - Rio
Bahia - Barra

There is much more, but this should keep you sufficiently tongue tied. And if you do get back to Rio, check out terma Rio Antigo. Many have panned it, but I always seem to have a good time there. It is smaller, less crowded, well enough lit, and has more of a local flavor. It does not have the numbers like the bigger places, so it's a bad choice for a full expedition crew and the girls are not as used to English only speakers. I think that you migh enjoy it. Yes, the music is too loud, so you won't loose that charm.


(Message edited by Gitano on August 22, 2004)

Speaking of LOS, I've been wondering when you would get there. You are possibly one of the top world travelers on this board. And someone who also gets deep into the culture. (I bet you though I was going to say someone who gets deep into the women)

Seriously though, there are guys who seem to do nothing but drink and fuck and look for a MacDonalds wherever they go. And then there are those who learn something of the language, get real (sort of) GFs, and fantasize about never leaving and just going native.

Whatever works.

And after LOS? Russia or Eastern Europe? Montreal? Buenos Aires?