Posted: Sun Nov 05, 2006 4:51 am Post subject: Written mutual intelligiblity with Spanish
I read this on Wikipedia:
Native Portuguese speakers usually read Spanish seamlessly, with the help of a dictionary for less common words or words derived from archaic (for Portuguese) root forms. The same is not quite true on the other way around.
Why can't Spanish-speakers read Portuguese easily? I am not fluent in either language, but by using the comparitive method I can easily see how close the two are, and how they should be mutually intelligible in written form. _________________ Currently learning:
Spanish and Portuguese have a lexical similarity of 90%, so shouldn't you be able to understand, or at least recognize at least 80-90% of Portuguese words? Do you notice the use of many archaic Spanish words in common use in Portuguese (e.g. Danish in comparison to Norwegian/Swedish)?
Spanish and Portuguese have a lexical similarity of 90%, so shouldn't you be able to understand, or at least recognize at least 80-90% of Portuguese words? Do you notice the use of many archaic Spanish words in common use in Portuguese (e.g. Danish in comparison to Norwegian/Swedish)?
Well, I speak Spanish at about an 80% level, so that alone lowers my comprehension of Portuguese, as I don't have the advantage of approaching this from a completely natively-fluent level.
A word can have the same origin as a similar word in a different langauge, but it does not mean it is always recognizable to a speaker of that other language.
For instance, compare Sp. - Mejor, Por. - Melhor.
Even those two words are similar, but not necessarily recognizable right off the bat if a Spanish speaker does not know about some of the differences between the two languages. Now imagine dozens of those slightly different words, and you find that you may not understand the full text. I usually understand most written Portuguese enough to grasp the gist of the text, but this is not always the case. _________________ Operation Northwoods - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods
Favorite languages = English/Spanish
Followed by Italian/French/Dutch
Oh, you speak Spanish as a second language?
If I was you, I'd take advantage of your situation and learn the relatively minor differences between the two, so then you'd have another 200 million people you could speak with! You could also say you'd have 3 languages under your belt, which would no doubt look good on a resume... Of course it is probably not so simple, and would take some practice...
How can Porthos be illerate in spanish if he's literate in english and can speak spanish? Spanish has the same alphabet as english and is spelled very logic, only a few differences of the punctuation.
How can Porthos be illerate in spanish if he's literate in english and can speak spanish? Spanish has the same alphabet as english and is spelled very logic, only a few differences of the punctuation.
I think what he means is is he completely fluent (e.g. does he speak Spanish at a native or near-native level)
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