Are Spanish and Portuguese really the same language?

08 September 2005

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Well, if Portuguese and Spanish aren't varieties of the same language, they're surely sister languages, and very close sisters at that. If we define dialects as speech varieties that are mutually understood, we can say they are, in fact, dialects of the same language. It's not uncommon to find a speaker of say, Brazilian Portuguese, talking to an Argentinean at an airport: each speaking his own language, both understanding each other, with just occasional need to stop now and then to clarify the meaning of a word. They communicate very well most of the time, as long as they avoid using slang or talking too fast.

Communication works because Spanish and Portuguese share around 80% of their vocabulary, and most of the same grammatical structures, things like the endings on nouns and verbs. Where communication breaks down, it's often because of differences in pronunciation. Listen to these two sentences, first in Spanish, then in Portuguese:

"Meus irmaos alemaes cantam bem"
"Mis hermanos alemanes cantan bien"

For me what jumps out right away when I hear someone speaking Portuguese, are the nasal sounds that characterize the language--this is true for Brazilian Portuguese as well as Portuguese from Portugal. Did you hear the difference, for example, between hermanos (in Spanish) and Portuguese irmaos ?

In addition to some differences in grammar and word order, there are words that sound the same in both languages but have different meanings. The verb "pegar" in Portuguese, for example, means "pick up"; in Spanish it means "hit". Put that in the context of a babysitter getting instructions for care of the baby... and you can imagine some confusion.

When reading -- where, of course, pronunciation isn't a factor -- the great amount of overlap in words and grammar means that a speaker of Spanish feels almost like he's reading his own language when he picks up a Portuguese newspaper. A recent study found that educated native speakers of Spanish with no previous exposure to Portuguese could understand as much as 95% of an academic text written solely in Portuguese.

But... there are other criteria used to differentiate a dialect from a language. As the saying goes, a language has an army behind it, but a dialect doesn’t -- and Portuguese has had its own army since the founding of Portugal in the 12th century. It's had an official grammar book, giving it the status of a separate language in the eyes of the Portuguese, since 1536. Like Spanish, Portuguese came from the colloquial Latin spoken by the Romans when they were on the Iberian Peninsula -- but on the western side of the peninsula, largely separated by mountains from Spain. With separation came differences in the two languages. By the way, let's remember Galicia, a mountain region of around 3 million people in the northwest corner of Spain, just above Portugal. They speak what I'd describe as a Portuguese heavily influenced by Spanish, which some say is a dialect of Portuguese and some say is a separate language.

You may be surprised to hear that Portuguese is the fifth most widely-spoken language in the world, used on four continents. In addition to Portugal, as I've said, it's the language of Brazil, the U.S.'s largest trading partner south of the border -- and one of the few countries in South America where Spanish is not spoken. In Africa, you'll find Portuguese in Mozambique, Angola, Guinea-Bissau, and Cape Verde. You can also hear it in Asia in places like the islands of East Timor, Macao in southern China, and Goa at the tip of India.

So, there are a lot of reasons why you might want to learn Portuguese. Above all, if you speak English and add either Spanish or Portuguese to your repertoire, you'll be able to talk to half the people in the world!

That's the linguistic thought for today, which comes from Dr. Ana Maria Carvalho, Director of the Portuguese Language Program at the University of Arizona. And this is the Five-Minute Linguist at the College of Charleston, in cooperation with the National Museum of Language. Visit us at www.cofc.edu/linguist . In the meantime, keep in mind that wherever you are, and whatever you do, language makes a difference.

Comments

Posted by: Marco de Pinto at September 18, 2005 08:44 AM

Posted by: webmaster at September 20, 2005 04:05 PM