Portuguese and Spanish are the closest Romance languages

«Spoken portugues sounds like Russian or German to me. »

I find Russian sounds rather different from German.
It is a fact that the Russian-Ukranian migrant workers in Portugal put the Northern Europeans to shame as far as pronunciation is concerned.

Ori, your point is valid, but...Judeo/Spanish is basically old Spanish with Portuguese and Hebrew admixture. I saw a Tom Hanks movie recently called, Every Time We Say Goodbye. I understood everything that was said in Judeo-Spanish in that movie, but I heard a lot of Portuguese words used. For instance in Ladino the word for hat is 'chapeu' (like in Portuguese) not 'sombrero' as in modern Spanish.

«Spoken portuguese sounds like Russian or German to me. »

This comparison between Portuguese and German (sounds/phonetics) is the most incorrect and unobjective I have ever read or heard of. It also implies that Russian and German must sound similar.
Some people should switch on their brains before putting their fingers on the keyboard to propagate bull.sh.it about the portuguese and German languages.

I don´t think that Portuguese sounds like German (i know a little) or Russian in any way. Portuguese sounds similar to Spanish to me but less similar than Italian (eventhough it might be).
Maybe Amancio just meant to say that it doesn´t sound as familiar as the other two languages do, when it´s spoken.
(Well, im just guessing but i dont really know)...

The other two languages = Catalan and Italian.

I said German as i could have said Dutch, Norwegian, Danish, Russian Slovene....... For my untrained ear all these languages sound the same.

Ana, brasileiro sounds very very like spanish but portugues doesn´t sound like spanish

I agree.

I agree with you entirely Huchu. I find too many people have groundless opinions in this forum. The abundance of irrelevant comments here never ceases to amaze me. I grew up speaking Portuguese to many of my Spanish speaking friends. My parents are from the island of São Miguel, Azores, where the accent is quite heavy. Yet my friends and I understood each other very well - difference in accent was never a hinderance to us. I keep hearing this nonsense that the Portuguese accent sounds like Russian or German. Yes, continental Portuguese sounds a bit guttural, but so does Castillian Spanish, maybe even more so. The Brazilian Portuguese accent sounds softer and more like the South American Spanish accent. But this is all academic. The fact is that once you spend a little time with a Portuguese speaker for example, and as your ear becomes accustomed to the sound of the language, the issue of accent becomes a moot point. Portuguese and Spanish are so close and intelligible primarily because of the vocabulary, grammar and the way that the sentences are constructed. There are many words which are exactly the same, and many words which are the same, but have one or two extra letters, or letter combinations. For example: 'work' (Spanish=trabajar) (Portuguese=trabalhar), or 'hose' (Spanish=mangera) (Portuguese=mangeira) or 'also' (Spanish=tambien) (Portuguese=também) Identical words are: 'afternoon' (Spanish=tarde) (Portuguese=tarde) or 'nothing' (spanish=nada) (Portuguese=nada), or 'to eat' (Spanish=comer) (Portuguese=comer). I could go on and on, but you get the picture.

I think that Brazilian and Italian are very similar to Spanish but in a different way.
Anyway, there are different accents or variations for both languages so it´d all depend on which variation is used. For example, I´ve been to Abruzzo in Italy and i couldn´t understand easily to the people there. To me just certain variations of Italian and Brazilian sound very close to Spanish. Portuguese sounds familiar also but not so much , well not to me, as i dont know any of it. (Anyway, i could understand it but as in this thread we´re comparing..)
As i said before this is just my opinion...

George

I live in Badajoz, 3km from Portugal, like I said, a city with many Portuguese population and i am very used to listen that language and i can assure you that here in this part of the border portuguese is considered a language unintelligible and completely foreign in spoken way (en su forma hablada). I know, like almost everyone in this forum, that Spanish and Portuguese share his structure, grammar, vocabulary..... All spaniards with a minimum level of knowledge can read a book in Portiguese.

"I find too many people have groundless opinions in this forum. The abundance of irrelevant comments here never ceases to amaze me."

What i find in this forum sometimes are people who would argue even about the price of fish just for the sake of arguing. Im a native speaker of Spanish, i have no idea about Portuguese or Italian and i find Italian or Brasilian more familiar to me than Portuguese from Portugal no matter that they are neighbour countries. This is my opinion, if you agree cool, if you don´t, can you at least respect it? thanks

No matter that Spain and Portugal are neighbour countries ...meant.

=>Portuguese and Spanish are the closest Romance languages<=

No Italian is....

Ana, with all due respect, you make a mistake, like many do, that is very annoying. Your refer to Brazilian as though it is a completely separate language. The national language of Brazil is 'Portuguese', not Brazilian. Yes, Brazilians have a Spanish sounding accent, but the language they speak is Portuguese. Granted, the accent of Portugal sounds more slurred and nasalized. So what? Yes Amancio, I understand your point, but don't assume that just because the Portuguese people who live near the Badajoz border speak with a unusual accent, that everyone else in Portugal does too. You are making a sweeping generalization. Have you ever been to Lisbon, Coimbra, Algarve? Even in Portugal there are many variations in accent, just as there are many people with different levels of education. If I spoke Portuguese to you I know that you would understand me, and I was even born in Canada. But my parent's are well educated, and so I learned to speak a nice souding Portuguese. I have also heard quasi-unintelligible Spanish spoken, but am I suppopse to assume that the Spanish language is unintelligible in general, just because there are some speakers who have a heavy accent? What I am talking about here is languages as they are spoken in their metropolitan standard by educated persons. If we keep this in mind, then it will be easier to keep this conversation focused. Once we start splitting hairs about rural accents within a given country, the subject gets too complicated.