Portuguese and Spanish are the closest Romance languages

It´s curious because I find the spoken portuguese of Elvas, Campo Maior, Estremoz (all this cities close to the border) softer than spoken portugues of Lisboa, estoril, benavente but both are unintelligible for us. I have gone several times to Lisboa (only aproximately 200 km), estoril, Fatima and Coimbra and luckily everyone understand spanish and speak it a little.

The last thing I´ll say on this topic is:
- I know that the official language of Brazil is Portuguese, i only said "Brazilian" to specify that i was reffering to Brazilian Portuguese and not to Portuguese from Portugal.
- If i have to compare, i´d say that in general, i understand Brazilian better than Portuguese from Portugal.
- Also, I can understand Italian better than Portuguese from Portugal.
-So, I can understand some spoken Italian and some spoken Brazilian when i hear them, as both of them sound familiar to Spanish, just that in a different way. About the one i understand the best..well, i don´t know..I understand both of them quite at the same level. But to me, the closest language to Spanish in Europe (outside Spain) is Italian.
My opinion is that you can not be too objective about this as you´re a native speaker of Portuguese. I think that you should talk about what language you consider to be more similar to Portuguese and not about what language you consider to be more similar to Spanish, as portuguese is your native language and not Spanish.
So this is all i have to say.

from me point of angle I sink the brazilian weed is weaked !

http://www.disbealig.com/

check it out ! respect !

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

You did not say anything, you wrote it. If I have heard you, may be I would have known the way you meant it. But OK I accept your reply that your ears are untrained in those languages.

"What i find in this forum sometimes are people who would argue even about the price of fish just for the sake of arguing."

The internet is a written medium which reaches millions of people simultaneously, so that you can easily propagate errors and false views. In this case false views about a language to which George and I are native speakers.
But OK I accept your opinion that you do not understand european Portuguese. It exhibits a multitude of closed and voiceless vowels which do not exist in Castilian.

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

What does neighbourhood between two countries or between two regions of a country have to do with intelligibility between their languages? You have the best example in Spain: Basque and Castilian are not intelligible languages. The reason why the Basques speak Castilian is because they must learn it at school. Germany and Poland are neighbour countries with unintelligible languages, etc.

Okay Ana, I'll indulge you. As a speaker of Portuguese, I state emphatically that Spanish is the closest romance language to Portuguese.
It is the same either way, according to your logic. Are you happy now? I doubt it. Your arguments lack weight simply because you are speaking solely based what you think, feel etc., and not on hard facts. I sensed early on your negativity toward Portuguese. But you are just one person, as such, you are entitied to your opinion, however unsubstantiated it may be. I know that here in Toronto, the views of most Spanish speakers I have met contrast with yours. They always state that it is Portuguese which is closer to Spanish and vice-versa. this whole myth that Italian is closer to spanish is just a myth. I have laughed many times when I have listened to Italians and Spanish speakers trying hard to make sense of what the other was saying. The languages sound similar, true, but the fact is that they lack the uniformity that the Portuguese and Spanish languages share.

George you are an idiot

=>Okay Ana, I'll indulge you. As a speaker of Portuguese, I state emphatically that Spanish is the closest romance language to Portuguese.<=

Closest ROMANCE language ? You mean that there is a Slavic or Germanic language thats even closer...your an idiot

To George,

"Judeo/Spanish is basically old Spanish with Portuguese and Hebrew admixture"

Indeed, there are some Portuguese and Hebrew words. However, the vast majority of words comes from Spanish, the verb conjugation is identical to Spanish, the pronunciation and writing (in the Latin alphabet) are the closest to Spanish (with some changeable pairs, such as m/n, b/v, kh/y/j/dj etc). Hence, Ladino is much closer to Spanish than any other Romance language.

As for Portuguese - it is well known that even speakers of that very language have difficulty understanding a different dialect. Therefore, I am quite sure that for speakers of a comletely different langauge (Spanish), it will definitely not be so intelligible.

Yes you are an idiot

I think George and Huchu are picking on Ana unfairly, since basically she said that the one language she felt closer is catalan rather than portuguese. Im galician, so of course for me portuguese looks basically like my language, but I have to admit that portuguese accent is harder to understand for me than brazilian, and probably for someone from other parts of spain catalan or even italian would be more understandable (even though clearly they are more different if you take grammar and vocabulary into account).

A small point about neighbouring languages and the basque country, the fact is that most basques speak basque because they 'must' learn it at school, since their parents democratically decided to restore it as main language in Euskadi, although only a minority could speak it or even understand it. spanish has a very long tradition as a local language all over spain, including in galicia and catalonia, although less so than in euskadi. Also basque and castilian have completely different roots, but basque pronunciation is closer to spanish than galician/portuguese or catalan, and thats to be expected since spanish was born right next to the basque country

kaixo!
"The reason why the Basques speak Castilian is because they must learn it at school"
Very wrong!...Just saying that you prove that you´ve never ever been to the Basque Country in all your life, not even for a short holiday. Well, i lived there for 14 years and i´ll tell you that most Basques (people who live in the Basque Country) don´t speak Basque. Just a little percentage of people there speak it but EVERYBODY speak Spanish there. So the case is completely the opposite of what you have described. If it was not for the little Basque that they learn at school, the language would get lost. (I think they should learn more because it´s a very interesting language and they (we) MUST keep it).
So, I dont know in what movie you saw that but know that you are not wrong but...very wrong..

And about what i said:
"No matter that Spain and Portugal are neighbour countries" well...the reason why i mentioned that is because there is another language of Spain (called Galician) which is closely linked to Portuguese but the fact that this language exists doesnt mean that Portuguese is the closest language to Spanish. There is only a part in the north west of our national territory where you can see the clear influence of Portuguese on the language that people use BUT anyway, any Spanish know that Italian is more similar. And please, with this is quit, i cant continue anymore with this thread...
:-S

actually, i just noticed that in any case galician has to be the closest to spanish, thanks ana. little wonder they dont take us into account when even us galicians forget about it :).

George i never called you an idiot..there is a real idiot between us behaving like it and trying to create missunderstandings.

Ana I think you're being very stupid You can't understand portuguese because you are ignorant.

BUT to correct a misleading bit of anas post, galician is not the result of portugues influence on spanish, rather the different evolution of galego-portugues within spain. Eu diria que se acaso o portugues naceu do galego, mais que ao contrario ... :)