In my opinion there are greater differences between European and Brazilian Portuguese than between European and Latin America Spanish. Even someone who doesnât know any Portuguese can easily distinguish the two.
It is the same language but some basic aspects of the language change. The pronunciation of some letters even varies. Iâm not talking about accents but pronunciation.
I think itâs better to stick with one at first, and when you reach an intermediate level you can expose yourself to the other one.
iâve been studying it for a year now 've had more exposure to the brazilian variety than the one from portugal but iâve listened to other podcasts from portugal as well from time to time,
jorgis@ is right about the pronounciation that is what you notice right away even if you donât know portuguese i find the accents from portugal a little more difficult to grasp when listening. and also there is some slightly different vocabulary and grammatical things but it is the same language
it sounds like you have more of a motive to learn the accent from portugal
Hi, thatâs great you want to learn Portuguese! Its a beautiful languagelanguage. Iâve been at it for 2 years. I found myself studying the Brazilian version mostly because there are 10 times the amount of resources for it. Portugal Portuguese is difficult to find material. But Portugal only has 10 million people in a country about the size of Virginia vs Brazil which has 200 million people in a country almost the same size of the continental usa. The most reading/listening material I havw found for Portugal is right here on LingQ. For Brazilian Portuguese, check out Cafe Brazil, its wonderful. âŠnative podcast with transcrpts and its free. I focused on only the Brazilian version for a linglong time, but if I concentrate I can also understand Portugal, but its harder because they swallow some of their sounds. You will do great having a background in Spanish. Good luck e boa sorte!
Theyâre indeed quite different. Some quick differences in order of how much trouble they give me: different pronouns and therefore verb conjugations (i.e. the use of vocĂȘ and a gente in BP but not in EP); pronunciation (EP being more âclosedâ with final syllables often cut off; the âchiâ and âgiâ sounds (for ti/te/di/de) in (most of) Brazil that donât exist in EP); vocabulary (where even some basic words like breakfast, train and bathroom are different); present continuous (estar a + infinitive in EP; estar + present participle in BP as in Spanish).
If you want to impress a Portuguese girl, go with EP. Practice Portuguese is a good resource and a good place to start, plus whatever beginner stuff is here in the LingQ library. Boa sorte!
Most Portuguese people iâve met are proud and nationalist of their country culture and history. Itâs rare for lusophones see foreigners that made an effort to learn our language even more EP. Your main reason to learn portuguese is to impress a girl from Portugal who youâre dating, so just learn EP.
One question: " Itâs rare for lusophones see foreigners that made an effort to learn our language even more EP. "
Instead of âârareââ would be better/correct to use uncommon? I canât remember who but a long time ago someone said that to me.
Car2017 is correct. It comes from a pre-Roman tribe called the Lusitanians who lived in the region and fought the Romans. The Roman province that corresponded roughly with the borders of modern Portugal was then called Lusitania. Much later, when the Portuguese were trying to establish an âorigin mythâ for their people to help establish a (non-Spanish) identity, they looked back to the Lusitanians. The most famous Portuguese writer/poet (a âfather of the languageâ type), LuĂs de CamĂ”es, wrote an epic poem in the 16th century called The Lusiads.
Hmm, tough question. Some thoughts, bearing in mind that my first language is Brazilian Portuguese:
In terms of written Portuguese, the language is obviously the same, but people from Portugal and Brazil will often have their preferences in terms of which words to choose to express a given concept. I could go over and over, but things like alĂŽ versus estĂĄ when you answer the phone, vocĂȘ vs tu (not homogeneous in Brazil though), the very loose way of conjugating verbs in Brazil compared to the âby the bookâ Portuguese way, entender vs perceber (I always have to stop and think when a Portuguese asks me if I âpercebiâ something), the way to refer to a person when you are talking to him/her (in Portugal somebody will say âo Ricardoâ when they are talking to me, which used to make me feel like they were talking about somebody else), and the list goes on. Anyway, as long as you get used to those choices you should be fine. Of interest, there was an ortographic reform sometime ago that harmonized the writing among the different Portuguese-speaking countries â remember that as a latin language, Portuguese is far more grammar-driven than, say, English, and so this was a huuuuuge deal. This harmonization, despite being controversial, definitely helped with language learning since the differences now are primarily of word choice, but they are written in the same way. That wasnât the case before, which led publishing companies to actually âtranslateâ books from continental to Brazilian Portuguese and vice versa. Odd, I know, but used to be the case.
In terms of accent, Brazilians will often (but not necessarily) speak a bit slower and pronounce each syllable more distinctly, which might make it easier to understand when youâre starting. Several sounds are also pronounced a bit differently, and I was told that the Portuguese make a couple sound distinctions that Brazilians donât. For a native Brazilian speaker, the first couple days in Portugal are often a bit baffling, since itâs easy to get lost with some expressions that Brazilians just simply donât use or trying to follow something that is being spoken just way too fast.
In terms of content availability, the Portuguese are certainly prolific generators and have awesome literary works, but since Brazil is a much larger country I believe that you will be more likely to find books, movies, and tv series (including the infamous ânovelasâ) in Brazilian than in continental Portuguese. Dubbing in Netflix (which btw is an awesome way to pick up the language) is often done by Brazilian native speakers, likely also because of the larger market size. I believe the same is true for Audible books.