What is your experience of learning Portugues after Spanish or learning Portugues being a Spanish native speaker? With my B2 in Spanish, I was suprised to find out yesterday that with zero knowledge I can read Portuguese Intermediate 1 texts on Lingq. This leads me to a plan of using Lingq from the very beginning and simply read and listen without dealing with grammar even for a second, at least for the first months. Not sure though if it is a good idea.
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I’d say that’s a good idea. With your ability to read in Portuguese already, it means you don’t have to focus heavily on comprehension while you’re reading and you can instead pay attention to the little differences that you’ll notice between the languages and then start to separate the two languages in your mind. I think you’ll find listening more difficult, since even native Spanish speakers typically cannot really understand Portuguese (although native Portuguese speakers can often understand Spanish). Good luck!
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Yes, in terms of listening I hardly understand anything.
on a related note, how much “interference” would you get from the Portuguese conflicting with your Spanish?
I think it depends on what your goals are. Interference is mostly a problem for speaking, using the language actively. One possible strategy (at least in the beginning) is to just read/listen and work on your comprehension and not try to activate vocabulary. Once your level’s good enough if you ever want to actually speak (say, you travel to Brazil) do what we, Spanish/Portuguese speakers usually do: speak portuñol! You mostly speak your dominant language with some words from the second one thrown in and paying attention to the “false friends” you detected in your previous learning. You’ll end up being proficient in two languages with little added effort.
That’s great to know. thank you senor. I’m not super cranked-up about learning Poruguese, but now that you tell me interference is more an issue with production, rather than input, I might be more likely to try French sooner and not completely ignore Italian.
I’m a native Spanish speaker with a B2 comprehension and B1 speaking ability in French and started learning Portuguese 2 weeks ago as part of my comprehensive 2018 language plan. Initially, I understood about 10~15% but when reading understood ~95%. All I do is read and listen and my comprehension after 2 weeks is gone up to ~50-75% depending on the topic. If I can understand, I can speak or stumble through a conversation. I had some basic conversations with hotel staff recently in Portuguese mixed with Spanish. Again, reading and listening with no grammar etc is enough and speak when you want. BTW French is a long road, I’m a B2 after 18 months.
I’m flirting with Italian as well and I find it clearly less similar to Spanish. However, pronunciation is much easier to me than Portuguese and this is a very strong point. While listening to Italian I can search for words I hear in a dictionary, in Portuguese it’s not that easy.
I even find that dabbling in related languages actually helps improve my main target language. Just tread the vocabulary in your secondary languages as you would in the case of some arcane or excessively slangish vocabulary: you want to recognie them but you’re not going to activate (at least, for the time being)
Well, as a native spanish speaker learning portuguese. I must say learning the language has been very easy. I know almost all the vocabulary and I can already read advanced stuff. I wouldn’t say the same about pronunciation. Portuguese has some nasal sounds that need a lot of practice and determination to master.
You should probably start at intermediate level in portuguese. Spanish provides a great foundation in terms of vocabulary but you still need to give it a go to pronunciation.
Thanks. I’ve been wondering about French. I would think at 1.5 hours a day, a year to year and half would be good from English to French (per an early Steve video), but that it would go faster with Spanish, was hoping a little faster, say 9 months to 1.5 years. However, it sounds like the longer end of that if you did it in 18 months.