Portuguese + Spanish the fastest growing western languages

{Wow with the way some of these other latinophones are talking at each other it would seem there was tension between brazilian speaking and castellano speaking latinos} [JGreg]

Surprise! Surprise. Where have you been? The tension between Brazilians and other South Americans is a BIG ISSUE! Never noticed? WoW! Are you from Mars?

There is tension between Brazilians and South Americans, between Brazilians and Portuguese nice to know all that, but is there a reason for so much tension or is it just caused by a group of block heads that do not represent the entire population?

''Brazilians are at issue with everybody. They are a nation with an identity crises. ''


Go to read Paulo Coelho or dance some sambinha.
Or do a trepada. Cause you seem depressed.

MUY BIEN. Quisiera aclarar algo, no existe ninguna tensión entre los hispanos sudamericanos y los brasileros. Están exagerando, sólo porque haya un idiota brasilero por ahí diciendo estupideces supuestamente en nombre de su nación, no significa que los demás brasileros compartan su opinión. PARA NADA.

Los brasileros no tienen nada que temer de los hispanos sudamericanos y vice versa. Si es que alguna vez se acordó la enseñana del español en Brasil es para promover la unión sudamericana y no para promover conflictos o nacionalismos. NO LE HAGAMOS CASO A COMENTARIOS SIN SENTIDO DE UNOS IDIOTAS QUE QUIEREN DISTORCIONAR LA IDEA PRINCIPAL. SUDAMERICA DEBE UNIRSE Y NO SEPARARSE. EN ESO CONSISTE EL SUEÑO BOLIVARIANO.

Los resentimientos para los ignorantes, yo estoy a favor de la unión del español y del portugués aunque muchos lingüistas no. Sólo el futuro nos dirá que pasará con ambos idiomas.

Por último, todos acá deben saber que el español es capaz de TODO. Si es que alguien acá vive en EEUU, debe saber a que me refiero. Si los brasileros piensan que el español no es capaz de ingresar a su país se equivocan, el español ha podido ingresar a los Estados Unidos y actualmente está llegando a todos los rincones del mundo, desde Japón hasta Rumania. Esto NO es una advertencia, sólo es para que sepan, no subestimen al español ni a ningún otro idioma. Eso es todo. =)

<<Brazil outrancks Mexico as the 8th economic power>>

Brazil, with 184 million, has almost double the population of Mexico, 105 million. And Mexico's territory(1,923,040 km²) is roughly a quarter of the territory of Brazil (8,456,510 km² ). Yet Mexico was the leading Latin America nation since 2001 and Brazil has only marginally regained that position. So one can only imagine how much stronger Mexico would be if it had the size and population of Brazil.

<<and is more influencial than Mexico.>>

The only thing Brazil is more influential than Mexico is in sex tourism. Thousands of gringos flock each year to Brazil for that very purpose. Even so 20 million visit Mexico compared to 5 million that go to Brazil. And about the soccer, well it doesn't feed the poor nor stop social inequality. So I guess it's irrelevant in the grandeur scheme of things.

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0908091.html

<<Brazilians are at issue with everybody. They are a nation with an identity crises. They need big time help.>>

I agree. They think they're more important than they really are.

Sou de Rio, Brasil e vivo num favela. I did not find out that I was "latino" until I moved to the United States, and was forced to take ESOL classes because of my last name, and not because of my proficiency with the english language.

One day, one girl from college asked me where I was from and I said that I was from Brazil then she asked me: oh! is that in Texas???? :o( ......

<<Wow with the way some of these other latinophones are talking at each other it would seem there was tension between brazilian speaking and castellano speaking latinos. My parents would laugh at some of the disagreements you all seem to be having (father: Panamanian Mother: Brazilian). In are large extended family we don't seem to have a problem getting a long. I have family members when we get together in big family occasions that one will speak Spanish and the other will respond in brazilian without a problem. It is funny how these people blow out of porportion the difference between sister languages. If anybody had half a brain they could weed through pronunciation and understand what is being said. Yes, don't get me wrong there are some very nationalistic brazilians and castellanos that seem to spout out reteric but there will always be people like that.>>


Clearly having relatives on both sides of the fence means you can't take sides. From what I gather most of the animosity is coming from Brazilians by overplaying their importance and whatnot. Spanish-speakers seem more assured of themselves and only responding to refute fanciful lies and distorted facts.

«So one can only imagine how much stronger Mexico would be if it had the size and population of Brazil. »

What useless talk:
So one can only imagine how much stronger the islands of Bermuda would be if they had the size and population of China.

<<What useless talk:
So one can only imagine how much stronger the islands of Bermuda would be if they had the size and population of China.>>

Mexico and Brazil are neck and neck. So it's not that preposterous to say that if Mexico had a couple of million more people and hectares it would quite easily surpass Brazil. Whereas Bermuda is several times smaller than China so that comparison is not feasible.

Are Brazilians hispanics? They don't think they are. Yet most people would say that Brazilians are hispanics.

The Portuguese say: “When we go to Spain we make an effort to speak Spanish, because they won’t try to understand our Portuguese. When they come here they only speak Spanish and we understand them.” Possible explanations for this “attitude”: “they don’t like us”; “they’re not linguistically capable”; or “they are just plain stupid.”
None of the above is of course true, at least on an overall basis. Not all Portuguese who go to Spain try to speak Spanish and most Spanish like the Portuguese—or are at least indifferent--, are neither less nor more linguistically inclined than the Portuguese, and are of an average IQ.
The explanation for this impression has to be sought in a more scientific area. A good clue can be found in the fact that speakers of the Brazilian variety of Portuguese are readily understood in Spain while the Continental variety is not--with the exception of the region of Galicia bordering on northern Portugal.
While we must admit that a country which is so much larger than its neighbor as is Spain, occupying 505,000 kilometers of the 581,000 in the Iberian peninsula, and with a population of 39,143,000 in 1995, as opposed to Portugal’s 9,292,000 there will exist a certain reluctance to understand the smaller and more impoverished neighbor’s language.
It is a fact that Spanish is a more international language than Portuguese, with many more speakers, books published, communication networks, stronger film industry (note Pedro Almodóvar’s recent Everything About My Mother) and Internet presence.
Portuguese as spoken in Portugal is not a status language in Europe as is French, Italian, Spanish, German, and of course English.
When most people think of Portuguese today they think of Brazilian Portuguese. A recent trip to Paris revealed that on the tourist bus with the possibility of listening to the tour in different languages, when the Portuguese flag was pressed the language—or variety—was Brazilian Portuguese. When Yahoo Portuguese is pressed on the Internet we are directed to Brazil. This is unfortunate perhaps, but is a reality. So there is no real reason for a Spanish person to learn Portuguese unless he is going to start a business in the country, and he will always be understood if he speaks Spanish.
But the opposite is also true. In Portugal almost no one studies Spanish; in fact there are only courses available in Porto, Coimbra, and Lisbon. Either the Portuguese think they can already speak it or there is no great interest in the culture of their neighbor. Spanish history and culture is also virtually ignored in the Portuguese school system. Students are only aware that three Spanish kings were once rulers of Portugal—between 1580 and 1640), but a tiny percentage could name the author of Don Quijote de la Mancha.

In a recent quiz show on television almost no one in the crowd knew that the Alhambra was in Granada. At the university in Vila Real the library has a grand total of 75 books on Spanish history. But at least that is better than the collection of Brazilian history and literature, which is zero!

A better explanation for why the Portuguese can understand the Spanish and not the contrary is the phonetic system of the languages. The existing phonetic differences between the two languages are very great, making the pronunciation the main difficulty on which a Spanish speaker stumbles when trying to understand or speak Portuguese well.

The vocalic wealth of continental Portuguese is much greater than that of Spanish. There are ten vowel phonemes and two semi-vowels, while in Spanish there are five. In addition there are oral and nasal diphthongs, 16 open and closed descending, and 9 ascending. One of the most characteristic traits of Portuguese is the great wealth of nasal vowels. In fact Portuguese is the Romance language that possesses the greatest number of these phonemes. Without going into technical linguistics, what this means is that there are many more sounds in continental Portuguese than in Spanish.

Vowel sounds in continental Portuguese are usually unstressed, and at the end of words often seem to disappear altogether. This makes comprehension difficult. A word like quente (caliente in Spanish) loses the final e. Porque becomes /pork/. These examples and many more which we obviously can not write here demonstrate why a Spanish speaker, unused to hearing Portuguese in his country, cannot make out the vowels necessary to form the meaning of a word, which written would be perfectly understood. The name of a city like Ermesinde—in Spanish /er/ /me/ /zin/ /de/ is pronounced /ermzind/, making comprehension almost impossible. The opposite—why the Portuguese can understand the Spanish—can be explained by the reduced vowel system of Spanish and the emphatic pronunciation of each phoneme. It can also be explained by more contact with the Spanish language in Portugal through films, television, tourists, and music—a lot of Spanish music is played on Portuguese radio stations but the opposite does not occur. In conclusion, when the Spanish do not understand the Portuguese it is not because they don’t want to but because they cannot.

And now we come back to the statement that the Spanish can usually understand the Brazilian speaker but not the Portuguese. The same holds true for the Brazilian who has great difficulty in understanding continental Portuguese and often can understand spoken Spanish more easily. It is all a question of phonetics. Like Spanish Brazilian Portuguese emphasizes vowels, even exaggerates them, often changing /e/ to /I/. Inter-consonant vowels or final vowels are never suppressed. Thus comprehension is facilitated.

"i have many friends from Brazil who live here, and they get stumbled when they hear Spanish, at least the European."


That statement in a ways very true when it comes to Eu. Spanish. But as everybody knows The latin varieties of spanish especially Caribbean spanish has a very different pronunciation than that of Eu.Spanish. The vowel sounds are much softer in Latin America such as the pronunciation of "J" and some "G" sounds in spanish which is gluttural with a more back of the throat pronunciation but almost completely softened in Latin Spanish. Another feature is many words ending in -ado become -ao in latin spanish such as the word to cook in spanish ( basically cocinado becomes cocinao in carribean spanish). Also, many words in spain that have "s" retain very lispy sounding features (that I even sometimes have a hard time understanding and I know spanish) very common in the accents around Madrid. Eu. spanish also has extremely fast speech perhaps the fastest of all spoken spanish that may lead to the difficulty. Many of my brazilian family members have said that latin american spanish is much easier to understand than the Eu. spanish because of the features that I mentioned and many more that i havent mention.

sorry I combined the talk of vowel and consonate sounds without explaining myself. The above comment about the G and J was consanant sounds.

Eu detesto Portugues!!!!

e um absurdo a gente ser obrigado a estudar essa lingua escrota com uma gramatica ridicula.. so podia ser coisa de portugues mesmo, lingua de burro!

sou a favor da extincao de aulas de portugues e que seja substituida pelo ensino de tupi guarani q e a verdadeira lingua nacional!

chega de lavagem cerebral, nao somos mais colonia de portugal!!