Italian & Portugese Lexical Similarities

Back to the thread.

When I was a kid I remember my Portuguese grandmother carrying on perfectly intelligible conversations with her Italian neighbours. And they were all of poor, humble origins. So just imagine how much more an educated Italian and Portuguese would understand one another.

As someone here already said, Italian and Portuguese do share a good deal of vocabulary e.g., filho/filha, forte, tempo, porta, corpo, ponte, isso, da, fosse, grande, posso, castello, miseria, sempre, cavallo, caro, sorisso, forno, etc., etc. And there are many other words that are almost spelled and pronounced the same way. There is more than enough similarity between these two languages to facilitate a good conversation.

From what I get it has nothing to do with education but it's really a language similarity, I didn't learn Italian (I'm Portuguese) and yet I understand 99% of the words Italians commonly use, some I don't however in a sentence more often than not if you understand 9 out of 10 words you'll get the meaning of the words you don't.

This is only true though when speaking a "clear" Italian, some regional pronunciations make it hard to understand cause they are either speak it too fast or on a less clear sound.

If you're Portuguese but not acquainted with Italian, I think maybe 8 words out of 10 is more realistic, but not always, again it all depends on what is being said. In the following example almost all of the words differ.

ITALIAN:
Domani voglio mangiare piu' presto che stamattina e ho bisogno d'un caffe' che sono stanco

PORTUGUESE:
Amanhã eu quero comer rápido porque de manhã eu preciso um café porque estou cansado

SPANISH"
Mañana quiero comer rápido porque en la mañana necesito un café porque estoy cansado

Portuguese and Spanish always seem to parallel each other however.

Olivia,

I could give you MANY examples of where Italian and Spanish parallel each other. I could also give you examples (I've probably done it here on Antimoon already, maybe in this thread! where Italian and Portuguese parallel each other.)

To me, most romance languages are just variations on a theme-not terribly different to my thinking than a musical theme with elaborate variations. I'm thinking about Spanish, French, Italian, Occitan, Catalan, Ladino, and Italian. Romanian is not as each to match up, but there are a lot of Italian-like words in Romanian from my recent acquaintance with this fascinating language.


Like you said, it all depends on what is being said.

Sorry, Romanian is not as "easy" to match up.

K.T. Your point is well taken: yes, sometimes Italian and Portuguese parallel each other reasonably well. But I don't think you'll ever encounter any Portuguese or Spanish sentences that differ as much as Italian differs from Port. and Span., especially as in the example given above.

That said, I still believe that Spanish and Portuguese match up closest most of the time - the vocabulary, syntax and grammar of these two brother languages is remarkably similar. I have read a lot of academic linguistics research that confirms this over and over again. There also appears to be agreement about this on numerous internet romance language sites as well. And almost all of the Spanish speaking people I know state that Portuguese is the easiest romance language for them to understand, then Italian and French respectively.

Truthfully, I never studied Spanish, yet I understand virtually everything a Spanish speaker says, and they understand me quite well too, while I sometimes struggle to get the full context of something said in Italian.

Many language scholars propose that more than anything, it was the significant Arabic vocabulary in Portuguese and Spanish that caused these two languages to evolve differently than the other latin languages.

I think I agree with you for the most part.

I agree that of the big romance languages a Spanish speaker probably understands (written) Portuguese best, then Italian and French.
I wouldn't be surprised if Arabic vocabulary was involved in the divergence, but I haven't researched that.

My only point is that I could probably give examples of Spanish or Portuguese that would not be mutally intelligible.

I agree with you Oivia. I am from Colombia where we speak a very pure Spanish, and I must admit that for us Portuguese is very, very comprehensible, even if the accent is a little different - no problem though. But Italian can be tricky, for me anyway, especially if you are not too familiar with it.

Yes, the Arabic infusion in Portuguese and Spanish certainly set these two brother languages apart from the others. But I also believe that these two languages use many forms of original latin words that are not used in the others. For example, in Portuguese and Spanish we say 'comer=eat from the earlier latin word 'comedere'. But in Italian and French it is 'mangiare/manger=eat from the later latin word 'manducare'. This is just one example, but there are many, many other latin words which are shared by Portuguese and Spanish, but not by Italian and French. Plus let's not forget that Spain and Portugal are next door neighbours who share almost exactly the same history and Iberian culture.

So true Miguel. The Arabic component was quite significant in Portuguese and Spanish, but not in French and Italian.

Also, here is more on what you mean about the words of latin origin that are used today in Portuguese/Spanish, but not in French/Italian:

LATIN: Magis/plus adv. (more):
Plus> plus (French), piu (Italian)
Magis> más (Spanish) máis (Portuguese)

LATIN: Frater/germanus n. (brother):
Frater> frère (French), fratello (Italian)
Germanus> hermano (Spanish) irmao (Portuguese)

LATIN: velle/quaere v. (to want/to search):
Velle> je veux, (French) io voglio (Italian)
Quaere> yo quiero (Spanish) eu quero (Portuguese)

This explains many apparent differences between Spanish/Portuguese and French/Italian, though not always of course.

Spanish and Portuguese also borrowed from sources not used in French or Italian. For instance the word (left), izquierda (Castilian) and esquerda (Portuguese), has no relation to any other romance language, as it comes from the Basque word (ezkerra).

There are also some words of Celtic/Visigothic origin that are unique to Spanish and Portuguese.

All of these factors, and others previously mentioned, are what kept Spanish and Portuguese close together as they diverged from French and Italian.

"Spanish and Portuguese also borrowed from sources not used in French or Italian. For instance the word (left), izquierda (Castilian) and esquerda (Portuguese), has no relation to any other romance language, as it comes from the Basque word (ezkerra)."

This is interesting. Why Basque, I wonder? The words for "right" in Spanish and Portuguese are close to other latin-based languages.

<<For instance the word (left), izquierda (Castilian) and esquerda (Portuguese), has no relation to any other romance language, as it comes from the Basque word (ezkerra)."

This is interesting. Why Basque, I wonder? The words for "right" in Spanish and Portuguese are close to other latin-based languages.>>

-- The words for "right" are indeed generally very consistent:
. Eng. 'right'
. Ger. 'rechts'
. Fr. 'droite' (from 'direct-')
. Sp. 'derecha' ( - " -)
. It. 'destra'
(One exception: Scand. 'höger')

Maybe because of superstitions associated with 'left hand', there is much more variety for 'left':
. Eng. 'left'
. Ger. 'links'
. Fr. 'gauche'
. Sp.'izquierda', Pt. 'esquerda', and Cat. 'esquerra'
. It. 'sinistra'
. Scand. 'vänster'

I'd like to know if similar inconsistencies also occur in Slavic languages?

I am only really familiar with Russian and Serbo-Croatian, but the words in Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Polish and Czech seem similar to me.

I don't like to use the Latin alphabet, but for comparison:

Russian: nalyevo (accent aigu on the "e")
Serbo-Croatian: levo

I think these are Polish and Czech, but I could be wrong:

Polish: na lewo
Czech: nalevo

Again, an interesting theory about the "left".

Portuguese does not have many Arabic words, it has three times more French words than Arabic, from literary origin.
Bask influences on Portuguese is small but these are some words in Portuguese

azorrague
bezerro
gazua
gorro
nava
lagóia
bruços

K. T.
Why Basque, I wonder? <<
Basque is a pre Roman language and ancient authors said that the people from the Iberian peninsula spoke different languages but they could all understand each other. Similar languages maybe.
Probably there are many more Basque words in the Portuguese non literary, the dialects from the country side

Guest you are wrong! The Portuguese language contains over 1000 words of Arabic origin. Howcome you don't know this? I can gladly provide proof of this if you like.