It is like a cross between Spanish and French when pronounced, in that it uses the rolling ‘R’, but many other things are like French, like nasalised consonants, double r or r at the end of a word / syllable sounding more like the French R and ’s’ sounding like ’sh’ depending on the accent. So, ‘bom tarde’ (good arvo) sounds like ‘bong tahde’. Portuguese also uses many conventions from french, like ‘de + o’ (de + le = du in french) = do (which means ‘of the’). Also, ‘o’ in portuguese sounds more like the spanish ‘u’ than ‘o’
Then we have the further complication of Brazilian portuguese – despite being grammatically easier (verb conjugation is easier and you use pronouns like in English, which is more logical for English speakers), has different pronunciation and different slang and vocabulary.
The biggest difference in my opinion is pronunciation. In portuguese, ‘d’ followed by ‘e’ or ‘i’ sounds like a ‘j’ in English, and ‘t’ followed by ‘i’ or ‘e’ sounds like the English ‘ch’ (this happens in Australian English, but nowhere near as much, for example ‘dune’ sounds like ‘june’ but ‘tin’ doesn’t sound like ‘chin’).
The ‘o’ at the end of words is sometimes not pronounced (this might be in Portugal as well), the ‘r’ at the end or the double ‘rr’ sounds like a ‘h’ (so ‘carro’ sounds like ‘kahu’), and the ’s’ doesn’t sound like a ’sh’ like it can sometimes in Portugal.
So, keep this information in mind, give portuguese a try, don’t stress when learning it (most portuguese speakers are really helpful when you are learning, and also accepting of dodgy accents, I’d imagine many people go to Brazil thinking they speak Spanish and as result they’d be use to mistakes) and also make sure you know which Portuguese you’d like to concentrate on – I prefer Brazilian portuguese because it, like Modern English, has a much ’simpler’ feel to it and shares some nuances – however you might disagree. If you feel that it isn’t working out, don’t give up straight away, but when you do, go back to Spanish and give it another go – also, Spanish people are very used to hearing people speak their language badly, so if you can’t speak Spanish, that’s not really much of an excuse to stop 
.
Anywho, good luck!
there are tons of differences in spelling, but the grammar structure is VERY similar
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oh yeah!
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Well… put it this way, my friend was born in Spain, knows Spanish perfectly, a lot of her family lives in Portugal, and she still can barely speak Portuguese.
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Portuguese is really difficult compared to spanish.
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i speak both!
yes.i know speak in spanish is very hard.he must try it.i know ur rock in speak spanish.
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It would be easier to learn Portuguese if you learn Spanish, but Portuguese is harder. They are similar in structure. If you know Spanish, especial WRITTEN Spanish, it will be a bit easier to learn any Romance language.
I speak Spanish, so Personally, I notice that you can kind of "read" Portuguese and understand it, but not as spoken word. (But I never did study Portuguese)
(The same effect happens with Romanian, you start to understand a bit of Italian, but I have heard that linguists say that this only works one way (Romanian to Italian, but not Italian to Romanian)
Also certain linguists have said that by learning Norwegian, you partially understand Danish and Swedish, once again for some reason only one way.
If you are interested, look up information on "lexical similarity", which has to do with how similar a language is to another, and often about how easy it is to transition to another.
Also, written and spoken difficulty can also vary greatly, example Chinese (which is easy as spoken, grammar but difficult to write because o the characters.)
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Just finished a course in Language Mechanics and translation.
It is like a cross between Spanish and French when pronounced, in that it uses the rolling ‘R’, but many other things are like French, like nasalised consonants, double r or r at the end of a word / syllable sounding more like the French R and ’s’ sounding like ’sh’ depending on the accent. So, ‘bom tarde’ (good arvo) sounds like ‘bong tahde’. Portuguese also uses many conventions from french, like ‘de + o’ (de + le = du in french) = do (which means ‘of the’). Also, ‘o’ in portuguese sounds more like the spanish ‘u’ than ‘o’
Then we have the further complication of Brazilian portuguese – despite being grammatically easier (verb conjugation is easier and you use pronouns like in English, which is more logical for English speakers), has different pronunciation and different slang and vocabulary.
The biggest difference in my opinion is pronunciation. In portuguese, ‘d’ followed by ‘e’ or ‘i’ sounds like a ‘j’ in English, and ‘t’ followed by ‘i’ or ‘e’ sounds like the English ‘ch’ (this happens in Australian English, but nowhere near as much, for example ‘dune’ sounds like ‘june’ but ‘tin’ doesn’t sound like ‘chin’).
The ‘o’ at the end of words is sometimes not pronounced (this might be in Portugal as well), the ‘r’ at the end or the double ‘rr’ sounds like a ‘h’ (so ‘carro’ sounds like ‘kahu’), and the ’s’ doesn’t sound like a ’sh’ like it can sometimes in Portugal.
So, keep this information in mind, give portuguese a try, don’t stress when learning it (most portuguese speakers are really helpful when you are learning, and also accepting of dodgy accents, I’d imagine many people go to Brazil thinking they speak Spanish and as result they’d be use to mistakes) and also make sure you know which Portuguese you’d like to concentrate on – I prefer Brazilian portuguese because it, like Modern English, has a much ’simpler’ feel to it and shares some nuances – however you might disagree. If you feel that it isn’t working out, don’t give up straight away, but when you do, go back to Spanish and give it another go – also, Spanish people are very used to hearing people speak their language badly, so if you can’t speak Spanish, that’s not really much of an excuse to stop
.
Anywho, good luck!
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Personal Experience.
They are pretty similar. Learning a second Latin-based language shouldn’t be terribly difficult.
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A second latin based language shouldn’t be hard to learn but, learn spanish first then Portuguese
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