How are Spanish and Portuguese different when it comes to grammar?
Good luck, pealco! It’s very rare for a “Spanish” speaker to speak Portuguese well and vice-versa as the two languages – Castilian and Portuguese – have been separated for almost a thousand years. Another Spanish language, Catalonian, is substantially more similar pronunciation-wise and even vocabulary-wise. Galician is still very similar to Portuguese, despite all the efforts of the Castilians, as they are the same language. Languages are always political and Portuguese, Catalonian and Galician as just as Spanish as Castilian, since Spain was, until the 18th Century, the geographical name for all the nations in the Iberian Peninsula. The Castilians dominated all other nations (except Portugal, which is the oldest independent country in Europe, with the oldest borders) and violently imposed their language on the others. Fortunately, these nations fought back heroically and so the Castilians were never as successful as they wished, although the fact that their particular language is cal
O/T: Hiya Joe. Catalans, Galicians, Andalusians and Basques are our brothers and much loved. Portugal imports more from Catalonia (including literature) than any other country, even though it’s not a country (yet!). The UK is second but Castile is way down the list. Castilians are still rivals, although things are getting much better. It’s the usual case of a small, fiercely independent country living next to a big imperialistic neigbour, like Holland and Germany. (In fact, Portugal and Holland arguably turned themselves into empires in their own right to affirm their independence.) We get Galician, Andalusian and Spanish TV on cable but they’re not much watched, if at all. Portugal is an extremely cosmopolitan, Atlantic country (we don’t dub our films or TV programmes) so all our cultural imports are British, American, Brazilian, French, Italian.
