Spanish and Portuguese come from the same root and are two important Romantic languages. These have originated in Europe. These languages like all other languages have similarities as well as differences. These have major differences in terms of phonology, lexicon, and grammar. Also, languages have their roots in the second degree of the Romance languages also known as the West Iberian Romance. Spanish is the third closest language to its root language i.e. Latin and Portuguese 31%. These divisions were made by the popular American linguist of Italian descent, Mario Pei in 1949. The experts and linguists who analyze both languages and their roots share that the major difference lies in the way both languages are pronounced. Mutual intelligibility is relatively great in terms of written form as compared to spoken.

This is also one of the popular pair where businesses from the Portuguese have to seek for Spanish translation services to expand their operation in Spain. Portugal and Spain are two of the world’s greatest economies with a relatively higher GDP.  Interestingly both these languages were only limited to the Iberian peninsula initially, due to which they had limited speakers. The languages share many aspects including their history and Latin roots that people often also call these languages almost identical which is not true. 

Both languages have their distinct features which are different from each other. Thus, if you have to translate from Portuguese to the Spanish language, here’s what you need to know 

Introduction

A brief introduction of both languages, in terms of speakers, and countries is given below. 

Spanish

Spanish belongs to Indo European language family. This is one of the most spoken and popular languages with up to 486 million native speakers. Most of them are situated in America and Spain. More than 20 countries use this language as their official. Moreover, this is the second most spoken native language. Most of the speakers of this language who speak it as a native language come from Mexico.

Portuguese

The Portuguese language also comes from the Iberian Peninsula of Europe. It is the official language in Brazil, Portugal, Cape, Verde, and Angola among others. People who speak Portuguese are referred to as ‘Lusophone’. This language has evolved from the colonial times. The Portuguese language has around 260 total million speakers with up to 230 million native speakers and 30 million second-language speakers. Portuguese have two main variants which are European and Brazilian variants.

Script and Writing Font 

Portuguese and Spanish languages share a similar script which is Latin. The written form and text are mutually intelligible.

How are you in Portuguese would be Como você está. It goes as  ¿Cómo estás? in the Spanish language. These are the basic similarities in the written text. This by no means implies that the languages are identical or similar. However, this makes it easier for the translators to translate the text from Spanish to Portuguese or vice versa.

Grammar

The Spanish language is a gendered language with masculine, feminine, and neutral whereas Portuguese has commonly masculine and feminine genders. It is also worth mentioning that a few words which are feminine in Portuguese are masculine in the Spanish language.

Pronouns

Portuguese language uses pronouns that have particular variants and they use them at the end of the verbs. Whereas this is not the practice for the Spanish language.

Cognates

As the linguists share the main differences between Spanish and Portuguese, it is because of the Arabic influence that the Spanish language has on its vocabulary and terms. However, the major difference between both is due to their origin in the Latin language. These may look similar in reading but could differ in meaning.

False Friends

Like other languages, false friends do exist between Spanish and Portuguese too. A few of the words are more similar and others are lesser.

A few common words include ‘Exquisite’ which is for ‘delicious’ in the Spanish language.

Whereas ‘esquisita’ in Portuguese stands for ‘weird’.

Barata is ‘cheap’ in Spanish and used for ‘cockroach in the Portuguese language.

False words have always been of great consideration for translators as they often mess up the meaning in the confusion of languages. Therefore, the translators working on Portuguese translation services and for all other languages should be clear about it. They should also check for the variants of the language they are translating for. The dialects and nuances of the languages differ accordingly.

Interrogative Pronouns

An acute accent is used by the Spanish people to use interrogative pronouns. Whereas they spell relative pronouns without any particular accent in order to maintain a difference between both. The acute accent usually changes the vowel sounds in the Portuguese language and remains constant in Spanish.

Pronunciation

Whenever two languages are this similar, the translation gets challenging. As the translators are more inclined to overlook the factors that are different in both languages. Though the pronunciation factor apparently has nothing to do with translation, it is important to mention the difference and the ground on which it differs. Sound also changes the game in the pronunciation of Portuguese and Spanish. According to analysts, Portuguese sounds more like Russian, and Spanish is more smooth.

Conclusion

Spanish and Portuguese share many similarities, starting with their place and language of origin, which are the Iberian Peninsula in Europe and Latin America, respectively. More similarities often cover the room for fewer differences for translators, and they may end up ignoring minor differences. Therefore, it is important that the translators are native speakers and understand both languages well. they should also be able to understand the differences in grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation. They should further be able to incorporate their knowledge of language effectively.