Portuguese and Spanish are two of the most widely spoken languages in the world today. Although they are closely related, to the point of having a moderate degree of mutual intelligibility, there are also important differences between them, which can pose difficulties for people acquainted with one of the languages who attempt to learn the other. Both are part of a broader group known as West Iberian, which contains also several minor languages or dialects with fewer speakers, all of which are mutually intelligible among themselves to some degree. Some of the most prominent differences between the two are explained below. This article does not cite any references or sources. ... West Iberian language is the subcategory of Romance languages, including Spanish and Portugese. ...

Samples

Portuguese and Spanish share a fairly great amount of words that are either spelled identically (although they may be pronounced slightly different), almost identically (though they may be pronounced more or less the same) or predictably similar. Consider for example the following paragraph, taken from the Gramática Esencial del Español, by Manuel Seco, and compare it to the Portuguese rendition below, noting the extensive lexical similarity and the only slight changes in word order:

Pero, a pesar de esta variedad de posibilidades que la voz posee, sería muy pobre instrumento de comunicación si no contara más que con ella. La capacidad de expresión del hombre no dispondría de más medios que la de los animales. La voz, sola, es para el hombre apenas una materia informe, que para convertirse en un instrumento perfecto de comunicación debe ser sometida a un cierto tratamiento. Esa manipulación que recibe la voz son las "articulaciones".

Porém, apesar desta variedade de possibilidades que a voz possui, seria um instrumento de comunicação muito pobre se não contasse com mais do que isso. A capacidade de expressão do homem não disporia de mais meios que a dos animais. A voz, sozinha, é para o homem apenas uma matéria informe, que para se converter num instrumento perfeito de comunicação deve ser submetida a um certo tratamento. Essa manipulação que a voz recebe são as "articulações".

Some common words are however quite different in the two languages, for instance:

Vocabulary

Overview

Vocabulary differences between the two languages arose from various factors:

• Orthography: some words are spelled differently, in spite of having the same origin and similar pronunciation: compare Spanish mayor with Portuguese maior "bigger/larger", or Spanish Miño with Portuguese Minho.
• Divergent phonetic evolution: ya / já "already", veces / vezes "times", visión / visão "vision", ojalá / oxalá "hopefully".
• Substratum differences. Spanish kept most of the Mozarabic vocabulary of Arabic origin, while Portuguese did not have a Mozarabic substratum as large, and in many cases replaced it eventually with Latin roots: albañil / pedreiro "stonemason".
• Influences from other European languages during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Portuguese received a great deal of French influence, while Spanish was more autonomous and Mediterranean-oriented.
• Influences from other languages (Amerindian, African, or Asian). For example, compare the Spanish and Portuguese words for:

"pineapple": piña (from the Spanish word for "pine cone") / abacaxi or ananás (from Tupi);

"tea", té (from the Min Nan dialect of Chinese) / chá (from the Cantonese dialect of Chinese).

• Semantic change, producing cognates that look similar but mean different things (false friends): cola means "tail" in Spanish, but "glue" in Portuguese (although the word exists in Spanish with the same meaning, it is little used nowadays).
• Words that are peculiar to each language: adosado "in twos" has no Portuguese counterpart, while saudade is typical Portuguese.
• Words that have two forms in one language, but just one in the other: Portuguese criar corresponds to both Spanish crear "to create" and criar "to raise", while Spanish sueño corresponds to both Portuguese sonho "dream" and sono "sleep."

Miño/Minho designates both the river as well as an adjacent Portuguese region Miño/Minho River The river is the longest in Galicia with an extension of 340 km. ... InshaAllah (ان شاء الله ) is an Arabic phrase evoked by Muslims to indicate hope for an aforementioned event to occur in the future. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... Mozarabic was a continuum of closely related Iberian Romance dialects spoken in Muslim dominated areas of the Iberian Peninsula during the early stages of the Romance languages development in Iberia. ... Arabic ( or just ) is the largest living member of the Semitic language family in terms of speakers. ... Latin was the language originally spoken in the region around Rome called Latium. ... World map showing the location of Europe. ... An independent origin and development of writing is counted among the many achievements and innovations of pre-Columbian American cultures. ... Map showing the distribution of African language families and some major African languages. ... Binomial name (L.) Merr. ... The Tupi languages are a language family of 70 languages which are spoken by Indian tribesmen in South America. ... Tea leaves in a Chinese gaiwan. ... Mǐn N n (Chinese: 閩南語), also spelt as Minnan or Min-nan; native name B ; literally means Southern Min or Southern Fujian and refers to the local language/dialect of southern Fujian province, China. ... Cantonese is a major dialect group or language of the Chinese language, a member of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages. ... In diachronic (or historical) linguistics, semantic change is a change in one of the meanings of a word. ... Look up cognate in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Saudade (pron. ...

Frequent homonyms

Apart from a considerable number of false friends, there are also some cognate words whose meaning is broader in one language than in the other. Some examples: Look up False friend in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

"Todo" and "tudo"

The Spanish indefinite pronoun todo can mean "all/every", or "everything". Portuguese distinguishes between todo "all/every" and tudo "everything" (used when the referent is an indefinite object or abstraction).

Todo insecto tiene seis patas. (Spanish)

Todo o insecto (or Todo inseto) tem seis patas. (Portuguese)

Every insect has six legs.

El ladrón robó todo. (Spanish)

O ladrão roubou tudo. (Portuguese)

"The thief stole everything," or "The thief stole it all."

"Muy," "mucho," and "muito"

Spanish distinguishes the adjective mucho "much" from the adverb muy "very/quite". Portuguese uses muito for both. (The cognate mui existed in ancient Portuguese, but has become disused.)

Sacamos muchas fotos durante el viaje. (Spanish)

Tiramos muitas fotos durante a viagem. (Portuguese)

We took many photos during the trip.

Las cerezas están muy maduras. (Spanish)

As cerejas estão muito maduras. (Portuguese)

The cherries are quite ripe.

As an adjective, muito is inflected according to the gender and number of the noun it qualifies, like mucho. As an adverb, it is invariable like muy. Thus, it would be incorrect to say *muitas maduras in the second example. Inflection of the Spanish lexeme for cat, with blue representing the masculine gender, pink representing the feminine gender, grey representing the form used for mixed-gender, and green representing the plural number. ...

Cardinal numbers

The cardinal numbers are very similar in Spanish and Portuguese, but there is a difference in numbers one and two. Spanish has different words for un ("a", "an"; masculine singular indefinite article) and uno ("one"; numeral or pronoun); e.g. página uno "page one". In Portuguese both words are the same, um. Spanish uno can be used like the English generic "one", to represent an indeterminate subject. This is not possible with Portuguese um. One is a personal pronoun in the English language. ...

Uno debe pensar antes de actuar. (Spanish)

One should think before acting.

This still applies in cases where a relatively indeterminate subject is genderized, such as the Spanish todos a una ("all as one," literally "all to one"). It should be rewritten in Portuguese without any cardinal number. For example, todos juntos "all together".

On the other hand, in Portuguese cardinal number "two" inflects with gender (dois if masculine, duas if feminine), while in Spanish dos is used for both.

Uno más uno es igual a dos. (Spanish)

Um mais um é igual a dois. (Portuguese)

One plus one equals two.

Dos cabezas son mejores que una. (Spanish)

Duas cabeças são melhores que uma. (Portuguese)

Two heads are better than one.

"Se", "si", "sí", and "sim"

In Portuguese, the word se can be a reflexive pronoun or a conjunction meaning "if". This may give the false impression that a Portuguese verb is pronominal when it is not. For example, Se ficou em Paris... means "If (he) remained in Paris..." When the conjunction se precedes a pronominal verb, it is common to have a double se in the sentence. Se se esqueceu da sua senha... "If you forgot your password..."

Miscellaneous

• Spanish extrañar can mean "to find strange" or "to miss". Portuguese estranhar only means "to find strange".
• Raro can mean "rare" or "strange" in Spanish. In Portuguese, it just means "rare".
• Spanish todavía means "yet/still". Portuguese todavia means "however/nevertheless".

Orthography

Different spellings for similar sounds

The palatal consonants are spelled differently in the two languages. Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate (the middle part of the roof of the mouth). ...

The symbols ll and ñ were used in Old Portuguese, but in the 13th century King Denis of Portugal, who was an admirer of the poetry of the troubadors and a poet himself, decided to adopt the Occitan digraphs lh and nh. The letter y was used in ancient Portuguese by some authors, but an orthographic reform in 1911 officially replaced it with i. The corresponding sound can be regarded as an allophone of /i/ in both languages. Dinis of Portugal (in archaic Portuguese Diniz; in English Denis), the Farmer (Port. ... Occitan literature — which was erroneously called Provençal literature some decades ago — is a body of works written in Occitan in what is nowadays the South of France. ... Occitan, or langue doc is a Romance language characterized by its richness, variability, and by the intelligibility of its dialects. ... In phonetics, an allophone is one of several similar phones that belong to the same phoneme. ...

In most Spanish dialects, the consonant written ll, originally a palatal lateral approximant /ʎ/, has come to be pronounced like the consonant y, a sound merger known as yeísmo. A similar phenomenon can be found in some dialects of Brazilian Portuguese, but it is much less widespread than in Spanish. However, the precise pronunciation of these three consonants varies with dialect within each language. Although the Spanish y has been transcribed here as /j/ to facilitate the comparison with Portuguese, it is often realized as the voiced palatal fricative [ʝ]. The palatal lateral approximant is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. ... Yeísmo is a distinctive feature of many dialects of the Spanish language, which consists of the merger of the palatal lateral approximant phoneme (written ll) with another phoneme, usually realized as a palatal fricative or affricate. ... The voiced palatal fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. ...

Correspondences between word endings

Various word endings are consistently different in the two languages.

• Spanish -n generally corresponds to Portuguese -m (e.g. Spanish: jardín, algún; Portuguese: jardim, algum). In the plural, the m is replaced with an n (Spanish: jardines, algunos; Portuguese: jardins, alguns). There is also a difference in pronunciation, since in Spanish these letters are fully pronounced, but in Portuguese they just indicate the nasalization of the the preceding vowel (see the section on the vowels, below).

• Common exceptions to the above rule concern the Spanish noun endings:
  • -an and -ano, which normally correspond to -ão in Portuguese;
  • -ana, which corresponds to -ã;
  • -ón / -ción / -sión, which usually correspond to -ão / -ção / -são or -ssão.
  • -on, which corresponds to -ão in most monosyllables;

• The 3rd. person plural endings of the preterite indicative tense are spelled with -on in Spanish (pensaron, vivieron), but with -am in Portuguese (pensaram, viveram).

• Another conspicuous difference is the use of -z in Spanish versus -s in Portuguese at the end of unstressed syllables, especially when the consonant is the last letter in a word. A few examples:

Álvarez,	Hernández,	izquierda,	mezquino	(Spanish)
Álvares,	Fernandes,	esquerda,	mesquinho	(Portuguese)

In phonetics, nasalization is the production of a sound while the velum is lowered, so that air escapes partially or wholly through the nose during the production of the sound. ... The preterite (also praeterite, in American English also preterit, or past historic) is the grammatical tense expressing actions which took place in the past. ...

Accentuation

Both languages use the acute accent to mark the stressed syllable of a word whenever it is not otherwise predictable from spelling, and Portuguese also uses the circumflex accent for the same purpose. The accentuation rules of Portuguese and Spanish are similar, but not identical. Discrepancies are especially pervasive in words that contain i or u in their last syllable. Compare the following pairs of cognates; in each, stress falls on the same syllable. The acute accent (   ) is a diacritic mark used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin and Greek scripts. ... In linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis that may be given to certain syllables in a word. ... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ...

taxi,	viví,	bambú,	ansia,	seria,	sería,	jardín,	pensáis,	pensó	(Spanish)
táxi,	vivi,	bambu,	ânsia,	séria,	seria,	jardim,	pensais,	pensou	(Portuguese)

See Spanish orthography and Portuguese orthography, for further information. Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ...

Phonology

Although the vocabularies of Spanish and Portuguese are quite similar, phonetically Portuguese is somewhat closer to Catalan or to French. It is often claimed that the complex phonology of Portuguese compared to Spanish explains why it is generally not very intelligible to Spanish speakers despite the strong lexical similarity between the two languages. Catalan IPA: (català IPA: or []) is a Romance language, the national language of Andorra, and a co-official language in the Spanish autonomous communities of Balearic Islands, Catalonia and Valencia (in the latter with the name of Valencian), and in the city of LAlguer in the Italian island of...

The following considerations are based on a comparison of standard versions of Spanish and Portuguese. Apparent divergence of the information below from anyone's personal pronunciation may indicate one's idiolect (or dialect) diverges from the mentioned standards. Information on Portuguese phonology is adapted from Celso Pedro Luft (Novo Manual de Português, 1971), and information on Spanish phonology adapted from Manuel Seco (Gramática Esencial del Español, 1994).

Comparing the phonemic inventory of both languages, a noticeable divergence stands out. First, Portuguese has more phonemes than Spanish, particularly vowels. Also, each language has phonemes that are not shared by the other.

Early phonetic divergence

Further information: History of the Spanish language, Portuguese Vocabulary.

This article does not cite any references or sources. ... See also: Portuguese language Since Portuguese is a Romance language, most of the language comes from Latin. ...

Vowels

Spanish and Portuguese have been diverging for over a thousand years. One of the most noticeable early differences between them concerned the result of the stressed vowels of Latin:

¹The vowels /a/ and /ɐ/ occur largely in complementary distribution.
²This diphthong has been reduced to the monophthong /o/ in many dialects of modern Portuguese. Complementary distribution in linguistics refers to the relationship between two elements where one element can be found only in a particular environment and the other element can be found only in the opposite environment. ...

As vowel length ceased to be distinctive in the transition from Latin to Romance, the stressed vowels E and O became ie and ue in Spanish whenever they were short (Latin petra → Spanish piedra "stone"; Latin moritur → Spanish muere "he dies"). Similar diphthongizations can be found in other Romance languages (French pierre, Italian pietra; French meurt/muert, Italian muore, Romanian moare), but in Galician-Portuguese these vowels underwent a qualitative change instead (Portuguese/Galician pedra, morre), becoming lower, as also happened with short I and short U in stressed syllables. The vowels /e/ and /o/ were correspondingly raised: in Spanish, they are mid vowels^{[citation needed]}, while in Portuguese they are close-mid. In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived duration of a vowel sound. ... The Romance languages (sometimes referred to as Romanic languages) are a branch of the Indo-European language family, comprising all the languages that descend from Latin, the language of the Roman Empire. ... In phonetics, a diphthong (also gliding vowel) (Greek δίφθογγος, diphthongos, literally with two sounds, or with two tones) is a monosyllabic vowel combination involving a quick but smooth movement from one vowel to another, often interpreted by listeners as a single vowel sound or phoneme. ... Galician-Portuguese (also known as galego-português or galaico-português in Portuguese and as galego-portugués or galaico-portugués in Galician) was a West Iberian Romance language spoken in the Middle Ages, in the northwest area of the Iberian Peninsula. ... In phonetics, vowel height refers to the position of the tongue relative to the roof of the mouth in a vowel sound. ... A mid vowel is a vowel sound used in some spoken languages. ... A close-mid vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. ...

Portuguese also differs from Spanish in having five nasal vowels (/ɐ̃/, /ẽ/, /ĩ/, /õ/, /ũ/), which, according to historical linguistics, arose from the assimilation of the nasal consonants /m/ and /n/, often at the end of syllables. Syllable-final m and n are still written down to indicate nasalization, even though they are no longer fully pronounced. In other cases, nasal vowels are marked with a tilde: ã, õ. A nasal vowel is a vowel that is produced with a lowering of the velum so that air escapes both through nose as well as the mouth. ... Assimilation is a regular and frequent sound change process by which a phoneme changes to match an adjacent phoneme in a word. ... Note: This page contains phonetic information presented in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) using Unicode. ... The tilde (~) is a grapheme with several uses. ... ã represents a nasal A (IPA: /ɐ̃/). Being a typically Portuguese sound, it is sometimes used as a symbol of the Portuguese language. ... Õ, or õ is a composition of the Latin letter O with the diacritic mark tilde. ...

Consonants

Some of the most characteristic sound changes underwent by the consonants from Latin to Spanish and Portuguese are shown in the table below. Sound change or phonetic change is a historical process of language change consisting in the replacement of one speech sound or, more generally, one phonetic feature by another in a given phonological environment. ...

*reconstructed

Peculiar to early Spanish (as in the Gascon dialect of Occitan, possibly due to a Basque substratum) was the loss of Latin initial F whenever it was followed by a vowel which did not diphthongize. Thus, Spanish hijo and hablar correspond to Portuguese filho and falar (from Latin filium and fabulare, respectively). Nevertheless, Portuguese fogo corresponds to Spanish fuego (from Latin focum). The Gascon language is an Occitan dialect mostly spoken in Gascony (in the French départements of Pyrénées-Atlantiques, Hautes-Pyrénées, Landes, Gers, Gironde, a part of Lot-et-Garonne, a part of Haute-Garonne, and a part of Ariège), and in the small Spanish... Basque (native name: euskara) is the language spoken by the Basque people who inhabit the Pyrenees in North-Central Spain and the adjoining region of South-Western France. ...

Another typical difference concerned the result of Latin L and N in Intervocalic position:

• When single, they were retained in Spanish but elided in Portuguese. Often, the loss of the consonant was followed by the merger of the two surrounding vowels (as in the examples in the table above), or by the insertion of an epenthetic vowel between them (Latin arenam → Spanish arena, Portuguese arẽa, today areia "sand").

• When double, they developed into the Spanish palatals ll and ñ. Indeed, the Spanish letter ñ was originally a shorthand for nn. In Portuguese, -LL- and -NN- just became single.

• When followed by the semivowel I, L coalesced with it into a j in Spanish. In Portuguese, L and N followed by semivowel I were palatalized into lh and nh, respectively.

The tables above represent only general trends. There are many exceptions, due to: In music, see elision (music). ... In linguistics, an epenthetic vowel breaks up a consonant cluster that is not permitted by the phonotactics of a language. ... In phonetics, consonant length is when a spoken consonant is pronounced for an audibly longer period of time than a short consonant. ... Ñ and ñ in Arial and Times New Roman, with an example word from Panare Ñ is a letter of the modern Roman alphabet formed by an N with a diacritical tilde. ... Semivowels (also glides, more rarely: semiconsonants) are non-syllabic vowels that form diphthongs with syllabic vowels. ... Palatalization means pronouncing a sound nearer to the hard palate, making it more like a palatal consonant; this is towards the front of the mouth for a velar or uvular consonant, but towards the back of the mouth for a front (e. ...

1. Other phonological processes at work in old Spanish and old Portuguese, which interfered with these.
2. Later regularization by analogy with related words.
3. Later borrowing of learned words directly from Latin, especially since the Renaissance, which did not respect the original sound laws.
4. Mutual borrowing, from Spanish to Portuguese or vice-versa.

Some consonant clusters of Latin also took markedly different routes in the two languages in their archaic period: A Latinism is a word borrowed from Latin into another language, such as English. ... In linguistics, a consonant cluster is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. ...

Learned words such as pleno, ocular, no(c)turno, tremular, and so on, were not included in the examples above, since they were adapted directly from classical Latin in later times.

Synaeresis

Portuguese has tended to eliminate hiatuses that were preserved in Spanish, merging similar consecutive vowels into one (often after the above-mentioned loss of intervocalic l and n). This results in many Portuguese words being one syllable shorter than their Spanish cognates: Hiatus in linguistics is the separate pronunciation of two adjacent vowels, sometimes with an intervening glottal stop. ...

creído,	leer,	mala,	manzana,	mañana,	poner,	reír,	venir	(Spanish)
crido,	ler,	má,	maçã,	manhã,	pôr,	rir,	vir	(Portuguese)

In other cases, Portuguese reduces consecutive vowels to a diphthong, again resulting in one syllable fewer:

a-te-o,	eu-ro-pe-o,	pa-lo,	ve-lo	(Spanish)
a-teu,	eu-ro-peu,	pau,	véu	(Portuguese)

There are nevertheless a few words where the opposite happened, such as Spanish comprender versus Portuguese compreender, from Latin comprehendere.

Different sounds with the same spelling

Since the late Middle Ages, both languages have gone through more sound shifts and mergers which set them farther apart.

Sibilants

The most marked phonetic divergence between Spanish and Portuguese in their modern period concerned the evolution of the sibilants. In the Middle Ages, both had a rich system of seven sibilants, paired according to affrication and voicing: /s/, /ts/, /z/, /dz/, /ʃ/, /tʃ/, and /dʒ/ (the latter probably in free variation with /ʒ/, as still happens today in Ladino). A sibilant is a type of fricative or affricate, made by directing a jet of air through a narrow channel towards the sharp edge of the teeth. ... Free variation in linguistics is the phenomenon of two (or more) sounds or forms appearing in the same environment without a change in meaning and without being considered incorrect by native speakers. ... Not to be confused with Ladin. ...

Around the Renaissance, the two languages reduced their inventory of sibilants, but in different ways:

• Devoicing in Spanish: the voiced sibilants written -s-, z and j/g became voiceless, merging with s-/-ss-, c/ç and x, respectively. In many dialects, /θ/ also merged with /s/ (seseo). Later, the postalveolar fricative /ʃ/ changed into the velar fricative /x/. Spanish spelling has been updated according to these sound changes.

• Deaffrication in Portuguese: the affricates written c/ç, z, and ch became plain fricatives, merging with the sibilants s-/-ss-, -s-, and x, respectively. In spite of this, modern Portuguese has for the most part kept the medieval spelling.

At the end of syllables, the pronunciation of the sibilants varies somewhat with dialect in both languages. See Spanish dialects and varieties, and Portuguese orthography, for details. A voiced consonant is a sound made as the vocal cords vibrate, as opposed to a voiceless consonant, where the vocal cords are relaxed. ... There are a series of significant differences in the way the Spanish language is spoken in the 20 or so countries and territories where it is an official language. ... The voiceless palato-alveolar fricative or domed postalveolar fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. ... The voiceless velar fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. ... Affricate consonants begin as stops (most often an alveolar, such as or ) but release as a fricative (such as or or, in a couple of languages, into a fricative trill) rather than directly into the following vowel. ... A syllable (Ancient Greek: ) is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds. ... Note: This page or section contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... The orthography of Portuguese is based on the Latin alphabet, and makes use of the acute accent, the circumflex accent, the grave accent, the tilde, and the cedilla, to denote stress, vowel height, nasalization, and other sound changes. ...

Unstressed vowels

The history of the unstressed vowels in Spanish and Portuguese is not as well known as that of the stressed vowels, but some points are generally agreed upon. Spanish has the five short vowels of classical Latin, /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, /u/, one of the most common vowel inventories in world languages. It has also two semivowels, [j] and [w], that appear in diphthongs, but these can be considered allophones of the vowels /i/ and /u/, respectively. The pronunciation of the unstressed vowels does not differ much from that of stressed vowels.

The system of seven oral vowels of medieval Portuguese has been fairly well preserved in the closely related Galician language (several Galician dialects have, however, lost the nasal vowels). In Portuguese, unstressed vowels have been more unstable, both diachronically (across time) and synchronically (between dialects), producing new vowel sounds. The vowels written a, e and o are pronounced in different ways according to several factors, most notably whether they are stressed, and whether they occur in the last syllable of a word. The basic paradigm is shown in the following table (it has some exceptions). Galician (Galician: galego, IPA: ) is a language of the Western Ibero-Romance branch, spoken in Galicia, an autonomous community with the constitutional status of historic nationality, located in northwestern Spain and small bordering zones in neighbouring autonomous communities of Asturias and Castilla y León. ...

¹These vowels occur in complementary distribution in Brazilian Portuguese. In European Portuguese, they have some minimal pairs. In phonology, minimal pairs are pairs of words or phrases in a particular language, which differ in only one phone, phoneme, toneme or chroneme and have a distinct meaning. ...

Similar alternation patterns to these exist in other Romance languages such as Catalan or Occitan. Although it is mostly an allophonic variation, some dialects have developed minimal pairs that distinguish the stressed variants from the unstressed ones. The vowel /ɨ/, unusual in the Romance languages, is often elided in connected speech. It is not present in Brazilian Portuguese. In linguistics, Alternation is when a set of morphosyntactic properties is phonologically expressed in two or more different ways in different words. ...

The orthography of Portuguese, which is partly etymological and analogical, does not indicate these sound changes, which makes the language look deceptively similar to Spanish in writing. For more details, see Portuguese phonology: unstressed vowels. Below is a sketch of the phonology of Portuguese. ...

Other pronunciation differences

Since no distinction is made anymore between the pronunciation of b and v, Spanish spelling has been reformed according to classical Latin. In Portuguese, the spelling of these letters is based on pronunciation, which is closer to medieval Latin. This leads to some orthographic disparities: Brazilian Portuguese (Português Brasileiro in Portuguese) is the group of dialects of Portuguese written and spoken by virtually all the 190 million inhabitants of Brazil and by a couple million Brazilian immigrants, mainly in the United States, Portugal, Canada, Japan, and Paraguay. ... Affricate consonants begin as stops (most often an alveolar, such as or ) but release as a fricative (such as or or, in a couple of languages, into a fricative trill) rather than directly into the following vowel. ... Note: This page or section contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... The alveolar trill is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. ... The alveolar tap/flap is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. ... In human language, a phoneme is the theoretical representation of a sound. ... The voiced bilabial fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. ... The voiced labiodental fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. ...

• Compare for example Spanish gobierno, haber, libro with Portuguese governo, haver, livro.
• The endings of the imperfect indicative tense of 1st. conjugation verbs (with infinitives ending in -ar) are spelled with b in Spanish (cantaba, cantabas, cantábamos, and so on), but with v in Portuguese (cantava, cantavas, cantávamos, etc.)
• The Spanish adjectival suffix -ble, as in posible (also used in English, "possible"), corresponds to -vel in Portuguese: possível.

In Spanish, the plosives b, d, g are usually realized as "soft" approximants [β̞, ð̞, ɣ̞]. While the same pronunciation can sometimes be heard in Portugal, most speakers of Portuguese pronounce these phonemes consistently as "hard" plosives [b, d, g]. This can make a Portuguese sentence like vou comprar umas botas sound like vou comprar umas potas to a Spanish speaker. Approximants are speech sounds that could be regarded as intermediate between vowels and typical consonants. ... A stop, plosive, or occlusive is a consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the vocal tract. ...

Grammar

Broadly speaking, the grammars of Portuguese and Spanish are not too far apart. Nevertheless, there are some differences between them which can be hurdles for people acquainted with one of the languages who attempt to learn the other.

Gender

Spanish has three forms for the singular definite article, el, masculine, la, feminine, and lo, neuter. The latter is used with adjectives to form abstract nouns employed in a generic sense, and also to intensify the meaning of adjectives. In Portuguese, there is only o, masculine, and a, feminine. Literary Spanish has also three corresponding third person pronouns, él "he", ella "she", and ello "it", while Portuguese has only ele, masculine, and ela, feminine. Lo and ello have no plural forms. Definite Article is the title of British comedian Eddie Izzards 1996 performance released on video and CD. The video/DVD and CD performances were both recorded on different nights at the Shaftesbury Theatre in London, England. ... In linguistics, grammatical gender is a morphological category associated with the expression of gender through inflection or agreement. ...

Some words are masculine in Spanish, but feminine in Portuguese, or vice versa. A common example are nouns ended in -aje in Spanish, which are normally masculine, and their Portuguese cognates ending in -agem, which are feminine. For example, Spanish el viaje "the voyage" (masculine, like French le voyage and Italian il viaggio) corresponds to the Portuguese feminine a viagem. On the other hand, the Spanish feminine la leche "the milk" corresponds to Portuguese o leite (masculine, like French le lait, Italian il latte).

Syntax of the definite article

In many varieties of Portuguese, personal names are normally preceded by a definite article, a trait also found in Catalan. This is a relatively recent development, which some Brazilian dialects have not adopted yet, most notably in the Brazilian Northeast. In those dialects of Portuguese that do regularly use definite articles before proper nouns, the article may be omitted for extra formality, or to show distance in a literary narrative. Compare, for example, Eng. "Mary left", Spanish María salió, Port. A Maria saiu. A given name is a word which specifies and differentiates between members of a group of individuals, especially a family, all of whose members usually share the same family name. ... Definite Article is the title of British comedian Eddie Izzards 1996 performance released on video and CD. The video/DVD and CD performances were both recorded on different nights at the Shaftesbury Theatre in London, England. ... Catalan IPA: (català IPA: or []) is a Romance language, the national language of Andorra, and a co-official language in the Spanish autonomous communities of Balearic Islands, Catalonia and Valencia (in the latter with the name of Valencian), and in the city of LAlguer in the Italian island of...

Portuguese also uses the definite article before the names of most countries (a notable exception is Portugal itself), and many cities. In Spanish, country and city names are typically not accompanied by an article, although there are exceptions, especially when the geographical name contains a common noun that may be followed by an adjective (e.g. los Estados Unidos de América, las Filipinas, la Costa Rica, etc.) However, even in these cases, Spanish does not always require a preceding definite article, and, when it does, the article is normally required in English as well.

Santiago es la capital de Chile. (Spanish)

Santiago é a capital do Chile. (Portuguese)

Santiago is the capital of Chile.

Él es de Costa Rica, que está en América Central. (Spanish)

Ele é da Costa Rica, que fica na América Central. (Portuguese)

He is from Costa Rica, which is in Central America.

Tengo un boleto a los Estados Unidos de América. (Spanish)

Tenho um bilhete para os Estados Unidos da América. (Portuguese)

I have a ticket to the United States of America.

Portuguese omits the definite article in stating the time of day unless para as is used.

Son las nueve y quince. (Spanish)

São nove e quinze. (Portuguese)

It’s nine fifteen.

In addition, in most dialects of Portuguese the definite article is used before possessive adjectives (like in Italian), which is not possible in Spanish. For instance, the sentence "This is my brother" is Este es mi hermano in Spanish, but may be Este é o meu irmão in Portuguese. Nevertheless, in some Brazilian dialects (mostly in the Northeast) the article is not used: Este é meu irmão. Headline text hjvhwhatsgm,Possessive adjectives modify nouns. ...

Contractions

The preposition a is identical to the feminine definite article in Portuguese. Thus, while a Ana would mean "to Ann" in Spanish, in Portuguese the same phrase would likely be interpreted as just "Ann". To include the preposition, the grave accent must be used (a + a = à). Thus, "I gave a gift to Ann" is Dei uma prenda à Ana. The grave accent ( ` ) is a diacritic mark used in written Greek until 1982 (polytonic orthography), French, Catalan, Welsh, Italian, Vietnamese, Scottish Gaelic, Norwegian, Portuguese and other languages. ...

Other Portuguese prepositions contract with articles or with personal pronouns, in some cases producing false friends: dos and no mean "two" and "no" in Spanish, but "of the" (de + os) and "in the" (em + o) in Portuguese. While Spanish also has the prepositional contractions al (a + el) and del (de + el), Portuguese has many more.^[1] False friends are pairs of words in two languages or letters in two alphabets that look or sound similar but differ in meaning. ...

Possessives

In Portuguese, all possessive adjectives inflect to agree with the gender of the possessed being, while in Spanish this happens only with nuestro/nuestra "our" and vuestro/vuestra "your" [plural]. Headline text hjvhwhatsgm,Possessive adjectives modify nouns. ...

Mi padre nació tres años antes de mi madre. (Spanish)

O meu pai nasceu três anos antes da minha mãe. (Portuguese)

My father was born three years before my mother.

Pienso que sus manzanas son mejores que sus tomates. (Spanish)

Penso que as suas maçãs são melhores do que os seus tomates. (Portuguese)

I think their apples are better than their tomatoes.

On the other hand, possessive pronouns do show gender in Spanish, and they are different from the possessive adjectives. In Portuguese, they are the same as the adjectives (but in this case the definite article is mandatory). A possessive pronoun is a part of speech that attributes ownership to someone or something. ...

Mi casa es más grande que la suya. (Spanish)

A minha casa é maior que a sua. (Portuguese)

My house is bigger than theirs.

For more details, see Spanish determiners: possessives and Portuguese pronouns: Possessive pronouns and adjectives. This article does not cite its references or sources. ... The pronouns of the Portuguese language have flexions according to their number and, in case of some third person forms, also according to their gender. ...

Personal "a"

Spanish employs a preposition before the direct object of a transitive verb when it denotes a person, the so-called "personal a". In Portuguese, this is most unusual. It is occasionally found in formal texts, like the Biblical commandment Amar a Deus sobre todas as coisas, "To love God above everything else", but it sounds archaic. Since direct objects are typically not preceded by a preposition, it is easy to tell them apart from indirect objects, which are always preceded by a preposition, and the analogue of leísmo is less of an issue than in Spanish. Laísmo and loísmo never occur in Portuguese. The accusative case of a noun is, generally, the case used to mark the direct object of a verb. ... A transitive verb is a verb that requires both a subject and one or more objects. ... Leísmo (using le) is a phenomenon in the Spanish language that involves using the indirect object pronoun le in place of the (standard) masculine direct object pronoun lo, especially when the direct object is animate. ... This article should be translated from material at es:Loísmo. ...

As mentioned above, the preposition a is identical to the feminine definite article in Portuguese, which can create some confusion. For example, in the Spanish sentence He invitado a Juana para cenar en nuestra casa "I have invited Joan for dinner at our house", a is a preposition, but in the Portuguese version Convidei a Joana para jantar em nossa casa it is a definite article.

Dative "se"

The Spanish construction, se lo dio, means either "[He/she] gave it to him" or "[He/she] gave it to himself/herself". The expected pattern for the former would be *le lo dio, but such a construction does not exist. This is unique to Spanish.

• Latin: dedit illis illud → dedit illis illum (early Vulgar Latin) → dit illis illu (late Vulgar Latin)
• Spanish: dio (i)lli (el)lo → dio ge lo → diógelo (arch.) → dióselo → se lo dio
• Portuguese: deu (i)lli (l)o → deu lhe (l)o → deu-lho

Thus, modern Spanish makes no distinction between the reflexive pronoun se and the dative personal pronoun se. Note that this did not happen in old Spanish: diógelo, "he gave it to him", dióselo, "he gave it to himself". The ancient g sound (similar to that of English) was replaced with s in the 14th-15th centuries (cf. Spanish coger, "to catch", but cosecha, "harvest", Port. colher and colheita, both from Lat. colligĕre). Vulgar Latin, as in this political graffito at Pompeii, was the speech of ordinary people of the Roman Empire — different from the classical Latin used by the Roman elite. ... In some languages, there is a difference between reflexive and non-reflexive pronouns. ... The dative case is a grammatical case generally used to indicate the noun to whom something is given. ...

Clitic pronouns

Further information: Portuguese personal pronouns and possessives

The Portuguese personal pronouns and possessives display a higher degree of inflection than other parts of speech. ...

Syntax

European Portuguese differs from Brazilian Portuguese with regard to the placement of clitic personal pronouns, and Spanish is in turn different from both of them. In linguistics, a clitic is an element that has some of the properties of an independent word and some more typical of a bound morpheme. ...

• In Spanish, clitic pronouns normally come before the verb, except in the imperative, the infinitive, and the gerund. In verbal periphrases, they precede the auxiliary verb.
• In spoken Brazilian Portuguese, clitic pronouns normally come before the main verb. In verbal periphrases, they come between the auxiliary verb and the main verb. This occurs even with the imperative, the infinitive, the gerund, and the past participle.
• In European Portuguese, clitic pronouns may come before or after the verb, depending on the type of clause. In verbal periphrases, they may precede or follow the auxiliary verb, or follow the main verb (when this is in the infinitive or the gerund).

In linguistics, an auxiliary (also called helping verb, auxiliary verb, or verbal auxiliary) is a verb functioning to give further semantic or syntactic information about the main or full verb following it. ... In grammar, a clause is a word or group of words ordinarily consisting of a subject and a predicate, although in some languages and some types of clauses, the subject may not appear explicitly. ...

Allomorphs

In European Portuguese, third-person clitic pronouns have special variants used after certain types of verb endings, which does not happen in Spanish. In Brazilian Portuguese, these euphonic forms are uncommon, since clitic pronouns normally precede the verb. Euphony describes flowing and aesthetically pleasing speech. ...

Mesoclisis

In formal Portuguese, verbs in the future indicative or conditional tense may be split into morphemes, and the clitic pronoun is inserted between them, a feature known as mesoclisis. No comparable phenomenon takes place in Spanish: In morpheme-based morphology, a morpheme is the smallest lingual unit that carries a semantic interpretation. ...

Lo traerá. (Spanish)

Trá-lo-á. (formal Portuguese)

He will bring it.

However, these tenses tend to be replaced with others in the spoken language, which do not require mesoclisis.

Verbs

See also: Spanish verbs and Portuguese verb conjugation

Spanish verbs are one of the most complex areas of Spanish grammar. ... In Portuguese there are three conjugations. ...

"To be"

Further information: Romance copula

Spanish and Portuguese have two main copulas, ser and estar. For the most part, the use of these verbs is the same in both languages, but there are a few cases where it differs. The main difference between Spanish and Portuguese is in the interpretation of the concept of state versus essence and in the generalisations one way or another that are made in certain constructions. For instance, The copula or copulae (the verb or verbs meaning to be) in all Romance languages derive from the Latin verbs SVM and STO. The former was the copular verb to be (ultimately from the Indo-European copula *h1es-), and the latter mainly meant to stand (ultimately from the Indo-European... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...

Está prohibido fumar. (Spanish) [estar]

É proibido fumar. (Portuguese) [ser]

Smoking is forbidden.

La silla está hecha de madera. (Spanish) [estar]

A cadeira é feita de madeira. (Portuguese) [ser]

The chair is made of wood.

Sólo uno es correcto. (Spanish) [ser]

Só um está correcto (or correto). (Portuguese) [estar]

Only one is correct.

Also, the use of ser regarding a permanent location is much more accepted in Portuguese. Conversely, estar is often permanent in Spanish regarding a location, while in Portuguese, it implies being temporary. (See the first example below.)

Secondary copulas are quedar(se) in Spanish and ficar in Portuguese. Each can also mean "to stay" or "to remain."

Nuestra oficina queda (or está) muy lejos. (Spanish) [quedar/estar]

O nosso escritório fica (or é) muito longe. (Portuguese) [ficar/ser]

Our office is very far away.

Mi abuela se está quedando sorda. (Spanish)

A minha avó está ficando surda. (Portuguese)

My grandmother is becoming deaf.

Me quedé dentro de la casa todo el día. (Spanish)

Fiquei dentro de casa todo o dia. (Portuguese)

I stayed (or "was") inside the house all day.

As explained in the next section, the Spanish sentence implies that staying inside the house was voluntary, while Portuguese and English are quite ambiguous on this matter without any additional context.

Pronominal verbs

Pronominal verbs are a bit more frequent in Spanish than in Portuguese, especially with actions relating to body parts: In grammar, a reflexive verb is a verb whose semantic agent and patient (typically represented syntactically by the subject and the direct object) are the same. ...

Guillermo se quebró la pierna jugando a la pelota. (Spanish)

O Guilherme quebrou a perna jogando (à) bola. (Portuguese)

William broke his leg playing football.

In other cases, Spanish uses these verbs to indicate subjective thinking:

No me gusta mi trabajo. (Spanish)

Não gosto do meu trabalho. (Portuguese)

I do not like my job.

When the same verb in Spanish becomes pronominal, voluntary action is implied:

Pablo quedó en París. (Spanish)

Paul stayed in Paris [an accident may have forced him to].

Pablo se quedó en París. (Spanish)

Paul stayed in Paris [because he decided to].

Both sentences above would be rendered in Portuguese as O Paulo ficou em Paris.

"Going to" future

Both languages have a construction similar to the English "going-to" future. Spanish includes the preposition a between the conjugated form of ir "to go" and the infinitive: Voy a leer el libro "I am going to read the book" (present tense of ir + a + infinitive). In Portuguese, there is no preposition between the helping verb and the main verb: Vou ler o livro (present tense of ir + infinitive). This also applies when the verb is in other tenses: Going-to future is a term used to describe an English sentence structure referring to the future, making use of the verb phrase to be going to. ...

Ayer iba a leer el libro, pero no tuve la oportunidad. (Spanish)

Ontem ia ler o livro, mas não tive oportunidade. (Portuguese)

Yesterday I was going to read the book, but never had the chance.

"Ir a" versus "ir para"

Quite common in both languages are the prepositions para and a, both of which often translate as "to". However, Portuguese distinguishes between going somewhere for a short while versus a longer stay, especially if it is an intended destination, in the latter case using para instead of a. While there is no specified duration of stay before a Portuguese speaker must switch prepositions, a implies one will return sooner, rather than later, relative to the context. This distinction is not made in English or Spanish, and the Spanish para cannot be used for this purpose.

Fui al mercado cerca de mi casa. (Spanish)

Fui ao mercado perto de minha casa. (Portuguese)

I went to the market near my house. [temporary displacement]

El presidente anterior fue desterrado a Portugal. (Spanish)

O presidente anterior foi exilado para Portugal. (Portuguese)

The former president was exiled to Portugal. [permanent, or more lasting displacement]

Note, though, in the first example, para could be used in Portuguese if in contrast to a very brief period of time.

Não fico muito tempo, só um minuto. Tenho de ir para o mercado. (Portuguese)

I can't stay long, only a minute. I have to go to the market. [pending task or appointment]

Auxiliary verb of perfect tenses

In Spanish and other Romance languages, compound perfect tenses are constructed with a verb derived from Latin habere. This used to be the case in Portuguese, too, but in recent centuries the verb ter, from Latin tenere, has been steadily overtaking haver, although the latter is still used with some frequency in writing and in formal spoken registers. While ter is used as auxiliary by other Iberian languages, it is much more pervasive in Portuguese. Compare, for instance, Spanish "Había comido cuando mi madre volvió" "I had eaten when my mother came back" with Port. "Tinha comido quando a minha mãe voltou". In grammar, the perfective aspect is an aspect that exists in many languages. ...

Imperfect subjunctive versus pluperfect indicative

A class of false friends between the two languages is composed of the verb forms with endings containing -ra-, such as cantara, cantaras, cantáramos, and so on. Spanish has two forms for the imperfect subjunctive, one with endings in -se- and another with endings in -ra- (e.g. cantase, cantara; were I to sing), which are usually interchangeable. In Portuguese, only cantasse has this value; cantara is employed as a pluperfect indicative, i.e. the equivalent to Spanish había cantado (I had sung). Although there is a strong tendency to use a verb phrase instead in the spoken language, like in Spanish and English (tinha cantado), the simple tense is still frequent in literature. The subjunctive mood (sometimes referred to as the conjunctive mood) is a grammatical mood of the verb that expresses wishes, commands (in subordinate clauses), and statements that are contrary to fact. ... The pluperfect tense exists in most Indo-European languages, including English. ...

Present perfect

In Spanish, as well as in English, the present perfect tense is normally used to talk about an action initiated and completed in the past, which is still considered relevant or influential in the present moment. Consider the examples below: The present perfect tense denotes a present condition resulting from a previous action. ...

No, gracias. Ya he cenado. (Spanish)

No, thank you. I have already dined.

Não, obrigado. Já jantei. (Portuguese)

He ido a España dos veces. (Spanish)

I have been to Spain twice.

Já fui a Espanha duas vezes. (Portuguese)

¿Has oído las últimas noticias? (Spanish)

Have you heard the latest news?

Ouviste as últimas notícias? (Portuguese)

In each of these sentences, Portuguese uses the preterite instead of the present perfect. In Portuguese, the present perfect (pretérito perfeito composto) is used for speaking of events which began in the past and were repeated regularly up to the present. Normally, it conveys the connotation that the event in question is likely to keep happening in the future (though this is not a necessary condition for the Portuguese present perfect to be used). A few examples: The preterite (also praeterite, in American English also preterit, or past historic) is the grammatical tense expressing actions which took place in the past. ...

Ultimamente, tenho ido ao cinema todos os sábados. (Portuguese)

Lately, I have gone to the cinema every Saturday.

Últimamente, he ido al cine todos los sábados. (Spanish)

Tenho pensado em pedi-la em casamento. (Portuguese)

I have been thinking of asking her to marry me.

He pensado en pedirle matrimonio. (Spanish)

As this last example suggests, the Portuguese present perfect is often closer in meaning to the English present perfect continuous, than to the present perfect. See also Spanish verbs: contrasting the preterite and the perfect. Spanish verbs are one of the most complex areas of Spanish grammar. ...

Personal infinitive

It is possible in Portuguese for a verb in the infinitive to agree with its subject, often showing who is supposed to perform a certain act; cf. É necessário voltares "It is necessary [for you] to return", É necessário voltarmos "It is necessary [for us] to return." In Spanish, the same idea would be expressed using the subjunctive, Es necesario que vuelvas "It is necessary that you return", and Es necesario que volvamos "It is necessary that we return", respectively. The personal infinitive is mandatory in some types of infinitive clauses and forbidden in others, but the choice between it and the impersonal infinitive is otherwise quite subjective, governed by stylistic criteria. In grammar, infinitive is the name for certain verb forms that exist in many languages. ... In languages, agreement is a form of cross-reference between different parts of a sentence or phrase. ... Stylistics is the study of style used in literary, and verbal language and the effect the writer/speaker wishes to communicate to the reader/hearer. ...

Future subjunctive

Related article: Subjunctive mood

This tense developed by medieval Ibero-Romance is now old-fashioned in Spanish, but remains in vernacular use in Portuguese (in fact, it shows no signs of falling out of favour). It appears in subordinate clauses that denote a condition which must be fulfilled in the future, so that the main clause will happen. Spanish will use the present tense in this type of clause. Consider the following three sentences. (Latin is included as a term of comparison, since it never developed a future subjunctive itself.) In grammar, the subjunctive mood (sometimes referred to as the conjunctive mood) is a verb mood that exists in many languages. ... The formation of Iberian Romance languages followed more or less this process: A common Romance language with dialectal differences was spoken throughout the ancient Roman Empire. ... In grammar, a clause is a word or group of words ordinarily consisting of a subject and a predicate, although in some languages and some types of clauses, the subject may not appear explicitly. ...

If I were king, I would end hunger.

Si essem rex, terminarem famem. (Latin) [past subjunctive]

Si fuera rey, acabaría con el hambre. (Spanish) [past subjunctive]

Se fosse rei, acabaria com a fome. (Portuguese) [past subjunctive]

The situation is counterfactual; we know that the speaker is not a king. All four languages use the past (imperfect) subjunctive here. A counterfactual conditional (sometimes called a subjunctive conditional) is a logical conditional statement whose antecedent is (ordinarily) taken to be contrary to fact by those who utter it. ...

If I am elected president, I will change the law.

Si sum electus praesidens, mutabo legem. (Latin) [future indicative]

Si soy elegido presidente, cambiaré la ley. (Spanish) [present indicative]

Se for eleito presidente, mudarei a lei. (Portuguese) [future subjunctive]

This second statement expresses a future possibility; the speaker may yet be elected president. Here, Spanish uses the present indicative tense, while Portuguese uses the future subjunctive.

For a different kind of example, a father speaking to his son might say:

When you are older, you will understand.

Quando eris major, comprehendes. (Latin) [future indicative]

Cuando seas mayor, comprenderás. (Spanish) [present subjunctive]

Quando fores mais velho, compreenderás. (Portuguese) [future subjunctive]

Not all subordinate clauses of this kind require the future subjunctive, however, and sometimes the present subjunctive is used where a beginner might expect to see the future subjunctive. Other times, both the present and the future subjunctive are acceptable, though they convey different nuances to the sentence.

The Spanish future subjunctive is, nevertheless, used in legal documents, and some sayings or idioms: An idiom is an expression (i. ...

A los que leyeren, "To the readers" (lit. "To those who may read");

Adonde fueres, haz lo que vieres "Wherever you go, do as you see".

References

Notes

Bibliography

• Carrasco González, Juan M. Manual de iniciación a la lengua portuguesa, 1994, Editorial Ariel, S.A., Barcelona
• Estrela, Edite A questão ortográfica — Reforma e acordos da língua portuguesa (1993) Editorial Notícias
• Lindley Cintra, Luís F. Nova Proposta de Classificação dos Dialectos Galego-Portugueses Boletim de Filologia, Lisboa, Centro de Estudos Filológicos, 1971.
• Luft, Celso Pedro. Novo Manual de Português. São Paulo, Editora Globo, 1990 (13th edition) pp 43-53
• Mateus, Maria Helena & d'Andrade, Ernesto (2000) The Phonology of Portuguese ISBN 0-19-823581-X
• Seco, Manuel. Gramática Esencial del Español. Madrid, Espasa, 1996 (4th edition) pp 81-94
• Squartini, Mario (1998) Verbal Periphrases in Romance — Aspect, Actionality, and Grammaticalization ISBN 3-11-016160-5
• Vázquez Cuesta, Mendes da Luz, (1987) Gramática portuguesa, 3rd. ed. ISBN 84-249-1117-2
• Contrastive Romance Phonetics at Orbis Latinus
• From Spanish to Portuguese 2.81 MiB FSI Language Courses
• História da Língua Portuguesa em Linha, Homepage of the Instituto Camões

A mebibyte (a contraction of mega binary byte) is a unit of information or computer storage, abbreviated MiB. 1 MiB = 220 bytes = 1,048,576 bytes = 1,024 kibibytes 1 MiB = 1024 (= 210) kibibytes (KiB), and 1024 MiB equal one gibibyte (GiB). ... Instituto Camões (also in English Camoens Institute or Camões Institute) is an institution created for the promotion of the Portuguese language and culture in the world, the Camões Institute has administrative and patrimonial autonomy, that, under the supervision of the Minister of the Foreign affairses, assures the...

See also

• Portuguese phonology
• Spanish phonology
• Spanish grammar
• Portuguese grammar
• Vulgar Latin
• Romance languages
• West Iberian languages
• Spanish language
• Portuguese language
• Preterite
• Portuñol/Portunhol
• Wikipedia in Portuguese: List of contracted prepositions

Below is a sketch of the phonology of Portuguese. ... Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... Spanish (Español) is a language originating in North-Central Spain which is spoken throughout Spain, most countries in the Americas, the Philippines and Equatorial Guinea. ... Portuguese grammar, the morphology and syntax of the Portuguese language, is similar to the grammar of most other Romance languages — especially Galician and the other languages of Iberian Peninsula. ... Vulgar Latin, as in this political graffito at Pompeii, was the speech of ordinary people of the Roman Empire — different from the classical Latin used by the Roman elite. ... The Romance languages (sometimes referred to as Romanic languages) are a branch of the Indo-European language family, comprising all the languages that descend from Latin, the language of the Roman Empire. ... West Iberian language is the subcategory of Romance languages, including Spanish and Portugese. ... This article is about the international language known as Spanish. ... Portuguese (  or língua portuguesa) is a Romance language that originated in what is now Galicia (Spain) and northern Portugal from the Latin spoken by romanized Celtiberians about 1000 years ago. ... The preterite (also praeterite, in American English also preterit, or past historic) is the grammatical tense expressing actions which took place in the past. ... Portuñol (also Portunhol), a portmanteau of the words Português (Portuguese) and Español (Spanish), is a mixed language based on Spanish and Portuguese. ...

External links

• List of Spanish-Portuguese false friends
• Contrastive Romance Lexicology at Orbis Latinus
• Diccionario Español-Portugués
• Dicionário Português-Espanhol
• A recording of the sibilants, as they would have been pronounced in medieval Spanish and Portuguese.
• Tá Falado! — Brazilian Portuguese Pronunciation for Speakers of Spanish