Can Portuguese speakers understand spoken Spanish?
My Aunt who is from Mexico says when reading or hearing protugese she can catch about half of what people are saying. From my understanding the languages are close when it comes to grammar but the vocabulary is differnt enough that you can't converse.
It's much easier for Portuguese speakers to understand Spanish than it is for Spanish speakers to understand Portuguese. When I started learning Portuguese I could understand a good deal, but still be a little more off because of their greater nuances. Of course that's Brazilian Portuguese in my case.I would still stumble a bit when I heard one of my former neighbors speaking the Portuguese of Portugal. The accent just drove me in a bit. But overall the comprehension is relatively high for both +1 for Portuguese to Spanish though.
Many Spanish speakers claim Italian is easier to understand, while some think Portuguese is easier. The truth is, If an average Spanish speaker pays close attention and makes an effort, they will see that Portuguese is much easier to understand than Italian, as Portuguese shares a lot more words in common with our language than Italian and the grammar is a lot more identical. The only thing that inhibits understanding on the Spanish side is their pronunciation and their nasal sounds which don't exist in Spanish, as Spanish only has five simple sounds and Portuguese has about fourteen or so. This is why Portuguese speakers understand Spanish speakers much better than the other way around.
It depends, some people understand it easily, some can't understand a word of it. It all depends on their will to understand. Many Spanish speakers claim to understand Italian better because it sounds more like Spanish. For me, Portuguese was always easier to understand back when I didn't speak a word of it. Heck, some Spanish speakers can't even understand other Spanish speakers from a different country, let alone Portuguese speakers.
Spanish speakers would only understand about one word in 10 of spoken Portuguese - despite the fact that the languages *look* similar. Portuguese speakers tend to understand far more Spanish than the other way around. This is because of the way Portuguese is pronounced.
