Notes on Learning Basic Italian and Portuguese as a Spanish Speaker

Portuguese, Italian, and Spanish all share a common ancestor language, Latin, and thus share many common characteristics. I had previously avoided or aborted learning any more than Spanish, because I thought I’d confuse them with each other. Early this year, I felt confident enough in my B2-ish Spanish as cemented in my brain that I changed my mind and decided I’d give Italian a serious go. Once I had some familiarity with it, I became more curious about Portuguese, on the back half of this year, with an eye for traveling to Portugal in the near future. While I am not fluent by any stretch of the imagination, I now possess enough of both languages to confidently pass online A1 practice tests consisting of reading, writing, and listening. It is now December, and I have a few thoughts about it all.

I will first touch on some thoughts on Portuguese specifically, then on Italian. Finally, I will touch on points that relate to them both.

Please note that I am not a linguist; I am certain they have the terms and tools to describe the ideas I state below more professionally and precisely, but alas, I am a humble practicant (sic). I leave these offerings for my fellow dabblers.

Portuguese

#

The ~ and its Consequences

#

The tilde (“~”) in Spanish is most often used above an “n” to form the glyph “ñ,” itself an official letter of the Spanish alphabet. This produces sound reminiscent of the “ny” in the name of the country, “Kenya.”

I recently learned that this special letter came about in Spanish by way of abbreviation in writing some centuries ago. For example, “anno,” a word that means “year” in both Portuguese and Italian and derives from the latin “annum,” is written “año” in Spanish. This to me suggests that “año” was written and spoken in Spanish as “anno” for some time as well, in common with Portuguese and Italian. Then, at some point, the Spanish came to read and pronounce the written abbreviation in a different way than it originated, with an “ny” sound instead of a long “n”.

Carrying forward this idea of the tilde being used originally as abbreviation, I came to find that many uses of the tilde in Portuguese could also be explained as the use of a written abbreviation finding new life as a newly spoken sound, in a slightly different way.

In Portuguese, however, the “ny” sound belongs to an entirely different glyph, and “ñ” does not exist. The tilde is not used in conjunction with the “n” to produce “ñ,” but to indicate the projection of a vowel slightly differently than usual, with a partially closed-off throat instead of clearly. Thus, “ã” vs. “a,” etc. The famous “nasal” sounds of Portuguese, these partially closed-off vowels, appear to me to be the direct consequence of this abbreviation of “n”s in writing. The difference being that in Spanish, the “ñ” exists, whereas in Portuguese, the “~” was placed on an adjacent vowel, and any evidence of the written “n” was removed entirely.

One can grasp at this idea by example of words like “mão,” meaning “hand” in Portuguese. In Spanish and Italian, the word for “hand” is “mano” – notice anything? Let’s take a look at some other examples I believe that I have come across that this rule applies to:

Tilde in Portuguese as Archaic Abbreviation of N, Leading to Nasal Sound

#

If you really think about the mechanics of the mouth and tongue, an “n” and a nasal vowel are really not far apart at all physically – they both involve the tongue closing off the mouth in some way while vibrating the vocal cords. The nasal vowel is simply a softer touch of the tongue, and using the back of the tongue to cut off the projection, rather than using the tip of the tongue against the roof to achieve the same goal.

This idea of the tilde corresponding to an abbreviated “n” and thus leading to the related nasal vowel has not been mentioned in any material I’ve looked at so far in my self-studies, but it has been quite useful for me as a rule of thumb. I must imagine that it’s more often mentioned in study material written with a Spanish- or otherwise Latinate-possessed audience in mind. My native language is English, and most of the things I’ve used to educate myself on Portuguese have been for English speakers.

Note that I’m not sure this rule holds for all of Portuguese – some words with “ã” may very well not be descended from this abbreviation. But many examples I’ve come across so far in my early studies perfectly mesh with this idea. This makes guessing at words a bit easier – slip in a clear “n” after the vowel with a tilde, and remove the tilde, and suddenly Portuguese looks and sounds a lot more like Spanish or Latin.

The ~ itself - is it a tiny “N”?

#

Maybe a linguist knows off the top of their head - but with all this written out, I must wonder… was the tilde mark in Latin originally just a smaller “N,” which is also, in essence, a single wavy line? Thus why it makes sense that this mark was used to abbreviate the letter “n” in both Spanish and Portuguese - the “N” was simply squished and moved on top of another letter to save space when writing, but came to be interpreted differently in each spoken language over time? Interesting possibility! I suppose it’s something to research…

Other Quick Notes

#

What about the “ñ” sound in Portuguese?

#

I briefly mentioned above that another glyph in Portuguese produces the same “Kenya” sound that “ñ” does in Spanish. That would be “nh.” This is another tool to leverage for translation and is very straightforward in its application for a Spanish speaker. Just imagine “ñ” in place of “nh,” and you recognize many words, or at least how to pronounce them reasonably well, right off the bat.

L vs R

#

Several Portuguese words are just Spanish words, with the L swapped for an R.

Italian

#

I feel like Italian is closer to Spanish in pronunciation and rules than Portuguese. Both Spanish and Italian seem to have a heavy focus on words being correctly pronounceable on sight with as few sounds-based rules to memorize as possible, regional accent differentiation notwithstanding.

Having said that, I feel like, lexically, Portuguese and Spanish actually share more similarities than Italian and Spanish. Lots of basic words in Portuguese and Spanish mirror exactly or nearly if you ignore orthography like “ñ” vs “nh,” whereas in Italian I have encountered more significant material differences.

It seems that many letters were removed from Italian at some point; many of the classic, and dare I say, best letters of the Latin script, that many modern languages still possess, ironically have been eliminated by the most direct descendant of Latin, Italian. “JKWXY” are the five Latin letters that have been dropped from standard Italian, save some foreign loanwords. I’m sure there is a fascinating history behind this decision, and I have resolved myself to read about it someday.

Touching on the missing “X,” I find it quite amusing that one of the most-often mispronounced Italian words, “espresso,” is because they dropped the “x” from “expresso” and replaced it, thus confusing all the other languages that still use some similar word to “expresso,” like English speakers with the word “express.” Anyway, Italian is quite easy to grasp for a Spanish speaker, in listening as well as in reading and writing, with a little practice.

Other Quick Notes

#

Final Consonants

#

Italian seems to drop final consontants often and place an accent on the now-final vowels, as if it were both a note of emphasis and an apostrophe denoting the lost letter. I find this quite amusing.

Both Portuguese and Italian

#

Easy Parts

#

One thing I have found rather easy to do in both Portuguese and Italian, with a Spanish background, is to read simple text. You must approach the endeavor with a creative mind and the ability to recognize and apply patterns. If you have those two things, the languages are not so different between themselves and from Spanish or Latin that you can’t sit down and grasp simple ideas very quickly, and even moreso with even a bit of time and exposure.

The biggest trip-ups of an otherwise easy reading journey will come from what are known as “false friends,” or words that sound very similar in both languages but mean different things. I have noticed that most of them tend to be from some distant idea in the past which had multiple words to describe it, and one word came to be dominant in one language, and another in the others. So, for example, “preciso” means “precise” in Spanish but “need” in Portuguese. Or, “vaso” means drinking glass in Spanish but “vase” in Portuguese. Or the classic “embarazada” in Spanish, fairly well known to English speakers as actually meaning “pregnant” rather than “embarrassed. In Italian, “imbarazzata” does indeed mean, “embarrassed.”

The grammatical rules of each language are also similar enough as to get by quite easily without too much study, as long as you’re not the one who has to actually produce the correct answer. Listening to someone else speak to you or reading someone else’s writing, it’s very easy to recognize what must mean what, given surrounding context.

Difficulties

#

The first and most obvious difficulty – confusing them with each other, due to their similarities. I was right in my initial instinct that I would not be able to totally keep them separate in my brain. There is an “English-speaking” part of my psyche and an “anything else” part of my psyche, and even those get confused and cross the barrier at times. So, all these Latin languages get their wires crossed sometimes. Even then, I think it has been a very enjoyable process and has still yielded results that make the errors and mentally sorting through similar-yet-different vocabulary and rules very worth it.

Portuguese, especially Portuguese from Portugal, has been surprisingly difficult for me to listen to and grasp, when compared to reading Portuguese, or listening to or reading Italian. The rules of pronunciation differ significantly for even basic sounds and combinations of letters when compared to Spanish and Italian. Portugal, in general, seems to like to drop a lot of vowels such that the spoken word is more of a smattering of consonants, with a handful of suggestions of vowels. It is really a marvel to listen to. Brazil seems to prefer to keep the vowels intact more often, from my observations. Yet, they both have various twists on certain consonant-vowel pairings that leave me scratching my head. Approaching it from Spanish / Italian / Latin, it’s like an accent on steroids. For example, the word “De” is pronounced essentially identically in Spanish, Latin, and Italian – “D” as in dog and “E” as in elf. In Portuguese, this combination of letters is pronounced, “Je,” so, “J” as in “John” and “E” as in elf.

Similar little rules pop up everywhere in the Portuguese language, and differ rather significantly between Portugal and Brazil. For example, when a word ends in a vowel followed by an “L”, (e.g., “Brasil”), Brazilians will pronounce this word as ending in “iu.” So, “Brasiu.” The Portuguese speakers of Portugal, in contrast, make no such adjustment. These little rules must be memorized, and the more straightforward instincts developed from Spanish, Latin, or any Latin-based or Latin-script language, must be overridden. In this way, it reminds me of English – so many little rules of pronunciation to memorize! Spanish and Italian seem to do their best to avoid so many little quirks; I believe this is intentional by the shapers of the language at the highest academic levels, but I am not so familiar with their histories as to comment.

Helpful Practices

#

A most reliable ally this year was the language learning application “Duolingo,” for both languages. I have used it on and off for many years - it is not the most adept tool at teaching underlying concepts, but it helps with consistency and practice, and builds upon itself slowly in terms of complexities introduced.

The language sharing application “Tandem” was a nice way that I met many Italian speakers in Italy and elsewhere, and practiced with them a bit while helping them with their English. I also befriended a Portuguese speaker apart from this, and have learned a lot from her about Brazil as well as Portuguese (shoutout Lina!). Speaking and sharing with real people, is, I think, one of the best ways to learn any language. Finding people to share with, in person or online, is a great way to progress as well as learn about the wider world.

Watching random YouTube videos after searching “X language listening practice” has also been very helpful, indeed. YouTube allows you to control the playback speed of videos, and this is very useful for listening practices that are a bit too advanced but that you still want to try out. I also listened to “Coffee Break Italian” every so often, on Spotify.

Another method I tried this year was watching television in the language I was trying to learn. Many shows on Netflix have dubbed voiceovers available in many languages, and even more languages are usually available via subtitles. I mixed and matched the foreign language audio with the corresponding foreign language subtitles and with English subtitles; sometimes I would rewind a portion and watch it once with foreign subtitles and once with English subtitles, particularly if I didn’t grasp what all was going on. Another idea is watching shows and movies you’ve already seen in your native language, in the language you’re trying to learn. It is all good fun, give it a try!

Finally, toward the end of the year, I changed my most-played video game, Victoria 3, to display all text in Portuguese. It is not a game with any voice acting, so it didn’t help my ear, but the fact that I am very familiar with all the abundant text in this game in English was quite a fun and real way to help me translate all the things I was seeing in Portuguese.

Other Quick Notes

#

F vs H

#

In Spanish, the “F” sound/letter appears to have been swapped to the silent “H” in many instances, compared to Portuguese, Latin, and Italian.

Conclusion

#

Learning languages that share a reasonably recent ancestor with a language you already know, like Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese, is at once shockingly simple and consistently frustrating. If you are a pattern-oriented, rules enjoyer, with a bit of patience, you will likely get a lot of enjoyment out of it! Give it a whirl and see how it goes.

Thanks for reading :)

Alex