What other language is most similar to Spanish?

Question

Is it Portuguese? Or Italian? Or someother one? Anyone knows? Thank you.

• wow yolii ! i was going to ask the same question . great question yolii - lovely_lovel Jul 7, 2010

Answer 1

Soy Español, y el italiano es más fácil de entender para un español que el portugués, por lo menos en el habla, por escrito no estoy seguro. El portugués es una variante del Gallego antiguo más que del Castellano.

Answer 2

Spanish is a West Iberian language.

West Iberian is a branch of the Romance languages which includes Spanish, Ladino, the Astur-Leonese group (Asturian, Leonese, and Mirandese, (even Extremaduran)), and the modern descendants of Galician-Portuguese (Galician, Portuguese, and the Fala language). According to historical linguistic analysis, these languages are significantly closer to each other in historical terms than to any other living language in the peninsula — including Catalan, the other major Romance language of the Iberian Peninsula.

(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Iberian_languages)

Answer 3

Thought you might be interested in this complicated-looking diagram.

When I first read your question, I thought of Catalán, because, though I have never studied it, I can pretty much understand it by virtue of speaking Spanish (for perfect comprehension a dictionary would be necessary), but according to the diagram, it looks like Aragonese is closer. Leonese is also very close. As far as more major languages go, Portuguese is the closest. And, also, I can pretty much understand Portuguese if spoken slowly, too, and I don't suppose that qualification is really terribly scientific. I don't know about the others because I have never heard them.

I did a bit of research, and have drawn up a diagram for you. Well, I can't really draw a diagram with the formatting I can manage in the outrageous formatting scheme available here, but I will attempt to recreate the diagram for you. Here goes. Basically, the line starts like this, with other languages sprouting off the side, but I'll just show you the lineage of the languages in question. Latin to Vulgar Latin to Continental Romance to Italo-Western Romance to Western Romance. Then off of Western Romance you get two branches: Ibero Romance and Gallo Romance. Ibero Romance splits into Spanish and Portuguese. Gallo Romance splits into Occitano Romance and French, and Occitano Romance splits into Catalán and Occitan.

If that was all a bit of a blur, you can see a similar diagram here, which, by virtue of not being an image but a weirdo Wikipedia diagram, I was unable to reproduce here.

Update: Wow. Okay, well, that diagram is almost impossible to read, it came out so small. I'll leave it up for people with very good eye-sight though.

Answer 4

I keep hearing Spanish speakers tell me Italian is easier to understand than Portuguese.

Heidita said:

I agree with that, my vote goes to Italian. wink

I agree. I choose Italian

... but it seems that Spanish an Portuguese are on the same branch

Answer 5

Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian.... They are all pretty close in their own ways...

I personally always thought Portuguese was the most similar, but I can also tell you that Italian is pretty similar to Spanish. I was reading something the other day that had bits and pieces of Italian phrases, and I could pretty much understand them all. Then, the last two sentences (very short) were in Italian. I could understand the first sentence based solely on my knowledge of Spanish (if you had translated it into Spanish, it would have said basically the same thing). I couldn't understand the second sentence though... It was "too Italian" .

French is also similar to Spanish. I, of course, am taking Spanish at school. Some of my friends, however are taking French. I kind of want to learn French too, so I'm always trying to compare it to Spanish. I have a friend from Switzerland who is fluent in French and is taking Spanish. She said that knowing French kind of made it a little easy for her to remember some of the words since they were very close, but there are times when they are just completely different.

Just remember, all the "Romance Languages" branch off from Latin, so, though you may not be able to say exactly which one is the most similar, you can still say they are all pretty similar to the others.

Answer 6

I say Italian. I hear Portuguese a lot, but I watched a Brazilian movie the other day and the language sounded more like French than Spanish.

Answer 7

can I get a vote for english?????, with the addition of A or O there are a great deal of similar words