How to reach B2 spoken Portuguese when already being a Spanish B2 speaker?

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langmon
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How to reach B2 spoken Portuguese when already being a Spanish B2 speaker?

Postby langmon » 2018-11-10, 5:43

I'd like to be able to speak B2 Portuguese, and I am grateful for already being able to do that with Spanish.
So how to reach the B2 Portuguese speaking level too, without mixing them up?
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Luís
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Re: How to reach B2 spoken Portuguese when already being a Spanish B2 speaker?

Postby Luís » 2018-11-10, 9:59

People who already know Spanish sometimes tend to think they can speak Portuguese by simply taking a Spanish sentence and replacing all Spanish words by Portuguese ones. Even if you might be understood, you'll probably be saying things that sound completely unnatural.

I suggest you go over a list of false friends and common expressions that are different in both languages. Then read about differences in verb usage. When it comes to listening comprehension (especially EP) I don't think Spanish will be of much help, though. As with most languages, the best thing to do is to listen to people speak or watch TV/movies/music, etc in that language.
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Re: How to reach B2 spoken Portuguese when already being a Spanish B2 speaker?

Postby langmon » 2018-11-10, 14:55

Luís wrote:People who already know Spanish sometimes tend to think they can speak Portuguese by simply taking a Spanish sentence and replacing all Spanish words by Portuguese ones. Even if you might be understood, you'll probably be saying things that sound completely unnatural.


While I wasn't really thinking of simply replacing, I also wasn't aware to that extent that it can sound really unnatural. Out of curiosity... is there a single example that would come to your mind? (Not asking about o Portunhol, that would be different once again :)).

Luís wrote:I suggest you go over a list of false friends and common expressions that are different in both languages. Then read about differences in verb usage.


I intend to do it as soon as I am ready for it, and possibly it will be done using Spanish.
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Re: How to reach B2 spoken Portuguese when already being a Spanish B2 speaker?

Postby vijayjohn » 2018-11-17, 7:27

SomehowGeekyPolyglot wrote:I'd like to be able to speak B2 Portuguese, and I am grateful for already being able to do that with Spanish.
So how to reach the B2 Portuguese speaking level too, without mixing them up?

Practice it in this forum! That's what I do.

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Re: How to reach B2 spoken Portuguese when already being a Spanish B2 speaker?

Postby langmon » 2018-11-17, 8:32

vijayjohn wrote:
SomehowGeekyPolyglot wrote:I'd like to be able to speak B2 Portuguese, and I am grateful for already being able to do that with Spanish.
So how to reach the B2 Portuguese speaking level too, without mixing them up?

Practice it in this forum! That's what I do.


That can be a way of practice, yes.
It's just that for that SGP guy :D, things are different sometimes.
Because he has some "sufficient enough" reasons not to dedicate "too much" of his time to any particular language, he is still wondering what else he can do, too, other than practicing in the forum.
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Re: How to reach B2 spoken Portuguese when already being a Spanish B2 speaker?

Postby Saim » 2018-11-17, 11:44

The first thing to do is to accept that although you'll have a huge headstart when it comes to comprehension due to the largely common lexical stock, it'll still take many hundreds of hours to even begin to approximate anything like correct usage in speaking and writing.

One thing that helped me a lot was to look up full collocations and expressions ("se convierte en", "hay que decir que", "no digo que * subj.", "otra cosa es..." and so on) in glosbe (Spanish - Portuguese) when writing in Portuguese. These things can often be quite different in the two languages.

I wouldn't worry about mixing them up, this naturally resolves itself through using the language. If you're mixing them up it probably means you're rusty or haven't yet learned that much of one of the two.


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