Thank You Spanish for Helping Me Learn Portuguese
I spent 2 years in Madrid in which I became fluent in Spanish. (Of course there’s always a spectrum with fluency.)
For fun, I decided to pick up Portuguese. I had brushed shoulders with it a few times and the last time I was in Europe (a few months ago) I departed from the Lisbon airport. My interest piqued.
Portuguese and Spanish vocabulary share 89% similarity.
That’s a lot.
So you can imagine how much of a shortcut it is to learn Portuguese already having Spanish in your back pocket.
Currently these are the activities I’m doing to help me learn Portuguese.
- Duolingo
- Reading books
- Listening to Podcasts
- Watching Dawn of the Croods on Netflix with audio and subtitles in Portuguese
- Being around new Brazilian friends. (This just happened by chance.)
Something I did in Madrid was to get the daily newspaper and highlight words I didn’t know. Then I looked up the words later.
I’m doing that again with a book I bought from Kaboom Books.

Language learning is fun and it’s an activity that never ends. It’s a giant puzzle where we keep searching for new pieces.
Alone, or with friends.
