Thank You Spanish for Helping Me Learn Portuguese

Nathan Puls
Jul 29, 2017 · 1 min read

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.

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