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If you had a choice to learn either Italian or Portuguese, which one would you rather

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Reply 60

EWS

Italian culture is great. Opera, wine and corruption. But they speak Portuguese in Brazil. Learn both.

Reply 61

explore

Don John

Glad we both really want Uruguay to lose :p:

but we shall have to see :wink:

haha, yep we'll see.

Reply 62

Magical Man

I'm actually learning Italian right now. I've had an Italian girlfriend for a good few months now so i've decided to learn the language she is always speaking.

Wouldn't have been my preference but it's the closest i'll get to constant immersion for a while

Reply 63

starforsure

Magical Man

Haha yes thats how I've picked up a lot of Svenska, not my first choice but my boyfriend is Swedish :love:

Reply 64

Magical Man

starforsure

Haha yes thats how I've picked up a lot of Svenska, not my first choice but my boyfriend is Swedish :love:

You have take advantage of any opportunity that comes your way! In the nicest possible sense of course

Italian

n1r4v

Portuguese.

But Portuguese from Portugal sounds Russian and not much like a Romance language.

Hahah so true. Brasilian Portuguese is probably one of the nicest sounding, then a toss up between Angolan or Cape Verde.

Reply 67

Cicerao

PORTUGUESE! Because I love a Brazilian. ;D

Reply 68

Jez RR

I prefer the sound of Italian, but Portuguese would probably be more useful for me since both Angola and Mozambique speak it.

Reply 69

littleshambles

Pop_tart

I completely disagree with you. People are much more likely to confuse italian with spanish than portuguese with spanish for example. Portuguese sure looks like spanish at first sight but definitely doesn't sound like it and they are no dialect in anyway? :s-smilie:

do you know what a dialect actually is? I mean if you put it like that, english, dutch, swedish etc would all be dialects of the germanic language tree. Makes no sense :P sorry.

Sigh.

I never said Portuguese was more like Spanish than Italian was, I said Portuguese was more like Spanish than you were suggesting (they're about 50-60% mutually intelligible) http://www.sulainterpreting.ws/files/users/e/535D6469E2612048E040A8C0AC002D4E/Mutual%20Comprehension.pdf

The "dialect" comment, being a joke for christ's sake (I swear no one in the Foreign Languages forum is awake today), is based on that fact. The notion that Portuguese and Spanish are as dissimilar to each other as English, Dutch and Swedish is laughable as those three languages have no mutual intelligibility when spoken and only some when written.

I don't think that the Romance languages are actually all dialects of each other, just to clear that up. Jeeeeeeez. And forgive me but weren't you the one saying that Spanish, Italian and French were "all sort of in the same corner and nothing special really"? Sorry but Portuguese is one of those guys in the corner.

Reply 70

explore

xmarilynx

German is way cooler than Italian IMO, I'd stick with that if I were you :biggrin:

Yep German is pretty cool, Think i might challange myself with Italian now (maybe a summer thing haha) :smile:

Portuguese :heart:

Ohhh I like the idea of Italian but I'd maybe go for Portuguese :o:

Reply 73

Miss Mary

Portuguese. I like how it sounds!

Reply 74

polaroid13

Italian; because I love the culture and just generally have an interest in it more than Portuguese.

Reply 75

Lizia

Italian every time. Italy is a much more interesting country than Portugal, in my opinion, and I could never get bored of visiting there. And the culture opened up to you by Italian is much more interesting and extensive, IMO, than Portuguese. I'm studying Italian at university at the moment, and 6 courses every year are culture ones. As much as I'd like to learn Portuguese, I don't think I would be able to sit through 18 culture courses of Portugal.

Also, if you're just learning it for holiday purposes, Italian is much more useful than Portuguese. Outside the main cities, it's pretty rare to come across Italians who speak English well, unless you happen to luck out. Whereas when I've spent summers in Portugal and Madeira, their level of English was vastly superior.

Pop_tart

do you know what a dialect actually is? I mean if you put it like that, english, dutch, swedish etc would all be dialects of the germanic language tree. Makes no sense :P sorry.

I think you're the one making no sense. You could make a fairly good case for French, Italian, Spanish and Portguese being dialects of one another, because they're fairly mutually intelligble. I speak French and Italian, and they're fairly similar.

To contrast: I can't read something written in Napolitan dialect, despite speaking standard Italian. However I can read a Spanish newspaper easily and make a stab at a Portuguese one. Standard French or Spanish are a lot more similar to standard Italian than the Italian dialects are. If I was a complete novice at languages, and someone showed me pages of Italian, Spanish, Napolitan, Sicilian and Milanese, and asked me to say which were separate languages and which were dialects, I'd say Italian and Spanish were the dialects, and Napolitan, Sicilian and Milanese were completely separate languages.

The same is just not true for the language you listed: I'm native in English and fairly competent in German, but I still can't read anything in Swedish. There's no denying that the Romance languages are a lot more closely linked than the Germanics.

Reply 76

The Mole

Probably Italian. Only because I would be more likely to go to Italy than I would Portugal...

Reply 77

vander Beth

I wanted to learn Portuguese in the fall, but the class was at I time I couldn't make, all the beginning languages were! I have to take French again! :mad: