text: how similar is portuguese and spanish?   it depends from what angle you are looking at. let's go through a few:  grammar. portuguese and spanish grammar share pretty similar grammar in terms of syntax (word order etc), and the idea of nouns, verbs, adjectives etc. however, portuguese is slightly more complex in that they have pronoun contractions (for example 'give that to me' uses a contraction of 'to' and 'me' to form 'mo' (me+o=mo). spanish uses the two pronouns seperately.   verb-wise, the portuguese has the same tenses as spanish, however where the spanish might use a compounded form only (eg the pluperfect tense being comprised of the imperfect form of 'haber' plus the past participle), portuguese interchanges between a compound form ('ter' + past participle), it also has an inflected form (eg 'comprar' becomes either 'tenhia comprado' or 'comprava').  the portuguese also likes to make work for itself in that it has two forms of the past participle. the 'proper' form as it were for grammatical use, and the 'irregular' form for expression as an adjective eg 'impresso' and not 'imprimido' for 'printed'.   vocabulary yes, portuguese does share a lot of vocabulary with spanish. however, in a lot of cases they have completely different words for things eg 'crianca' (excuse the lack of accent) for girl, where it is 'chica' in spanish. as previously mentioned, sometimes the word exists in both languages, but means another thing altogether (eg 'polvo' meaning 'octopus' in portuguese, but 'dust' in spanish).  accent the portuguese accent is very very different to spanish. it sounds like a russian trying to speak spanish while trying to eat. lots of nasalised vowels and clipped endings. this is especially moreso in brazilian portuguese, where they are even more nazally.  in conclusion, portuguese is harder to learn than spanish, but if you've already got knowledge of spanish it should be fairly easy to pick up.