Rafa's Sao Paolo speech: He can speak Portuguese ?
 

Is it a big and difficult linguistic jump for a Spanish speaker to speak Portuguese? Seeing Rafa give his post-match speech at Sao Paolo, he looked both confident AND nervous at the same time, like, he was easily able to speak some parts, and then was thinking of the Portuguese words for other parts of his speech. Is Rafa regarded as a good Portuguese speaker?

Also, what choice words did Rafa say to Carlos Bernardes at the post-match handshake? It didn't look pleasant. :|

For Rafa it would be a big jump, esp with his knees.

Speaking new languages is a small step for Freddie, but a giant leap for Ralphie. :D :D


(j/k: how are you "You Can't be Serious" ? )

See the Bernardes thread above.

It's a quite, because they are very similar (and many other's latin based languages) but some words have a completely different meaning, like "embarazada", that is similar to portuguese "embaraçada". Embarazada means pregnant, while embaraçada means "in a bad situation" (but we know that if you're a teenager the words means the same :P).

It was because Carlos Bernardes UNFAIRLY gave Nadal a warning for a time violation, even though Nadal didn't break any rules. Carlos Bernardes has bullied Nadal in this manner before (I believe it's a matter of personal dislike), and it's absolutely disgusting. Carlos Bernardes is the worst umpire I have ever seen in the history of tennis. He should have received some sort of ban from the ATP (he may have already received numerous fines if ATP officials are starting to pick up on this). I'm glad Nadal gave him a good talking to after the match, just like at the World Tour Finals against Berdych in 2010 (in the Round Robin matches). :-P

Bernardes was correct. Nadal was ready to play but delayed the serve, so he was warned. I don't see anything but mimimi.

I don't think there is a huge difference between the two languages, but I don't speak either so we need an expert to help us out here. Crisstti, where are you????? :-D

Because Rafa's English is heavily accented, he doesn't get enough credit for his linguistic abilities. Roger is lauded for speaking four languages but both Novak and Rafa speak even more. Novak I think is more bold about trying to speak various languages in public but Rafa I believe understands more than all of them but hesitates to speak them.

Rafa is often interviewed on French tv, for instance, and they prattle on in French and he understands them but is shy about responding until this past summer when he made a determined effort to converse more in French. Same with Italian. Both languages are similar to Catalan which is, of course, his native language. I wouldn't be at all surprised if Portuguese falls into much the same category.

Rafa speaks Mallorquin, a dialect of Catalan as Swiss German is to German, Catalan, Spanish, English, French, Italian, and now Portuguese. Pretty impressive and it certainly puts us unilingual North Americans to shame.

Oh stop it. You're embarrassing all Rafa fans.

What? :confused::confused::confused:

Spanish and Portuguese vocabulary is for 89% the same. They are the closest romance languages. On top of that Catalan and Portuguese share a 85% vocabulary.

The only difficulty for Spanish speakers is the pronunciation.

Thanks ViscaB. I've heard/read somewhere that most Spanish speaking people can get by in Portuguese so far as understanding enough of it to figure out what someone is saying if they needed directions to the nearest tourist attraction for instance but that speaking it, getting the verbs and tenses and different words right is a fair bit more difficult. Is that correct?

That is correct. :-P

Drama Queen alert. He did deserve his time violation warning and he better learns from it. Your bullying comment is laughable, and not worthy of further comment.

This sounds about right--the grammar and vocab are similar enough for mutual comprehension (once the pronunciation hurdle is cleared), but different enough that expressing yourself correctly would require some study of the language. For example Portuguese has a verb tense (the future subjunctive) that Spanish doesn't.

The main problem though is the pronunciation of the Portuguese. The way Brazilians speak Portuguese is easier to understand.

It depends. The way portuguese speaks portuguese is easier if you're Spanish.

Does Carlos Bernardes speak portuguese? He looked both confident and nervous.

Does he speak it with heavy topspin?

Porteguese and Spaniards can speak to each other in their own languages. With one speaking Porteguese and the other speaking Spanish. That's how similar they are.

I know a Brazilian at work and I am fluent in Spanish. When he talks I can't understand what he is talking about. I pick out words here and there (about 50%+) but that doesn't help in determining what he is talking about. Enough of the words don't sound the same that it's not really possible to communicate easily. I tried to help a Brazilian tourist once at Best Buy and HOLY CRAP I swore I understood the words but they apparently don't mean the same things :). Also I have no problems speaking and understanding Spaniards.

I guess a good example is that old Lambada song. I think I understand quite a few of those words, but I don't know what the song is trying to say. It's like if you make a song with just random words thrown in to make a sentence (at least to me)

That said, i'm sure it's easy to learn if you are fluent in one of them. I picked up French easily since sentence structure is very similar you just need to memorize words.

FYI I learned Cantonese first, then Spanish, then English was my third language. On top of that my wife is Czech so when we have a kid it's going to get interesting.