On the Mutual Intelligibility of Spanish and Portuguese

Abstract

People who make decisions about public language use seem not to be in agreement. During the World Cup Soccer Championships held in Mexico in 1986, with Spanish language interviews on most television newscasts, TV Globo in Brazil translated all Spanish interviews with subtitles, voiceovers, or consecutive interpretation by the reporter. Another Brazilian network, Manchete, did not translate at all. Television production companies in Colombia customarily broadcast interviews of visiting Brazilians, frequently soccer players, in Portuguese with no translation. The Sdo Paulo International Airport makes virtually all announcements in Spanish, as well as in Portuguese, English, and French. The Rio de Janeiro International airport, on the other hand, does not routinely make announcements in Spanish. A variety of opinions have been expressed in writing, by both linguists and non-linguists. The British linguist William Entwistle (1953 [31]), in describing what makes two speech forms languages rather than dialects stated that mutual ease or difficulty of understanding is not the primary consideration. Norwegians and Swedes, Spaniards and Portuguese, can understand each other fairly well in their different languages. A popular tourist guidebook (Jebsen and Biel, 1986 [329]) states the case for one-way understanding: Most Portuguese have a fairly good, natural comprehension of spoken Spanish. But be forewarned that the reverse is not the case. Knowing Spanish will put you into a unique position for one-way communicationable to ask directions or make reservations but unable to understand the response.