If you already know Spanish and are considering learning another language, you may be wondering which ones will be easiest to learn. Generally, you will want to choose a language close to Spanish. Let’s look at several different languages to see how they compare.
There are some similarities between Portuguese and Spanish. There is a 90% lexical similarity between the two, which means they share a lot of the same words. This doesn’t mean that someone who speaks Spanish would automatically be fluent in Portuguese, though.
This is because the pronunciation of the words tends to be quite a bit different. Generally, Portuguese speakers have an easier time understanding a Spanish speaker.
The lexical similarity between Italian and Spanish is over 80%, which is almost as high as Portuguese. There are a lot of crossover words, and it is generally easy for someone who speaks one of the languages to learn the other.
Again, though, there are pronunciation differences, as well as some words that have entirely different meanings. Speakers can generally understand one another, though.
Spanish is a phonetic language and French is not. The lexical similarity between these languages is around 75%, so a lot of the words are similar.
There are enough words that are different, though, that it can get confusing for speakers to understand one another. Additionally, pronunciation is quite different, so that is something to keep in mind if you want to learn French.
These two languages have a deep connection, and as the others mentioned above, they are Romance languages. Catalan is the second-most spoken language in Spain, and most people who speak Catalan can speak fluent Spanish, but not vice versa.
Spelling and grammar are the same, and most words in Catalan will be familiar to Spanish speakers. The lexical similarity between the languages is around 90%, similar to Portuguese.
Romanian is another Romance language, so it shares some similarities with Spanish. It only shares a 70% lexical similarity, though, so quite a few of the words are different between the languages.
Additionally, in Spanish, there are only masculine and feminine genders, whereas Romanian also has neutral gender terms. Romanian also has more irregular verbs when compared to Spanish.
Based on lexical similarity, you will find that Portuguese is the closest to Spanish. Just remember that you will need to rethink the way the words are pronounced. You will also want to know which words are different between the languages.
Following Portuguese is Italian as the second closest language to Spanish. If you want to learn Italian or Portuguese, it is recommended you use a language program or app to help you do so.
For example, our team rates Pimsleur and Babbel very highly as both provide practice drills that stretch across reading, writing, speaking, and listening.
Portuguese and Italian are the closest languages to Spanish as these languages share over 80% lexical similarity.
Italian and Spanish are similar because both languages are rooted in Latin and emerged following the collapse of the Roman Empire.
Portuguese and Spanish are both romance languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin.