Would intermediate Spanish help or hinder Portuguese learning?

Although saying all that, i'd also love to travel the rest of south america as well so it's definitely an option to live in a spanish speaking country and get fluent in that.

Argh why does Brazil have to be the odd one out?!

Edited by: jordanfreedman

Argh why does Brazil have to be the odd one out?!

Blame a couple of popes

A couple of anecdotes. Although he was born in California, my father's first language was Italian. He later said that he was able to read most Romance languages, and understand some spoken ones. He later became fluent in Spanish without doing anything more than watching Spanish language TV and traveling in Mexico.

I haven't traveled in Brazil myself, but I have found that most Brazilians I have encountered are pretty knowledgeable of Spanish.

However, if I were planning to spend some time living and learning in China, the first think I'd want to do is learn some Chinese. I wouldn't expect that everyone I dealt with was fluent in English, or that signs, forms, announcements or anything else i needed would even be in a roman alphabet. I'd certainly want enough Chinese to be able to make friends, buy stuff, and order a meal.

The way things are right now, anyone planning a career in International Relations who has the opportunity to learn Chinese would be well-advised not to pass up that opportunity.

Nutrax, I definitely agree but I should add that it's an english speaking campus. I was certainly considering Mandarin but i'm just not sure that much of a commitment should be undertaken just for career reasons. I'll never make it to the other end surely if that's my only drive. Is it not a long term commitment to be fluent in mandarin? I mean years of total immersion?

Edit:

To add to that, what broke the camel's back for me, was hearing that the Chinese can be quite xenophobic even to fluent mandarin speakers. All that work to still be treated as an outsider?
The opportunity cost is too great as well. In the time it'll take to learn mandarin, I could learn three romance languages which will open up large regions of the world (europe and all the former colonies) - certainly will look good on the CV too. Won't necessarily do this but it's an option!

Going to China and learning Spanish may seem an odd mix. But I'd like to see China with my own eyes and learn about it's role in world politics. But personally, i'd like to one day live and certainly travel or holiday in S America so Spanish/Portuguese seemed the correct language to learn. Method in the madness I guess, but I certainly have my doubts with my plan as well. Either way, i'll definitely learn some mandarin to get by as well.

Edited by: jordanfreedman

p.s. just noticed the link. Very interesting!

Any Romance language will "help" any other, but Brazilian Portuguese has a very distinctive phonology and cadence. If I had to make a comparison, it would be analogous to Polish among the Slavic languages (sound, not spelling), with a similar structure on paper but needing a lot of ear-training.

Studying Spanish for a year couldn't hurt, but don't get your hopes up. Also be aware that Brazilians can get very annoyed by foreigners who speak to them in Spanish and expect to be understood.

Thanks.

The plan is to learn in a classroom in China for a year and then to be immersed in Brazil for a year. In China, it's 6 hours of classroom study a week and i'll practice for 1-2 hours a night. To add to that, there will no doubt be central/south americans studying there too.

Then I would like to go to Brazil for up to a year. I would be working part time and studying portuguese part time. My question was generally (although I know it was hard to decipher) would this Spanish use help or hinder my portuguese learning?
Would it help me get better at portuguese quicker or will the similarity confuse me at first and slow my progress?

Edited by: jordanfreedman

Would it help me get better at portuguese quicker or will the similarity confuse me at first and slow my progress?

You're presenting this as an "either/or" question, when the reality is it's likely to be "both/and." Sure, knowing Spanish vocabulary will help you with Portuguese vocabulary, and there are many similarities in grammar as well. But when trying to master a new foreign language, there is always cognitive interference from previously studied languages, even when the languages aren't closely related. If you actually do achieve some degree of fluency in Spanish, then there's certain to be a good deal of confusion for you when switch to Portuguese, especially at first.

Frankly, your whole plan seems completely half-baked to me. Unless you're studying in Hong Kong, then knowing at least some Mandarin is really not optional if you don't want to lead the narrowest, most circumscribed "tourist" kind of life in China. Also, I have to presume most of the students at your university would be Chinese, who generally have very different issues when studying European languages than Westerners do, especially when it comes to pronunciation. I suspect you'll find the experience frustrating. And, really, it never makes sense to devote a great deal of time to studying a language that isn't your actual target language. (This would apply even if you had experience of the language and culture you propose to adopt, but goes double with pie-in-the-sky plans like yours.)

Thanks, there may be pro's and con's but generally what comes out on top? I know it's not as simple as one word answers but surely it swings one way.

I thinks that's a harsh assessment. It is not half baked, it has been thought out over months of considering my options.
I want to live in China temporarily to experience what it is like there and to have Asia on my doorstep. Although due to not seeing my self going there very often or seeing myself integrate there in the long term future, I'd prefer to avoid the long term, painstaking tribulations of learning mandarin. The university is a campus of my old university, Nottingham. It may not be as authentic as possible but it's a compromise. As I've said in Post 3, I will be learning some Mandarin to get by.

I can see myself going to Brazil often so it makes sense to make steps to learn the language whether that be in China or otherwise. You make an especially good point about the learning style as it may be geared to mandarin speakers - will definitely be a question to ask! Great advice there.

Edited by: jordanfreedman

Thanks, there may be pro's and con's but generally what comes out on top?

I think I made it clear that, in my opinion, the cons outweigh the pros. Studying Spanish with the goal of learning Brazilian Portuguese makes no more sense than studying French with the goal of learning Brazilian Portuguese. Even with European Portuguese, the level of mutual intelligibility between Spanish and Portuguese is actually lower than that of Spanish and Italian. (Spanish friends have told me they can't follow spoken Portuguese at all, though reading a written Portuguese text isn't difficult for them.) As all of the respondents have said, there would be some benefit, but not remotely as much as you're imagining.

Study Spanish to learn Spanish, as an end in itself, not as a stepping stone. But, like Nutrax, I think you'd be a fool to squander the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to learn Mandarin in an immersive environment, especially in an off-the-beaten-path place like Ningbo. (No, you wouldn't be "fluent" in a year; but there is plenty of value in learning a language to an intermediate level.)