i don't understand your comparison. german and english have almost no words in common, whereas spanish and portuguese are well known for being so similar that people fluent in one are able to have at least a basic understanding of what is being said in the other. List of mutually intelligible languages Written and spoken forms Afrikaans: Dutch (partially)[2] Azerbaijani: Turkish (partially)[3] Belarusian: Russian and Ukrainian[4] Bosnian: Croatian, Montenegrin, and Serbian (when written in Latin script)[5] Bulgarian: Macedonian[6] and Torlakian when written with the Cyrillic alphabet.[7] Croatian: Bosnian, Montenegrin, and Serbian (when written in Latin script)[5] Czech: Slovak[8] Danish: Norwegian and Swedish[9] Dutch: Afrikaans (partially)[2], West Frisian (partially)[2], and German (partially)[10] English: Scots[11] Galician: Portuguese[12] and Spanish[13] German: Dutch (partially)[10] Indonesian: Malay[14] Kinyarwanda: Kirundi[15] Kirundi: Kinyarwanda[15] Macedonian: Bulgarian[6] and Torlakian when written with the Cyrillic alphabet.[7] Malay: Indonesian[14] Montenegrin: Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian (when written in Latin script)[5] Norwegian: Danish and Swedish[9] Portuguese: Galician[12] and Spanish[16][17][18] Russian: Belarusian and Ukrainian[4] Scots: English[11] Serbian: Bosnian, Croatian, and Montenegrin (when written in Latin script)[5] Slovak: Czech[8] Spanish: Galician[13] and Portuguese[16][17][18] Swedish: Danish and Norwegian[9] Tokelauan: Tuvaluan[19] Torlakian (when written with the Cyrillic alphabet): Bulgarian and Macedonian [7] Turkish: Azerbaijani (partially)[3] Tuvaluan: Tokelauan[19] Ukrainian: Belarusian and Russian[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_intelligibility
German actually has a bunch of words that are an English speaker could at least take a pretty good guess at what the word is. Hell Germanic influences make up a good part of our language http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Origins_of_English_PieChart_2D.svg I hear if you can speak both English and German though you're basically halfway to Dutch.
Portuguese for sure! i'm saying that just because i'm from Brazil Actually make sense if you choose portuguese my dear.. in my opinion, if you already know Spanish, is easier to learn portuguese and if you know both, its easy learn italian. and of course you'll be very welcome here in brazil. paz e amor!
why are they all sayin that portuguese and spanish are "almost the same language"? god, every language is unique, so as portuguese and spanish. I agree that is easier to learn portuguese if you already know spanish, but just because some words are similar. here in brazil we have spanish at school and it's harder to learn than english, for sure!
i still can't decide! :/ romanion is on my list to learn to lol but the other two first. baby blue: i agree. i can read a lot of portuguese! but i can't read any italian yet
oh girl, you really want to learn languages! =) its a good thing, i'll be happy to help you (with portuguese) if you need. peace!