# World Cup. Portugal vs. Brazil. Can players communicate with each other?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-cup-portugal-vs-brazil-can-players-communicate-with-each-other/816746
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [June 26, 2018, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-cup-portugal-vs-brazil-can-players-communicate-with-each-other/816746 "2018-06-26T00:32:34Z")
**Posts on this page:** 12
**Page:** 4
### Author:  [@Ashtura](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ashtura)
#### Post date: [June 28, 2018, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-cup-portugal-vs-brazil-can-players-communicate-with-each-other/816746/61 "2018-06-28T14:04:29Z")
> [@Frodo](#):
>
> Since I didn’t really know the pronunciation I just used google to hear it.
> It’s very similar. the “ch” gets turned into a kind of “sh” and the “rr” almost sounds like a soft “g” but the word sounds very similar to the spanish “cachorro”.
Gosh people, “dog” is just an example. An example of an extremely common word that is NOT the same (perro is dog, perrito is puppy, cachorro is “cub” - spanish. Cachorro (ka-show-hoo) is dog, cachorrinho (ka-show-heen-yoo) puppy, folhito (fol-yee-to) is cub.
Oh yeah, and pronunciation, just between Rio and pretty much everywhere else (the ones you hear in google translate are NOT Rio accents, more like São Paulo), are markedly different, I would estimate MORE different than Portugual and any other place in Brazil.
Are we also going to say that garbage, “basura” in Spanish, “lixo” (lee-shoo) in Portuguese are similar? There are COUNTLESS examples of this, and don’t even get me started on slang. I know, I wrote out every single word I didn’t understand of in a notebook during conversation on a daily basis to drill later. Of course, there are similarities of course, insomuch as there are similarities in all romance languages.
Again, if it’s so similar, somebody translate even the first 10 seconds of the video I linked (no cheating).
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### Author:  [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)
#### Post date: [June 28, 2018, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-cup-portugal-vs-brazil-can-players-communicate-with-each-other/816746/62 "2018-06-28T14:50:13Z")
You’re being purposefully obtuse, right? I’m sure most foreigners would have problems understanding [this interview](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giqkHN9NK-Q) as well; tell you the truth, most Spaniards needed to ask “WTF is a _mojino_?” when El Sevilla and his pals got famous. So? The rest of us are not talking about talk shows addressed to a local audience; we’re talking about people purposefully speaking more carefully than usual.
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### Author:  [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)
#### Post date: [June 28, 2018, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-cup-portugal-vs-brazil-can-players-communicate-with-each-other/816746/63 "2018-06-28T15:02:04Z")
> [@Nava](#):
>
> I’m not even sure what kind of linguistic separation do you expect us to have.
Not to hijack the thread, but I’m curious just how long of a time difference there actually needs to be (in the absence of TV/radio) to produce a “new” language.
From what I understand, the Romance languages didn’t really split out of vulgar Latin until sometime in the 6th and 9th centuries, and even now there’s still a great degree of mutual intelligibility between some of them; Spanish and Portuguese for example, or maybe Italian and Spanish to a lesser extent.
So we know that 1400-1100 years is enough, but how much more to make them mutually unintelligible, like say… English and Dutch or English and German?
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### Author:  [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)
#### Post date: [June 28, 2018, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-cup-portugal-vs-brazil-can-players-communicate-with-each-other/816746/64 "2018-06-28T15:15:09Z")
> [@Leo\_Bloom](#):
>
> Never realized that about the Brazil/Portugal gulf. If I understand this thread correctly, it is far wider than the Castillian/South- or Latin- American gulf, which is mostly a matter of relatively penetrable accent and occasional vocabulary differences.
>
> FTR, I (a NYC-er), had a hand-to-Og encounter with a couple from Edinborough asking for directions. Even after the third try–as I reposted in every European language I knew–when the husband got through to me he was speaking English, and I caught a few words, I still couldn’t understand what his wife was saying.
>
> Extremely weird and unsettling, for some reason.
> [@JKellyMap](#):
>
> I just had a similar experience and reaction last week! A Scotsman was talking to another behind me in a line (queue), and it took me five minutes to realize he was speaking English — until then, I thought it was some foreign language (Frisian? Icelandic? I had no idea). Like with you, it gave me a very strange feeling.
Don’t feel too bad, Scots (not to be conflated with Scottish Gaelic) is often classified as a separate language, rather than a dialect of English.
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### Author:  [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)
#### Post date: [June 28, 2018, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-cup-portugal-vs-brazil-can-players-communicate-with-each-other/816746/65 "2018-06-28T15:19:09Z")
> [@JKellyMap](#):
>
> As someone noted upthread, the Rio accent is quite different for many words, though. It seems like half their words end in “-gee” (as in English “golly gee!”).
That’s mainly for words that either start with the letter ‘d’ or end in ‘-de’. Iberian Portuguese is clipped, whereas Brazilian is not (at least in the south; it’s a big country). Saudade in Lisbon is (approximately) so-dahd. In Brazil, it’s so-dahdji. Good morning is bom dia and bom jia, respectively. Portuguese tends to mush the ending ‘s’ in most words to a ‘sh’ sound.
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### Author:  [@Ashtura](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ashtura)
#### Post date: [June 28, 2018, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-cup-portugal-vs-brazil-can-players-communicate-with-each-other/816746/66 "2018-06-28T15:38:39Z")
> [@Nava](#):
>
> You’re being purposefully obtuse, right? I’m sure most foreigners would have problems understanding [this interview](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giqkHN9NK-Q) as well; tell you the truth, most Spaniards needed to ask “WTF is a _mojino_?” when El Sevilla and his pals got famous. So? The rest of us are not talking about talk shows addressed to a local audience; we’re talking about people purposefully speaking more carefully than usual.
Actually, the original premise is strangers at the world cup, with no assumptions about background. At least we _were_. Of COURSE people can find ways to work around communication problems. Hell, I can nod my head and a many (not all) people from all over the world will know I meant “yes.”
But to act as if there are going to be any more than simplistic shallow-as-a-mud-puddle communication in THAT situation, (\*not \*among co-workers where there were a myriad of people from different backgrounds, education, linguistic exposure), is obtuse, per your words.
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### Author:  [@Sunny\_Daze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunny_Daze)
#### Post date: [June 28, 2018, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-cup-portugal-vs-brazil-can-players-communicate-with-each-other/816746/67 "2018-06-28T17:22:48Z")
> [@upend](#):
>
> I did an education exchange between my school near London to a high school in Connecticut.
>
> the teacher in our group, reinforced stereotypes about UK boys schools by telling the high school principal, “there’s nothing the boys like more than nip behind the bike sheds for a quick fag”.
Fag meant smoke/cigarette in that context I would think. How long ago was this?
> [@Ashtura](#):
>
> Actually, the original premise is strangers at the world cup, with no assumptions about background. At least we _were_. Of COURSE people can find ways to work around communication problems. Hell, I can nod my head and a many (not all) people from all over the world will know I meant “yes.”
>
> But to act as if there are going to be any more than simplistic shallow-as-a-mud-puddle communication in THAT situation, (\*not \*among co-workers where there were a myriad of people from different backgrounds, education, linguistic exposure), is obtuse, per your words.
I have to agree with Nava. I do think you’re fighting common sense pretty hard here. Yes, native speakers of both countries are going to manage just fine. Nava is one example. I worked with both Brazilian and Portuguese individuals and asked them this very question and they had no issue. French and Canadian likewise, which I can attest to myself. Spanish between Latin America and Spain works just fine, as Nava has said, and I can back up as well. Of course people can have social conversations or conversations about sport.
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### Author:  [@Ashtura](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ashtura)
#### Post date: [June 28, 2018, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-cup-portugal-vs-brazil-can-players-communicate-with-each-other/816746/68 "2018-06-28T17:43:58Z")
> [@Sunny\_Daze](#):
>
> Fag meant smoke/cigarette in that context I would think. How long ago was this?
>
> I have to agree with Nava. I do think you’re fighting common sense pretty hard here. Yes, native speakers of both countries are going to manage just fine. Nava is one example. I worked with both Brazilian and Portuguese individuals and asked them this very question and they had no issue. French and Canadian likewise, which I can attest to myself. Spanish between Latin America and Spain works just fine, as Nava has said, and I can back up as well. Of course people can have social conversations or conversations about sport.
If you’ve been following the discussion, it has diverged to Portuguese vs Spanish, not between dialects of the _same language_. The difference between Portuguese vs Spanish is not even in the same ballpark between British and US English.
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### Author:  [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)
#### Post date: [June 28, 2018, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-cup-portugal-vs-brazil-can-players-communicate-with-each-other/816746/69 "2018-06-28T20:04:20Z")
> [@Colibri](#):
>
> I would liken Portuguese to Spanish as spoken by a drunken Italian. 😉 It does sound slurred in comparison.
Or by a sober Frenchman! 🙂 That’s the way I usually describe it. And it’s funny how Portuguese, when speaking English, often sound like they are Russian.
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### Author:  [@Knowed\_Out](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knowed_Out)
#### Post date: [June 29, 2018, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-cup-portugal-vs-brazil-can-players-communicate-with-each-other/816746/70 "2018-06-29T18:03:04Z")
I always wondered, do speakers of European Spanish & Portuguese sound more sophisticated and highfalutin to Latin American ears, like European English compared to American English?
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### Author:  [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)
#### Post date: [June 29, 2018, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-cup-portugal-vs-brazil-can-players-communicate-with-each-other/816746/71 "2018-06-29T18:16:38Z")
For Spanish, yes and no. We do tend to sound “like the people on TV” (the amount of times you see the TVE logo while flipping through channels in Latin America is a lot higher than us Spaniards expect), but that is also true of other combinations; I knew a Colombian highlander whose father was from Seville, and when he went to spend a summer at his grandmother’s as a teen, his cousins made fun of him “sounding like the people on TV”. He was from an area where the dialect has a lot of influence of Northern Spanish, so yeah, he “sounded like a newscaster”.
Lots of people whose own dialects are from other dialect families, such as my friend’s cousins or some of my Costa Rican coworkers, think those TVE accents are invented, not even put on: they are not. They may be a higher register than that person uses at home, but they’re not artificial. For people from Castilla-León, the change of register is just a matter of a minor word choice, pronunciation and stress don’t change at all; they sound like that all the time. For those of us from Rioja, Navarre, Aragon, there’s a change in stress and word choice.
Because so many Bible translations are made by Spaniards or to academic Spanish (which Spaniards on business in Latin America will aim for), we tend to sound old-fashioned and Biblical to them. But, because some of the words chosen for those translations are still used in Latin America and almost lost in Spain, they often sound old-fashioned and Biblical to us!
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### Author:  [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)
#### Post date: [June 29, 2018, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-cup-portugal-vs-brazil-can-players-communicate-with-each-other/816746/72 "2018-06-29T19:11:33Z")
> [@bump](#):
>
> So we know that 1400-1100 years is enough, but how much more to make them mutually unintelligible, like say… English and Dutch or English and German?
The differentiation between the modern Germanic languages is about the same antiquity, roughly starting around 500-600 AD. Mutual unintelligibility doesn’t depend on time alone, but also on language history. English has been greatly affected by its origin as a kind of creole between different Germanic languages as well as by the Norman invasion, so it is more different than might be expected given when it split. Likewise Jamaican Creole is nearly unintelligible to many speakers of standard English, when it originated less than 400 years ago.
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