Portuguese from Portugal and from Brazil are extremely similar languages but not from a phonetic POV. Portuguese people sound like Russian people where as Brazilian people sound more like Italian people if that makes any sense.
That being said I very much disagree with the initial comment. Portuguese people will understand Spanish people somewhat well (depending on their age and education) but Italian and French is a bit of a stretch and it definitely isn’t the other way around. My theory for the main reason is that in Portugal almost no TV Shows are dubbed except the ones for kids and even then not always (I’m Portuguese and I watched many cartoons in Spanish on TV). This isn’t the case in the other European countries so they don’t really get used to hearing other languages often.
Portuguese from Portugal and from Brazil are extremely similar languages but not from a phonetic POV. Portuguese people sound like Russian people where as Brazilian people sound more like Italian people if that makes any sense.
That being said I very much disagree with the initial comment. Portuguese people will understand Spanish people somewhat well (depending on their age and education) but Italian and French is a bit of a stretch and it definitely isn’t the other way around. My theory for the main reason is that in Portugal almost no TV Shows are dubbed except the ones for kids and even then not always (I’m Portuguese and I watched many cartoons in Spanish on TV). This isn’t the case in the other European countries so they don’t really get used to hearing other languages often.