The world's most influential languages

Re:The world's most influential languages by zalew on Monday September 17, 2012 @07:07AM (#4532013)

I spoke Brazilian Portuguese and even back then it was relatively hard for me to understand Portuguese the original due to pronounciation/accent differences (by relatively hard I mean I had to focus). I had less problems understanding Spanish, say, in Uruguay. To this day, although I forgot the language, I can easily spot a Brazilian in a crowd of talking people while it takes me a moment to recognize someone speaking European Portuguese.

> many more countries speaking the language.

maybe more, but not with 200 million people

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Re:The world's most influential languages by dguaraglia on Monday September 17, 2012 @02:04PM (#4533902)

Hah, that's something that always amazed me: I lived in Brazil for 7 years (coming from Argentina) and became fluent in Brazilian Portuguese in the process. Funnily enough, I don't have any problem at all understanding most Portuguese people, whereas my wife wouldn't be able to understand half of what they said. How does that work? :)

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Re:The world's most influential languages by pjmlp on Monday September 17, 2012 @02:14PM (#4533956)

Having a few Brazilian friends, I would say they have some hard time getting our pronunciation, whereas foreigners seem to be more open minded, kind of.

I have lived this experience with French. I have less problems to understand French Canadian than my French friends.

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Re:The world's most influential languages by zalew on Monday September 17, 2012 @09:18PM (#4535766)

American English is also easier to understand for most foreigners than some accents of English (and I mean only the ones from England).

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