Portuguese belongs to the Romance language family along with languages like Spanish, Italian, Romanian, and French. There are lots of similarities with the Spanish language as seen in verb conjugations ( yo + verb uses o ending, eu + verb also uses o ending). Portuguese shares a similar use of nasalization like French. Both words for bread (Pain and Pão) are nasalized for example. The word for tiger is tigre in Portuguese, Italian, and French. These are just some examples of Romance family similarities that reflects contact and borrowing from each other's languages and language ancestors. Knowing these little tidbits of language history and connection makes it easier to learn languages of one family. Since I have a strong Spanish background, I think by connecting the similarities and conjugation patterns and sentence structure will all help me learn the Portuguese language faster. By understanding their common ancestors of Latin, one can also see how these languages are connected and how it should help in learning any from the family.
I also think this is a neat feat of history where we borrow aspects of one language for our own. It reflects trade and interaction patterns. There is much to be learned about history as a whole through the timeline of language.
Languages also change over time through this interaction with other languages, as I said. We borrow words from others and add them into our own vocabulary. The internet has made this even more prevalent, with the world right at our fingertips. Not only do we borrow words from other languages, we come up with our own and add to our slang. It's very fascinating to see how much a language can change to the point that we don't understand it anymore. If I'm correct, we as English speakers can't understand English from just a few hundred years ago. It's completely different!
Linguists can track these changes through historical documents, changes in vernacular, even the internet where modern day words have changed over time. With thorough research, it's clear to see these changes.
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