The Romance Language Sisters

As a teacher of Spanish and Portuguese, and as someone who has acheived near-native proficiency in both, I am often asked just how different the two languages are. Here's an analogy I've developed as an answer.

Imagine I show you a family portrait of four sisters. They appear elegant, radiant, vibrant. There are no twins among them, but they are all similar in age and you can definitely see a family air about them. The extension of each smile, the bridge of each nose, the arch of each eyebrow and the curve of each breast show variations on the same Latin family theme. In fact two of them, you decide, seem to resemble each other very closely indeed.

After I show you the portrait, I introduce them to you in person, and you exchange a few words with each of the four sisters. You learn that their appearance was no indicator of how they speak, because the two that you had previously categorized together by physical resemblance, you have now split apart by speech, each with one of the remaining two sisters. Two of the four, although speaking different languages, seem to speak quite nasally and slide more often between their words, while the other two speak with non-nasal, sharp, clear vowels in their also distinct languages. Among the four of them, they seem to be able to understand each other to some extent, though this varies by context and speaker.

Finally you learn their names and the key to the analogy. The two who look the most similar of face and body are named Spanish and Portuguese. But Spanish, when speaking, shares with her sister Italian the use of sharp, clear vowels, while Portuguese, and her sister French, speak with a greater range of vowels, including nasal ones, as well as slipperier-sounding consonants.

The analogy is not perfect. What about the extended family, with sisters like Catalan, Galician, Haitian Creole, and Romanian? What about dialects and other variations within one language, such as Continental vs. Brazilian Portuguese? Obviously it is a more complex issue than my simple portrayal allows; however, I find that at least for the typical perceptions of most Anglophones, the humble little analogy proves insightful for characterizing (if not explaining) the visual similarities between written Portuguese and Spanish, as well as the spoken affinities between Italian and Spanish, and between French and Portuguese.