Dear Daniel, sometimes i have (SO LUCKY ME) to travel to Sao Paulo, and also the opportunity to meet many friends to speak with, the funny thing ,years ago was that i use to speak spanish so they talked to me in Portuguese all the time, and we understood each other pretty well .With certain few skulk and loose meannings in both sides. I do surely think that is more a matter of each one`s sense of audition and understanding, than a Geographical or Cultural matter.( with all the respect to the last member who answered you). ,because everyone`s interest about learning a different language than native,is very ad hoc with our specific needs.An example:Mexico shares frontiers with USA and we cannot say that every single person here speaks english.All American countries,or some big amount countries overseas adopted diverse languages from the empires who conquered them then.But now, these are modern times.......Boa noite! .By the way i `m in love with Brasil.... Leona.

Hello Daniel, Among all the Latin American countries, Brazil is the only one speaking Portuguese and not Spanish,so Spanish is the predominant language in the whole continent.People in Brazil need to understand a minimum or even learn Spanish if they are to deal with the rest of the countries in their vicinity through business or any kind of relations. While most of the Latin American countries just need their native Spanish to communicate with other countries in their surrounding. This is the main reason why they don't find it necessary to learn or understand Portuguese, while the Brazilians find it crucial to understand Spanish.

The question is phonetics! The Portuguese language has Spanish phonemes, but the Spanish language do not have all the Portuguese phonemes.

Isto está relacionado à colonização na europa. E ao desenvolvimento de Portugal, antigo ducado espanhol que pouco alterou a antiga lingua oficial da coroa espanhola.