Hi,
Understanding another spoken language is very different from be able to read it,
because it requires realtime skill. Pronunciation and accent really get's in the way.
I am a native Portuguese speaker and I understand spoken English rather well.
However, it will depend on how it deviates from the "reference" that I am used to hear.
People with strong accents, like Scotts and people from India, will sometimes make it
very hard for me to understand what they are saying. I am simply not trained enough
to parse that format.
What has been said above is not surprising, the majority of Brazilians even have problems
understanding spoken European Portuguese. In Portugal, we do not have any trouble
with Brazilian Portuguese. The last two generations have grown watching Brazilian TV programs, so
the accent and the local idiomatic expressions are well known to us, including the use of
Tupi/Guarani derived words. The reverse did and does not happen, and on the rare occasion
that something originating here gets to Brazilian TV, the use of subtitles is not unheard of!
The two countries have been diverging for more than two centuries. Today, we the advent of the Internet,
it is easier to have both groups of speakers exposed to the same content and gap will get narrower over time.
Spanish is also easily understood for pretty much the same reason. Portugal is small and narrow.
Spanish TV transmissions would reach a significant portion of the country. Before cable and subscription TV,
watching Spanish was a great way to complement the limited choice of national TV channels.
The rule seems to be that small countries have porous cultural borders. People from large countries
are more shielded from exposure to other languages and have little need to seek the knowledge.
The good news is that pointing and smiling a lot is a very effective language barrier breaker.
