I found this thread now almost 2 years on, while thinking of studying Portuguese for the first time.
One thing that strikes me immediately is the contrast with Spanish as regards vowel sounds. For example, their
senhor - "sayn-yohr" - and
queimar - "kay-mahr" - remind me of a careless English speaker who is not paying attention to emphasizing the purity of the Spanish vowels in
SeƱor and
quemar. Understand, I mean no disrespect to anyone, just that I heard a speaker of certain dialect of English say "health" as something like
hay-ulth, making it essentially a two-syllable word.
So, being a careless English speaker myself, should that fact alone encourage me to take the plunge?
Not to mention the fact that I'd get to say the consonants b, d and v in the English-style, right?