Do you need to know Portuguese to travel to Portugal? Perhaps you know Spanish and you wonder whether it’ll be of use there too? And, if you don’t, will English suffice? Here’s what languages you can expect to hear in Portugal.
The official language of Portugal is, as you can imagine, Portuguese. There are many different dialects in different parts of the country, depending on where we’re looking. For instance, in a city bordering Spain, you’ll hear ‘Barranquenho’, a dialect of Portuguese which is very heavily modified by Spanish. Portugal also has its own sign language.
Can you speak Spanish in Portugal? If you look at the statistics alone, 15% of the population claims to speak Spanish. In reality, it could very well be that many more people will understand the basics of it. Spanish and Portuguese are, afterall, a bit similar, and so you could awkwardly use Spanish to communicate on the most basic level. Still, it would be, at best, a survivable interaction, unless you find a representative of the said 15%.
What about English then? Here, the statistics suggest about 35% of the population. We can certainly expect the majority of these percent points to belong to younger people living in cities. Still, hotels, restaurants, shops and other services which interact with tourists actively seek out people with good English, as it’s a great asset for the company to have such a person on the frontline. As such, it’s quite likely that you’ll get by with English alone just fine. If you’re going to the countryside, however, there’s a chance that more isolated places may not speak English at all, even on the basic level.
So yes, you can survive in Portugal without knowing Portuguese, even though we’d still strongly encourage you to learn at least the basic phrases for polite interaction. We know, it’s an experience that the English-speaking nations don’t really have, but it really is a good practice and it won’t take that much effort to learn the few basic phrases that you’ll use throughout most of the trip. We can assure you, people will appreciate it.
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