1. It’s not too far from English, Portuguese and English are both members of the Indo-European language family—Portuguese belongs to the Romance branch (along with Spanish, Italian and French). English belongs to the Germanic branch (which also includes German, Dutch, and Norwegian). So, in part, the similarities between English and Portuguese are “genetic” since they are distant relatives. Still, on top of that they also evolved in the same language area, a geographical area of intense linguistic exchange.
2. English is a Germanic language with a Romance overlay, whereas Portuguese is a Romance language. This would indicate that Portuguese is more similar to English than it is to Russian, but that it is closer to Spanish than to English.
3. Modern English derives from Middle English which derives from Old English which issues from the West Germanic branch of the Germanic language family, which derives from Proto-Germanic, which derives from Indo-European which derives from Proto Indo-European Essentially, at some point, the ancestor of the Romance languages (French, Italian, Portuguese, etc.) split from the ancestor of the Germanic languages (English, Dutch, Icelandic, German, etc.), probably as a result of geographic displacement.
4. If it is just vocabulary being measured, it is probably down to the weaknesses of whatever statistical model is being used. However, there are a couple of things that PT has that are more English-like than anything in (modern, at least) Spanish or other Romance languages.
5. Similarity in grammar patterns “ly” and “mente” can be clearly seen between English and Portuguese.
“Mente” is an adverb ending that is similar to the English adverb ending “ly”. You can interchange or add to the root verb and make the word for both the language. For example,
a.automatically -automatica+mente
b.completely - completa+mente
c.normally - normal+mente
d.traditionally - tradicional+mente
6.The English -ent and Portuguese -ente
Similarly,in this case, also you can directly add “ente” in place of “ent” to the English word to make the Portuguese word. This ending works with both nouns and adjectives and is quite straightforward (in this case, the stress falls on the -e- of -ente):
a.Different —Differente
b.President -Presidente
c.Recent-Recente, etc.
7. Same spelling different sound and the same meaning.
Some words have the same meaning as their English counterparts and the same spelling, but have a different way of pronouncing. There are tones of words ending in -a- that are the same in Portuguese and English. Unlike English that put stress on the first syllable, the Portuguese emphasize the last syllable in the words. e.g.Animal — Animal(ah-knee-MOW),Natural — Natural (nah-too-ROW),Real — Real (hey-OW). There are few exceptions also, that does not apply the above theory.
