Actually, Spanish and Portuguese sound very different. (my dad is Portuguese and I started learning Spanish a few months ago) For example: first, the G and J are different in Portuguese and Spanish. If you take the word 'people' which is 'gente' in both of the languages, the pronounciation of it is different. Also, Portuguese has 'õe' and 'ão', Spanish doesn't have these sounds. The 'ç' isn't used either in Spanish, and the Z is pronounced differently too. Ofcourse there are more, but I think it's hard to explain if I can't let you hear the exact differences.. I'm not at home now, but at my own pc I have the link to a site where you can hear all europian languages after typing a text you want to hear, so I can send you that later if you want.

There's a hard question - specially if you consider that the words 'Spanish' and 'Portuguese' are umbrella terms referring to plenty of dialects. For example, in Brazilian Portuguese the 'r' may sound: - like in Spanish, in South Region mainly; - like in English, in inner parts of Southeast Region; - like in French in coastal parts of Southeast Region; - be ommitted when in the of a syllable, in Bahia's dialect; Do you see how hard is it to define 'how does it sound'? Consider like Chinese... you have one written lingua franca (Mandarin) - and even when chinese speak all the 'standard chinese' they might sound different. Well, I'll try to explain you the differences: S - Sounds ever hard (like in 'press') in ES (español, spanish) but sounds ever soft (like Z) in PT unless when starting a word ('sorte', 'suco', 'santo') or double ('massa', 'missa', 'osso'); R - Sounds ever 'flapped' (listen to words like 'martes', 'muerte', 'fuerte'). In Portuguese sounds like English 'h' (in 'heal', 'hail', 'hammer') when starting a word ('rato', 'roda', 'razão') or when double ('morrer', 'mirra', 'carro') - sounds like spanish in other situations (according to the dialect); J - Sounds like English 'h' in Spanish. In Portuguese sounds like the Russian 'zhe' (ж), or like 's' in English words like measure and pleasure... or, similarly to Chinese zh in zhou (州).

Spanish and Portuguese sound very different, although in written form they are rather similar. Also, the Portuguese as spoken in Brazil and Portugal are very different. I have a detailed page about Portuguese pronunciation, focusing on Portugal, but there are some explanations about the Portuguese of Brazil as well. There are lots of sound samples (mostly taken from fado music) to illustrate my point. The site starts here: http://rudhar.com/foneport/en/foneport.htm of sorted by written letters: http://rudhar.com/foneport/en/alfaport.htm .

CH - In Spanish, sounds similarly to Mandarin ch and q like chang (长) and qu (去). In Portuguese, sounds like sh in shou (瘦); LL - This sound varies a lot in Spanish, depending on the dialect. It may sound like an L follow by a short I (lh, љ) - like ch, etc... In Portuguese, such sound is not found, but there's a similar sound LH which sounds like the above mentioned " L + short i " sound; Ñ - Sounds like Portuguese NH. This may sound strange for foreigners, but you'll found a similar sound in Mandarin and English final -NG. Like in ying (营) and yang (养). There are many other differences... but I'm not that good to explain it all here :p

Portuguese is a nasal language, it mean that we have to use our nose to speak it. different between spanish and english. for example, ção, nhão rrado many people make mistakes speaking it as well, cuz portuguese is a nasal language. then the portuguese and spanish alphabet are really different, the words sounds different.. The most weird sounds are ``J`` and ``R``. And of course, accent. See ya