Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 52, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 September 1875 — The Spaniards and the Portuguese. [ARTICLE]

The Spaniards and the Portuguese.

_ A writer says: Tlie Spaniards and Portuguese would dislike each other much less ifcthey took the trouble to inquire into the causes of the mutual aversion. They seem to be afraid of too great a resemblance between them, though to an unconcerned stranger nothing is more striking than their dissimilarity. At tlie time I left Madrid for Lisbon I was told I should have no difficulty about the language, as every Portuguese speaks Spanish. But I found that every man I addressed here in the best Castilian I could muster resented it as an affront if he conceived that there could be any other means of communication between us. Anything more different than the accent and intonation of the two dialects cannot be imagined.. The Portuguese is Spanish without its bone and nerve; it has something of the nasal twang of the French blended with some impossible German, Russian and even Chinese dipthongs, and lacks those harsh but energetic gutturals which, for aught we know, the Spaniards inherited from the Arabic, but which, as themselves think, they borrowed from the German. The physiognomy of the two races presents an equally remarkable contrast. The Spaniard is impetuous, selfasserting, courteous but dignified, cordial, outspoken; the Portuguese is slow and deliberate, self-concentrated, obliging on second thoughts but instinctively guarded and distant. If he speaks English ever so little he is Anglicized, waits for an introduction, and his conversation reveals a strange mixture of shrewd sense and deep-seated prejudice. Not quite satisfied with himself, he has no lively sympathies with his fellow-beings, and, least of all, with his own neighbors. There is nothing stronger than the Spaniard’s frank contempt of the Portuguese; nothing more sly than the sneering complacence with whichJlie Portuguese pities the Spaniard, bewailing calamities for which the sufferer has no one to blame but himself.