[brozaman]

Spanish isn't particularly rich in sounds but other languages use combination of vowels or accents. French or Portuguese have much more than 5 sounds and the same vowels.

[anthk]

Portuguese has more vowels than Spanish. And Latin itself had 7 I think.

[brozaman]

I meant the same characters not the same sounds.

Portuguese has the same basic characters except for ç, in the case of vowels it's resolved with combinations of letters or by adding accents. For instance e and é have different sounds and ou isn't the same sound as o followed by u.