[lukeschlather]

As a native speaker of English and having conversational ability in Spanish I would describe both Scots and Portuguese as separate languages. Portuguese feels like it has as much in common with Spanish as Italian or French to me, and I can't remotely carry on a conversation in Portuguese. (Or Scots really, though with the somewhat mutual intelligibility I can speak English or Spanish and maybe that's workable, but I'm definitely not going to understand the Portuguese.)

[lolinder]

Which dialect of Portuguese are you referring to?

I'm a fluent second-language Spanish speaker and have had a lot of success communicating with native Portuguese speakers, but only Portugal Portuguese and various African Portugueses. I can't understand Brazilian Portuguese at all.