Yeah, my phrasing was pretty clunky ngl. I was going to say “the little brother” but I put some effort into not inserting gender into my language where I can but I tripped up on how that made me word that sentence.

I was trying to say that Portuguese is generally perceived to be the junior partner to Spanish just like how Dutch is to German - people tend to think that it’s that language which sounds pretty similar but that it holds less importance or prestige because it isn’t as widespread. I don’t agree with this perception at all though and I think it’s super weird that people give more or less prestige to certain languages. Or even dialects of the same language, for that matter.

(Literally the other day I got into it with someone about Jamaican patois being its own language and not just “Funny English with a bad accent and some slang terms” but, apparently, this person had themselves convinced that half of the academics in linguistics would agree with their take rather than shrugging their shoulders and responding with “Well how are you going to define a language anyway?”
I mean I’m sure there’s some Eton scholar toffs who would die on that hill, that Jamaican patois isn’t a legitimate language in itself, but I have no respect for a chauvinist who wraps up their bullshit in the trappings of academia anyway.)