Speaking Spanish again after learning Portuguese from Spanish: 6 little difficulties

I have been learning Brazilian Portuguese for the last four years through my existing knowledge of Spanish. They say that these languages are 80% similar, so I say why start from the ground up. The 20% worth of differences is what will kill you though, and that's where the learning and speaking practice were of course necessary.

Last week, however, I ventured back to a country where I could employ my latent Spanish fluency once more. My wife and I, along with her brother and four other friends, traveled to the Dominican Republic for a week-long break from the Colorado cold. Switching from Portuguese back to Spanish was easier this time than the last time I had attempted it: crossing the border from Brazil to Argentina on foot last summer. That time, I could hardly speak any Spanish to the Argentine border agent because my mind was so confused. I ended up just persisting with Portuguese for several days since most people in the Argentine border town we stayed in could understand both languages. Eventually my mind flipped to Spanish but my lingual ego was definitely bruised.

Where Argentina meets Brazil high above the Rio Iguaçu. I'm the guy in the blue who doesn't know that he's about to get linguistically demolished.

This experience in Argentina allowed me to walk away with a few thoughts about the biggest problems one might encounter in switching rapidly from Brazilian Portuguese to Spanish. I put these thoughts to the test this past week in the Dominican Republic and arrived at the six biggest things I had to remember to change so that I actually spoke proper Spanish again and not "Portuñol". The six "big" things are actually quite simple tips, or language hacks I suppose you could call them. Three deal with pronunciation and three deal with little words:

In Spanish:

1) …words that have an L at the end of them are once more pronounced with an L sound as in English, not a W sound. Brazil, papel, azul.

2) …words that have a UE at the end of them are pronounced "ay" as in "lay", not with an "ee" as in "tee" sound. Que tal, porque, Que hora es? (side note: not Que horas son? as in Portuguese!)

3) …words that have an O at the end are once more pronounced with a hard O, not "oo" an in "too" as in Portuguese words when the O follows a consonant. Como, espero, tenho/tengo.

4) …the word for "there" is allá, not lá as in Portuguese! Lá is such a fun, emphatic word in Portuguese which sadly just can't happen in Spanish. I messed this one up a lot.

5) …the word for "but" is pero, not mais as in Portuguese! You would be shocked how much this cropped up, I think because it's usually said as a connecting word without even thinking about it.

6) …you must say no at the end of a questioning phase instead of the Portuguese conjunction né. Vamos cenar ahorita, no? This was another trip-up that got me accused of speaking with a heavy Brazilian twang.

And that's all you need to know! Just kidding. Of course you will find difficulties of your own that you will have to learn to overcome, but I hope that these may provide a little help or at least a little insight into the mental process you may need to undergo when switching between two very similar languages.

Até logo! I mean, hasta luego!