I'm brazilian and many times I can't understand the European portuguese. They usually speak faster than Brazilian portuguese and they have a strong accent. Nevertheless, the Brazilian portuguese has many slangs. It's recommended to listen both to learn some terms and their accents, because there are some differences among their grammar and speaking. It's very common the Brazilians speak using gerunds while the Portuguese use article + infinitive verb. Brazilian usually speak terms with third person, Portuguese speak with second and third person frequently.

Dear friend,

I learn European  Portuguese  almost three years and could tell you that this version of Portuguese is a bit more difficult for pronunciation than Brazilian version  of that language. But you will understand both by time,  without  many  difficulties. I already speak by SKYPE with my friends in Portugal and Brazil and we can understand each others.

Wish you successful study, Kamenko

You guys were talking about differences between BR Portuguese and PT Portuguese and the similar relation between AM English and BT English... but I dont agree with that. I see more similarities between AM English and BT English than I see between BR Portuguese and PT Portuguese (talking about word orders, Lexics and Pronunciation). So I find it really easy to an AM English speaker to understand a BR English speaker and the other way round... but for a BR Portuguese speaker to communicate properly with a PT Portuguese speaker, I guess both may have a good knowledge about the two "versions" of the Language.

Лекс, here in Brazil we have something called "Academia Brasileira de Letras" which is an organ that regulates the usage of the Language, stating the right ways of writing and speaking Portuguese. So of course we use many words in an incorrect way but there IS a correct way... from which we'd rather stay away in informal conversations but we MUST use when writing an essay/article/school paper and so on.

Will, i must say that the pronountiation in Portugal is too much difficult than the brazilian version, I studied the brazilian version, i find it more easy to understand , it's not so faster and the pronunciation is not so strong as in Portugal. but i spoke many times with portuguese people, and i understood them very well, i just hear it quite weird because i'm not accostum to that kind of expressions that portuguese people use.

As Ivo said, including inside Brazil there's many different accents, probably the most popular is the accent of Rio de Janeiro (because of TV). On my opinion, for me it's easier the southeast accents, probably because they are softer than northern or central.. (soft as spanish) and when I hear on TV people from the favelas . i really can't understand any word!!!

Hey, I'm brasilian and I can imagine that what you call brasilian portuguese is the portuguese we hear in television, because if you realise you'll see that our country is huge, so with many different accents. Some people here usually say as a kind of a joke that a peoson from the north wouldn't understand a person from the south; obviously it's only a joke but that's not completly fake, they probably would have a hard time hehehe. So if you can speak portuguese you will be able to communicate in portugal or here in Brasil, you'll only will need to take a time before get used to the diferent accents and some vocabularies. And about which I prefer: I think both really sound beautiful, but I'm too much used to brazilian's one, so I really love the sound of portuguese from Portugal.