# 2 questions about languages



## tim fullbright

Hi folks,

This is a little off topic maybe. Or maybe the wrong forum, if so let me know,
and I will not repeat the mistake.

here we go;

1) are spanish/italian or spanish/portuguese mutually intelligible? How do these
2 languages "sound" to you? Do they sound fast? slow? rude? polite? can you,
as a spanish speaker go to these countries (brazil and italy lets say) and get by?

2) if you are a south american spanish speaker, can you go to spain and "fake"
it so that you are taken as a native? (or vice versa, you are from spain lets 
say, you go to south america etc.) what will give you away? accent or vocabulary? or forget about europe, can you go from one south american
country to the other, talk to people without them realizing you are
from another country. which countries are closest in speech and which are
furthest away from the rest?

that is it, just curious, sorry for off-topic. have a nice sunday.


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## futaro

Hi Tim!
For your first question I can tell you that if you know spanish and french you can read portuguese but not speak or understand it. But with spanish and french you can understand and speak (bad) italian.
South american speaker are not taken as native in Spain. They have a very differen accent and the vocabulari is a little different. Speaking in South America is also a little different between the countries who speak spanish. Only Argentina and Urugay are similar.
Bye


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## DesertCat

I imagine the different versions/accents of Spanish spoken in different countries would be similar to the differences/accents of English spoken in different countries.

I know an Italian here that can converse with a native Spanish (Mexico) speaker and though neither can speak the other language they can pretty much understand what the other is saying.


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## Vanda

As a Brazilian I can say that we understand spanish (from Argentina or other countries), but Argentinian , for example, don't understand us, according to some of them.
Also it's not hard understanding Italian . I mean for ordinary people , of course,
that have not studied those languages.
As for me, I know enough to communicate and a lot of understanding of those : Spanish, French, Italian.


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## Cristmarsal

I´m agree with DesertCat... If you speak with an australian, or englishman, or even whit for example, a newyorker, you will know the diference, in words and in accents... maybe, you even have play to that game, making like you are from another englis speaker place.... between spanish places is the same. I mean, I´m from Canary Islands, in Spain... I know when someone else is from Madrid or Barcelona, even  when they are "playing" they are from Canary Island... but maybe don´t make diference when someone from Madrid is "playing" he is from Barcelona...


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## Edher

saludos,

       Well, I've never really had the chance to talk to an Italian, however, I've seen a few shows on TV with a few Italian conversations and at times, I felt that the English subtitles were unnecessary for me.

       About passing as native of a different country, well, I would like to try that in Cuba. I found the way they communicate quite fascinating and absolutely charming. 

I want to go out there and say,   "Ya tu sabeh chico, hoy el dia ehta mah o menoh"

Edher


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## cuchuflete

The following is thoroughly unscientific, just observations from personal experience.

Native Portuguese speakers, whether Iberian or Brasileiro, have little trouble understanding their Spanish-speaking neighbors.  The Spanish speakers, on the other hand, understand very little Portuguese.

I've heard many people from Portugal speak French with a good accent.  Most --there are plenty of exceptions--Spaniards who speak French do so with an identifiable accent.

Lots of Italians and Spaniards can converse coherently without knowing one another's languages.  

"Passing" is very difficult for someone who hasn't lived in the target country for quite a while.


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## jorge_val_ribera

¡Hola!

In my opinion:

1) Italian sounds fast but if you know some basic words you can understand it almost totally and it's very easy to understand what an Italian says and to speak with one.
Portuguese sounds pretty funny (in a good way) and it is a bit more difficult to understand it at first because the sounds aren't so clear as the Italian sounds. But once you hear it a few minutes you should be able to understand it pretty well and it's very, very easy to speak with a Brasilian person (I'm speaking about Brasilians because I don't know any Portuguese people). 

But the funny thing is that it is a bit different when reading. A text in Portuguese is VERY, VERY easy to understand. I could read an entire magazine and understand it totally figuring out some words by context. It is a bit harder with Italian.

2) I would say NO. I'm totally sure I couldn't go to Spain and pretend to be from there and have the people believe me. I just couldn't because my accent would sound REALLY weird! 
And in another South American country... Well, I don't think so. You know, I couldn't even go to the west part of my country and pretend I'm from there (logically, I live in the east  ). I would say the way we speak as far as vocabulary and grammar is very similar to the Argentinian way. But our pronunciation is rather different.


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## suzzzenn

It seems so illogical that Spanish speakers can't understand Portuguese, but Portuguese speakers can understand Spanish. *Why do you think this is so*? It seems to me it should be equally easy in both directions. Is there something about the sound system? I have often heard Portuguese speakers say "Spanish speakers _*claim*_ they can't understand us", as if there is some doubt.


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## Jad

suzzzenn said:
			
		

> It seems so illogical that Spanish speakers can't understand Portuguese, but Portuguese speakers can understand Spanish. *Why do you think this is so*? It seems to me it should be equally easy in both directions. Is there something about the sound system? I have often heard Portuguese speakers say "Spanish speakers _*claim*_ they can't understand us", as if there is some doubt.


 
I don't think it's illogical, after all, people with very strong Irish Scots accents for example are very hard for someone from South England to understand, but the other way round doesn't cause them a problem because our accent is clearer and better known.


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## suzzzenn

The idea that if one accent is better known, it is easier to understand, I agree with. If someone hears an accent a lot, it is easier to understand than an unfamiliar one. But I'm not sure about one accent being clearer than another. Which accent is clearer is not absolute, but relative. For example, would someone say that the Portuguese accent is less clear than Spanish accent? From whose perspective?


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## MarkLondres

Jad said:
			
		

> I don't think it's illogical, after all, people with very strong Irish Scots accents for example are very hard for someone from South England to understand, but the other way round doesn't cause them a problem because our accent is clearer and better known.


 
Likewise Lisbon has a very strong accent that I am sure you need native ears to understand, surely if a handful of Spanish linguists went to somewhere like "Coimbra" they would find portuguese much easier to understand.


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## davidahn

Just a hypothesis, but I think Spanish-speakers are somewhat like Americans... since everyone else speaks your language, you don't feel the need to learn theirs. Brazilians (and Portuguese) don't have that luxury, and probably also consume quite a bit of Spanish media (music, TV, movies, etc.), whereas the reverse is not the case.

David


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## Narda

Hello everyone, I know I am late to the subject but couldn't resist.

I agree with Cuchuflete, before I learned the little Portuguese I know, I remember clearly an incident near Disney in Orlando many years ago.  A lady stopped me at a corner and asked me something, I thought I was not understanding her Spanish and I asked her two or three times, finally my hubby (my treasure) understood and gave her the directions she was asking for.  I must have had such an expression!  She smiled and left.

Italians speak tremendously fast for me.  I believe I would have a big problem.

On the other hand, going from one Spanish country to the other, with time you can acquire the modisms/accent of the host country but just as a tourist, for a few days, as much as you try and as good a linguist you may be, they always catch you, there will always be a phrase, an expression, a tiny word with wich you are comfortable but that is not commonly used where you are at the time.


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## Carolina Rocío

Hi!
I've been reading this thread for a while (instead of doing a couple of other things, it's like a vice!)
I totally agree with the ones who say that for portuguese speakers it is a lot easier to understand spoken spanish than viceversa, eventhough, for a spanish speaker it is not impossible to figure out what a portuguese speaker is saying, if he/she speaks s-l-o-w-l-y....
With italian it is almost the same, but a little easier for spanish speakers, just what someone else said already.
Talking about South/Central American accents, the strongest, from my point of view, would be the caribean (all Central America, Venezuela, and in a different way Argentina and Uruguay). The Andean region (Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia too) we somehow share other similarities in our accents. I've heard that the countries with less strong accents are Colombia and Peru, at least in some regions. I don't know if the ones who know how people speak in South America would agree with this. Anyway, I find it not so difficult to "play" other "accents", like Argentinian, and Spanish (Spain).  (Playing "spanish" is wonderful to improve your spelling ). And I have seen that Peruvians who have lived in other spanish speaking countries adopt quite easily the host accents, while people from other countries living in Peru don't usually forget their own, or find it harder to do it.
Saludos,
Carolina


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## Outsider

tim fullbright said:
			
		

> Hi folks,
> 
> This is a little off topic maybe. Or maybe the wrong forum, if so let me know,
> and I will not repeat the mistake.
> 
> here we go;
> 
> 1) are spanish/italian or spanish/portuguese mutually intelligible?


Well, Tim, are *English and Dutch* mutually intelligible? *English and German*?... 

There is no sharp frontier between "intelligible" and "unintelligible". With closely related languages, it's more like a continuum. I can make out a few words here and there when I hear another Romance language be spoken, sometimes enough to get the _context and subject_ of a conversation, but in general not enough to follow the conversation completely.

Here's my background and personal experience:

I'm a native speaker of Portuguese who learned French for seven years in school, but hasn't practised it in a long time. I never learned Spanish or Italian formally.

I can read French magazines and Spanish texts fairly well. (Typically, there are a couple of words per page that I don't know, but often the context allows me to guess what they mean. This can be dangerous, though: sometimes, the context can mislead you into the opposite of the real meaning of a word, or into a meaning that could make sense in the context, but is not right.) Italian is more difficult for me -- its vocabulary is too different.

The spoken language is more difficult to follow than the written language. With French, I can usually get the gist of a conversation, but often there are unknown words here and there that prevent me from getting a full grasp of what's said and its nuances, which is quite frustrating, considering I actually studied the language. I sometimes try to watch a French talk show on TV5, and I get annoyed at the amount of times I see everyone laughing but can't get the joke.  

I can usually understand the gist of a conversation in Spanish, but, again, there are all sorts of missing pieces in the puzzle for me. Imagine hearing a recording of a conversation in English where 5 to 15% of the words were bleeped at random. That's what Spanish sounds like to me.

Italian is a curious case. I does _sound_ closer to Portuguese than French, but, because I studied French but never studied Italian, I find it much harder to understand than both Spanish and French! I can only understand some loose sentences here and there, and occasionally the gist of a few consecutive sentences.

It must be said that my exposure to each of these languages is not the same. Because I can understand a little Spanish and a little French, I'm more likely to tune in to a French TV channel or a Spanish TV channel (I have cable) than an Italian TV channel. So I guess ignorance and acquaintance tend to perpetuate themselves.



			
				tim fullbright said:
			
		

> How do these 2 languages "sound" to you? Do they sound fast? slow? rude? polite?


I think that whether a language sounds "rude", "polite", etc., is very subjective. I'll just say that, even though I don't understand it well, I find the Italian language beautiful to listen to, and even to look at when it's written.

The "speed" of a language is a funny thing. Portuguese people tend to feel that Italians and Spaniards (but not most American Spanish speakers) speak fast. However, I've heard foreigners say that we Portuguese speak fast. This may well be subjective, too. I suspect that all native speakers of any language tend to speak it more or less with the same speed, which sounds "normal" to them, who are used to it, and "fast" to foreigners, who have trouble keeping up with them.



			
				tim fullbright said:
			
		

> can you, as a spanish speaker go to these countries (brazil and italy lets say) and get by?


Even though I am not a Spanish native speaker, I have to say that a lot depends on what you mean by "get by." I see Englishmen, Germans and Scandinavians come to Portugal and "get by" with small phrasebooks for tourists that they buy back home. It all depends on how fluent you're aiming to be.



			
				suzzzenn said:
			
		

> It seems so illogical that Spanish speakers can't understand Portuguese, but Portuguese speakers can understand Spanish. *Why do you think this is so*? It seems to me it should be equally easy in both directions. Is there something about the sound system? I have often heard Portuguese speakers say "Spanish speakers _*claim*_ they can't understand us", as if there is some doubt.


My theory is that Portuguese speakers are simply more exposed to Spanish than the reverse. For example, you'll hear songs in Spanish in a Portuguese or Brazilian radio station every now and then (Julio Iglesias, Ricky Martin, Alejandro Sanz, Placido Domingo, etc.); I don't think that songs in Portuguese are heard as often in radios of Spanish-speaking countries. 
Another example: American films -- which are what most of us watch, nowadays -- sometimes feature "Latino" characters who speak Spanish, but you'll be hard pressed to hear Portuguese in an American film. This is simply a consequence of the fact that Spanish is spoken in many more countries than Portuguese.



			
				MarkLondres said:
			
		

> Likewise Lisbon has a very strong accent that I am sure you need native ears to understand, surely if a handful of Spanish linguists went to somewhere like "Coimbra" they would find portuguese much easier to understand.


To my ears, the difference between the accent of Lisbon and the accent of Coimbra is minimal. There are much greater differences between the accents of Porto and Lisbon, or Braga and Lisbon. 
And it's a bit awkward to see the accent that -- rightly or wrongly -- serves as the standard for most Portuguese people, in and out of the mass media, be described as "very strong".


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## jess oh seven

i know some Portuguese people who can get by very well in Spanish, and even be mistaken for Spanish natives. but apparently it doesn't work the same the other way (ie. Spanish - Portuguese).

i've been learning Spanish for quite a few years and spent a year in Spain, so my understanding of European Spanish is quite good, but sometimes i have a little trouble with some South American (or even Southern Spain...) accents. 

i have to do Portuguese as part of my degree as well, but i've only studied it for one year... i tried watching some Portuguese television... i had SUCH a hard time understanding it... i could pick out various words but woah, it's so difficult. i need to be more exposed to it to get a better ear for it. i understood more on the French tv channel and i only spent a year studying that about 3 years ago!!


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## valerie

suzzzenn said:
			
		

> It seems so illogical that Spanish speakers can't understand Portuguese, but Portuguese speakers can understand Spanish. *Why do you think this is so*? It seems to me it should be equally easy in both directions. Is there something about the sound system? I have often heard Portuguese speakers say "Spanish speakers _*claim*_ they can't understand us", as if there is some doubt.




If I remember well, the sound system in Portuguese is much richer - and more complex - than the sound system in Spanish. That may explain that the Spanish speakers have a harder time understanding Portuguese than Portuguese speakers have understanding Spanish. Probably there are a lot of sounds they do not hear clearly and so they cannot recognize words which they would be able to read.

I remember spending some days in Lisbon for work, without any previous exposure to Portuguese, and it costed me 2 days to understand that the sound CH was the pronounciation of the letter S. From that moment I was able to recognise the words and understand the conversation


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## LaSmarjeZ

I'm Italian and I descovered I can understand almost perfectly Spanish, and also speak it pretty well, and I can't say I've been studing it. (Also if in the region where I live in Italy is spoken I dialect more close to the Spanish, since Sardinia has been part of Spain in the 14th century).
But I've noticed that they find a little harder to understand us, but maybe it's just because we speak too fast!
Portuguese it's really easy to read, but the sound it's very different and it's possible to understand just if they speak very slowly.
About the second questiond, I've meet a lot of people from southamerica and I can hear the differents between people from different coutry's speaking, and it's quite funny when they start discussing about the meaning of some words.


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## joseluisblanco

suzzzenn said:
			
		

> It seems so illogical that Spanish speakers can't understand Portuguese, but Portuguese speakers can understand Spanish. *Why do you think this is so*? It seems to me it should be equally easy in both directions. Is there something about the sound system? I have often heard Portuguese speakers say "Spanish speakers _*claim*_ they can't understand us", as if there is some doubt.


 
Because Portuguese speakers have a very particular pronunciation, like that of French Speakers. If you aren´t accostumed to that, you will hear some buzzing noise instead of an articulated language. But, due to the similarity between Spanish and Portuguese, with a careful listening you can, at least, associate diverse meanings from the other language.
It seems that Portuguese speakers don´t have problems to be discerning about Spanish pronunciation.


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## Outsider

joseluisblanco said:
			
		

> If you aren´t accostumed to that, you will hear some buzzing noise instead of an articulated language.


Now we know what we sound like.


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## Bettie

Once in Europe I met a Portuguese guy with whom I had a very interesting conversation about politics, he spoke in Portuguese and I in Spanish the whole time!!!
The same with Italian, I am able to understand a little at least.
French, oh no, I am very bad at it.
I can fake accents because I am good at it, if I try, yes, and it's not just that I try but I start to talk like the people I am talking with, and I try not to because I am afraid that they think that I am making fun of them.


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## joseluisblanco

Outsider, please take no offense from my opinion. I find this matter interesting.
I believe to have a good knowledge of English, but I find it difficult to understand it when spoken. Intonation, different vowel lenghts, more vowels/diphthongs than in Spanish, accents for the sentence rather for the individual words, and what JL Borges once wrote, _ese idioma de leves gruñidos _(not a literal transcription_).(a language made of slight grunts)._

_---_
French seems like a paradigm of that buzzing sound, followed by Br. Portuguese and then Por. Portuguese.

---
Spanish and Italian seem to me to be more plain, simpler in their pronunciation (appart from rr's). Seems that Japanese shares this property.


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## Nitrok

Hello, this is my first post, but my english is so bad... 

I'm spanish and i can speak french... and i understand the portuguese (because there's phonemes that they are the same). this is similar with the italian people but they have little differents with us But They are very easy to learn...

And with the south american, the language is the same, but there are a different vocabulary and the pronunciation too. 

Regards...

pd: Excuse me for my english, it so bad...


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## Outsider

joseluisblanco said:


> Outsider, please take no offense from my opinion. I find this matter interesting.


If I remember well (it's been a while), I was more amused than anything.


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## Minimagpro

Im a native english speaker but I live in Cádiz (Andalucía) Spain. I can also speak portuguese (I lived in Brazil for 5 years).

The Spanish is Cádiz is very different than that of Madrid, Barcelona, or any other country. We have many words and phrases that are only used here and we also have different accent. We drop the s out of almost every word. 

I read some in italian, a little french, and almost no Romanian.


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## borgonyon

I've been to Argentina, Perú, Venezuela, Colombia, Bolivia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Republica Dominicana, Puerto Rico, Cuba. I have had a good time in each place and no problem with misunderstandings in our communication. They always knew I wasn't local. They had no idea where I was from since my Mexican accent died some time back. My wife is cuban and some mexicans say I sound like a cuban. But the cubans didn't agree. In Spain they asked me if I was from Andalucia.

I worked in a special project on and off for five years in Italy and I never had problem communicating. They understood me and I understood them. My problem was I had to think in Spanish, otherwise I was lost. They do speak very fast, but so do the cubans and I'm used to that. [If you are not cuban it's very hard to fool them into thinking you are. Their accent and the way they talk is quite peculiar.]

We have quite a few Brazilian friends and we talk a lot both in English and in Spanish. One of them spent a whole year living with us. I still can't understand her when she calls for my wife. My conclusion is that it depends on the education and where they are from in Brazil, for us Spanish speakers to understand them. I also found out that many words are like bad-spoken Spanish. Like the Spanish kids speak when they are learning to talk. Many words also have a totally different meaning than they do in Spanish, i.e. "basura" [trash] means "broom" for Brazilians.

Both my wife and I like to watch foreign films. The most interesting thing is that we have a hard time understanding the Spanish films. Often times we turn the subtitles on to find out what they are saying! But that only happens with movies. I had no problem understanding what they said when I visited the country several times in the 90s.

A few have commented about the differences even within our countries. I'm from Northwest Mexico and our accent is totally different from the central part of the country. I went to a small college about an hour outside of Monterrey and they have their own particular accent. The funny thing is that we say that people from the central part of the country "sing" when they talk and that's what they say about us!

Great thread, had a great time reading you all's comments.


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## luis masci

tim fullbright said:


> if you are a south american spanish speaker, can you go to spain and "fake"
> it so that you are taken as a native? (or vice versa, you are from spain lets say, you go to south america etc.)


I bet I can if I’d want. Because I’ve heard Spaniards since I was a child and the accent is very present in my mind. But only for a while because I must fake it. In writing Spanish I can pass as a native Spaniard even easier. 
Also you don't forget that in Argentina’s schools we learn the conjugation like it’s used in Spain (though we don’t use it in the same way in our day to day life). I guess many Argies can fake the Spaniard accent, however I don’t think many Spaniards could do the same with our accent.


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## Cecilio

luis masci said:


> I bet I can if I’d want. Because I’ve heard Spaniards since I was a child and the accent is very present in my mind. But only for a while because I must fake it. In writing Spanish I can pass as a native Spaniard even easier.
> Also you don't forget that in Argentina’s schools we learn the conjugation like it’s used in Spain (though we don’t use it in the same way in our day to day life). I guess many Argies can fake the Spaniard accent, however I don’t think many Spaniards could do the same with our accent.



I think in general many Spaniards find it very amusing to imitate the Argentinian accent just for fun (e g , I like the sentence "Este, ¿cómo dijiste?"). And there are people who do it so well you would think they're from Argentina.


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## Minimagpro

what is the argentinan accent like? I have never talked with anyone from there


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## luis masci

Pero che Mini,¿cómo es que vos no nos conocés a los argentinos?
Does it explain a bit our peculiar Spanish?


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## Lucia Adamoli

Well, spanish is my native language, and when I was 3 my family moved to Brazil. So, I grew up learning the two languages. That made it a lot more easier to me to learn french. Pronunciation, meanings, etc. were not as hard as for my argentinian collegues. 
I was raised in Brasilia, and have now been living in Buenos Aires for the last 15 years. So, when I get to talk to a brasileiro/a, they often ask me if I am paulista (somebody from São Paulo). My accent has either gone or mutated, and I didn't even know it!
All my "spanish-speaker" friends find hard to understand protuguese, and it is a lot worst with french. 
I love the varieties of accents in all languages, it is simply delicious! 
Ooops, almost forgot italian, my famiglia is going to kill me!  just kidding
Well, I also understand Italian very well (both written or written), can speak it very basically and wouldn't dare to write it.
I think that maybe having grewn up in a bilingual way, made it easier to "understand" the romanian structure. 
I learned english by an "osmothic method"  : watching movies and readign books, and also with a little help from my 1st grade school english teachers. I can understand German quite well. Once in Holland, I couldn't understand a word of their adult language, but for my big surprise when I heard a girl speaking I understood it all. 
I have tried to learn chinese (cantonese) and russian, but they are so different... 
This with "natural languages". Related to the artificial ones, I learned to read, write and a little vocabulair (?) of Sindarin, an "elfish" language invented by J.R.R. Tolkien.
That's all, folks! Pheww!!!!


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