# Italian/Spanish: How similar are they?



## aedude94

yo hablo español y inglés pero quiero aprender italiano (o portugués, yo no sé). Se parece italiano a español? un poco?  sería fácil aprenderlo? (si hablo español). espero que sea! jaja. Sepa alguien una pagina para aprender italiano en inglés (o español)? gracias


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## MarcB

Try this site http://www.lancs.ac.uk/staff/letchfoa/comparison.htm
All of the romance languages have some similarity. But some are closer to others. In my opinion  Spanish-Portuguese and Italian-Portuguese are closer than Spanish-Italian. I would say of these three Spanish-Portuguese are the closest.For native spaekers who only know one of these they are able to communicate with the other with varying degrees of difficulty, if spoken slowly.Some vocabulary is identical in all three some in two out of three. The grammar is also similar but Sp and Po are closer also.


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## TimLA

aedude94 said:
			
		

> yo hablo español y inglés pero quiero aprender italiano (o portugués, yo no sé). Se parece italiano a español? un poco? sería fácil aprenderlo? (si hablo español). espero que sea! jaja. Sepa alguien una pagina para aprender italiano en inglés (o español)? gracias


 
Spanish is my second language, and there are similarities between the two. Often, in Italy I see Spaniards speaking Spanish to Italians, and the Italians speaking Italian back to them, and they get along. But I must tell you, Italian is MUCH more difficult. I've been working on it for quite a while now, and I do OK, but the subtleties are very complex -- you'll need to work very hard. In my opinion, you get about 20% of Italian if you speak Spanish...the rest is hard labor


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## Korena

MarcB said:
			
		

> Try this site http://www.lancs.ac.uk/staff/letchfoa/comparison.htm
> All of the romance languages have some similarity. But some are closer to others. In my opinion Spanish-Portuguese and Italian-Portuguese are closer than Spanish-Italian. I would say of these three Spanish-Portuguese are the closest.For native spaekers who only know one of these they are able to communicate with the other with varying degrees of difficulty, if spoken slowly.Some vocabulary is identical in all three some in two out of three. The grammar is also similar but Sp and Po are closer also.


 
And, to add to that, the reason why all romance languages are similar is because they are all based on Latin!

You can go to:
http://www.ielanguages.com/

or:
http://www.ielanguages.com/eurolang.html

to find out a little more about linguistics and the history of the languages!

-Korena


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## ronanpoirier

Well... I don't know... I have tried Spanish and Italian... and I have to say... portuguese is like placed between both languages it'd be something like:

Spanish - Portuguese - Italian

I also think Portuguese pronounce is closer to Italian than to Spanish


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## moodywop

One of the Spanish foreros once said that it's quite easy for a Spaniard to understand written Italian and vice versa. I've never studied Spanish and yet I can understand everything in aedude's post. Technical/scientific language is probably the easiest to understand.
Fast-spoken, colloquial Spanish is quite another matter.


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## jester.

I think, concerning the degree of difficulty, the choice could either be Portuguese or Italian and the difference wouldn't be too great.

I think you should just choose the language that you like more, concerning sounds, written language or the one you could use more frequently.
I'm afraid I always propose this no matter who asks the question of which language to choose


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## Cnaeius

Hello everybody,

in my opinion Italian and Spanish are more similar than Italian and Portuguese. Before learning a bit of Spanish I was however able to understand it quite well when written, but the same thing I cannot say for Portuguese. And the differences in understanding increase for spoken language
Ciao


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## lazarus1907

I have spent hours talking to Italians sometimes, and each of us was using his/her respective languages (I don't speak Italian). Of course, it required that we spoke slower, clearer, and avoiding idioms and local terms, but it wasn't impossible. Educated people find it easier to do this, I think. I remember a long conversation I had with an italian teacher once: Every time we got into a word we got stuck with, we quickly managed to find a synonym, or refer to our common Latin roots to figure out its meaning.

If they speak among themselves, at normal speed and speech, I only understand bits and pieces, of course.

I can also speak to Portuguese people (I often do), but I find it harder to understand them.


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## LaSmarjeZ

I never learn Spanish, but I'm able to comunicate with it and I use to talk spanish with some friends of mine coming from southamerica.
So, I will say that they are really similar and easy to understand, also if I've seen that it's easier to speak and understand Spanish than for Spaniard to speak Italian.
Portuguese it's easy to read, but understand and speak it is really hard.
That's what I think


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## Yuribear

I speak both, Italian and Spanish, and I must say that it is true that Brazilian Portuguese is closer to Spanish than Italian. However, there are some italian dialects that are very close to Spanish like Sardo (from Sardinia) and Venitian (from Venice). I used to live in Venice and my mother could understand and talk to my venetian friends without problem, but when the romans came to visit... she was in trouble.


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## Bienvenidos

I speak Spanish and I have studied Latin, thus it's easier for me to understand Italian, because of my background in both languages. However, generally, Spanish and Italian are quite different: especially some pronounciation. Portuguese is much closer to Spanish, and I can understand that sometimes more than I can understand Italian. Again, however, Portuguese has its differences from Spanish. I think of it this way: all languages are different, no matter how similar they are.

*Bienvenidos*


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## LaSmarjeZ

Yuribear said:
			
		

> I speak both, Italian and Spanish, and I must say that it is true that Brazilian Portuguese is closer to Spanish than Italian. However, there are some italian dialects that are very close to Spanish like Sardo (from Sardinia) and Venitian (from Venice). I used to live in Venice and my mother could understand and talk to my venetian friends without problem, but when the romans came to visit... she was in trouble.


 
I think that Portuguese is more similar as vocabulary, while Italian is closer as pronunciation.
However, me and some friend of mine tried to make a test. Me and a girl from Verona translated a part of an article in the respective dialects and some Brasilian girls were listening to us. They find out really easier to understand me than the other girl. So I think Sardo it's closer to spanish and portugues.

Excuse me...my english here it's horrible!!!


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## Yuribear

LaSmarjeZ said:


> I think that Portuguese is more similar as vocabulary, while Italian is closer as pronunciation.



You are absolutely right. I am learning Brazilian Portuguese now and the pronunciation is a mixture between the gutural french, spanish... and a pinch of something else. On the other hand it is very easy for native spanish speakers to have a good italian accent and viceversa.


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## ernest_

I work with an Italian lassie and she speaks perfect Spanish... even better than me  I would've never guessed she was Italian, had she not told me, except one day that she came across the word "amateur" and she said "amatoriale" but other than that I had no bloody clue. So, I've got the feeling that those languages are very close indeed.


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## federicoft

Italian and Spanish are similar to the point they are two distinct languages. 
Surely it wouldn't take too much effort learning Italian if you know Spanish and vice-versa, still it's all but an automatic thing.

Besides, as an Italian speaker without any knowledge of it, I find quite hard to understand even the very general meaning of a Portuguese spoken sentence.


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## Jeedade

I find Spanish and Italian grammatically speaking equally difficult, they both have their oddities both it’s more or less similar.
Understanding however is a different matter. I find Spanish much more difficult. Most Italians I encounter (Milan area mostly) seem to try their best to overpronounce everything (making it easy to understand). The Spanish of the people I work with (mostly Madrileños) sounds like lighting-fast, staccato bursts of machine-gun fire. Their national sport seems to be swallowing as many syllables as possible. They could all work at an auction (you know, the guy that spits out numbers at an incredible speed), or they could be that guy that says the mandatory “for risks and side effects please consult your doctor etc” sentence they put at the end of every pharmaceutical commercial 

I have little experience with non-Iberian Spanish, but it seems easier to understand.

To answer your original question, I moved to Italy with a reasonable level of Spanish and little Italian (started learning it a month before moving). Work and daily life was in Italian from day one, and it was tough but doable. I survived on my Spanish skills. It would probably have been easier if Spanish was my mother language.


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## pomar

Starting from the very first question, that was submitted by a Spanish person, I think that Portoguese is much more similar to Spanish than Italian is, specially about grammar and glossary. But Italian pronunciation might be easier for a Spaniard (no nasal sounds). By the way, Ronanapoirier, what makes you think that Italian pronunciation is similar to Portoguese?
Anyway the problem with similar languages is the different grammar, a lot of  similar words with completely different meaning and the confidence that the learner can feel about mastering the language, since he understands a lot of it, so that he has no strong motivations to improve its skills. I hope I managed to make it clear.  pffff
As for me, I never studied Spanish nor Portuguese, but I understand them quite well when written, not always well when spoken. The most difficult to understand is European Portuguese, Brazilian is easier. And of all Spanish variant, I agree with Jeedade about Madrid (not to mention Andalusia) variant!! Machine-gun fire!! Spanish spoken in Catalunya or in Argentina is much more soft, if I can say so.


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## Hotu Matua

pomar said:


> I think that Portoguese is much more similar to Spanish than Italian is, specially about grammatics and glossary. But Italian pronunciation might be easier for a Spaniard (no nasal sounds).


 
I fully agree. 
If you are a Spanish speaking person and you are listening to Italian, even for your first time, you get a feeling of close familiarity with the sounds. Except by maybe a couple of sounds, the phonetic system of Italian is identical to the Spanish one.
When you listen to Portuguese, however, you get a very different picture. Portuguese is full of nasal sounds unknown to Spanish speaking people, and also closed and open vowels, besides some few consonantic differences.

Having said that, when it comes to glossary and grammar, Portuguese proves to be by far the closest relative to Spanish. 

Now a word of caution: It is very easy to START learning another Romanic language if you already know one, but to achieve a full command of it is a very hard task, as the similarity becomes a trap full of "false friends": words that you would guess to convey a meaning when they mean something radically different.


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## yujuju

My theory is this:

Spanish is Portuguese, spoken in an Italian way 

(in clarity not in accent) , I mean, as some of the lasts: Spanish and Portuguese are very similar in the writing, but when they speak in their normal speed it is hard to understand if it's your first time. On the other hand, italian is difficult to understand in the first view because for some sounds they use totally different letters, but when they speak you can communicate quite well (so I think if Italian were written in the "Spanish way" or the other way round, it would be easy to understand; avoiding typical own words, it would be something like changing some letters or endings, in a broad way said).

To sum up, if the three were written phonetically (which is really the language), portuguese would be most different. Uff I've written too much :S


It is, I think, the same as Danish, Norwegian and Swedish. Once I read Norwegian was Danish, spoken in a Swedish way.


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## Qcumber

Once you've mastered a Romance language, you may safely assume you can understand about half if not a lot more of what you read in a newspaper in any other.


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## Nanon

One can certainly understand much more than 50% while reading. I think much has been written in these forums about mutual intelligibility of Spanish and Portuguese, Spanish and Italian... Well, intelligibility is almost a given, but doesn't the degree of difficulty in *learning *depend on the level of proficiency you set yourself as a goal?



Hotu Matua said:


> Now a word of caution: It is very easy to START learning another Romanic language if you already know one, but to achieve a full command of it is a very hard task, as the similarity becomes a trap full of "false friends": words that you would guess to convey a meaning when they mean something radically different.



Absolutely. This is exactly how I felt when I started studying Portuguese based on my knowledge of Spanish. Aaargh. Making a Spanish sentence sound Portuguese is just a trick that does not suffice to speak properly.

I wrote about this once in the Portuguese forum. I speak Spanish well and I didn't have a clear idea of the difficulties when I started studying Portuguese using my knowledge of Spanish as a starting point. Only vocabulary is easy, but there are some false cognates even in everyday's words. Also, the verbal and pronominal system of Spanish is easy as compared to Portuguese. (And believe me, French verbs and tense concordance are already a piece of cake if you compare them to Spanish.) 
Not to speak about Portuguese phonology which is as complex as French or English...

I can understand written Italian as well as standard variants of spoken Italian to some extent, I can fake a fairly good Italian pronunciation, but I certainly cannot speak it. If I get exposed enough to Italian, I am sure I will get started very quickly, but I will need to study seriously and to dissociate Italian from French, Spanish and Portuguese if I want to speak well.

It is however frustrating to see that some people believe these languages are all the same. For instance, I needed Portuguese for work and I wanted something more than just basic business communication skills. But I could not convince my boss and get an approval for Portuguese lessons. He considered that Spanish and Portuguese were just the same and that I didn't need to learn what I was supposed to know!...



pomar said:


> By the way, Ronanapoirier, what makes you think that Italian pronunciation is similar to Portuguese?


My hypothesis: the consonants. Clear b / d / g and s / z sounds, a clear b / v opposition etc. Probably not the vowels, I would say...


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## Grekh

Well, I've just started to study Italian. I'm a Spanish native speaker and I find it quite easy to learn because there are bunches of words which are really similar, plus the pronuntiation is quite similar to spanish (or at least to my pronuntiation). On the other hand, I've read some portuguese and I've talked to brazilian people (they in Portuguese, me in Spanish) and we find easy to understand each other, nevertheless, there are some times when I can't understand a word of what they're saying and the same happens the other way around.

My conclusion is that Italian is easier for Spanish speakers than Portuguese.


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## friedfysh

Ive heard that Brazilian Portuguese borrows a lot from Italian, one point I distinctly remember is that Brasilians use the italian grammatical structure when using the imperative, and not the portuguese one.


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## ronanpoirier

pomar said:
			
		

> By the way, Ronanapoirier, what makes you think that Italian pronunciation is similar to Portoguese?


EXplaining it better, I'd say Portuguese phonology is closer to Italian's than Spanish's. I've been calculating and there are more identical sounds (consonants sounds) between Portuguese and Italian than between Spanish and Italian and SPanish and Portuguese. Of course I just picked up one accent to calculate it, since we know we take a step in any place and we find a different accent. And about vowels, Spanish and Italian are closer. But Portuguese is closer to Italian than to Spanish.


Freidfysh, what do you mean by using Italian structure in imperative?
(And yes, we have a lot from Italian. Especially here in Rio Grande do Sul and there in São Paulo. Although there's a difference: Italian people came to RS to colonizate and they went to SP to work in lieu of the slaves. I guess that made a difference of influences since here the Italians got localizated and one area and in SP they got spread throughout the state. So I guess in SP there are a biggest influence in the whole state and here we have it in some particular areas of Italian imigration.)


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## LenyZaZa

Hello,
Spanish and Italian do have some things in common in my opinion. I speak Spanish, and am currently learning Italian. I must say, it's not as hard as I thought it would be. When you translate something it's in the similar format as Spanish, masculine words end in an "o." Things like that make it easier to learn. Here are some words that show likeness between the two tounges...
*Note= Noche*
*Bene= Bien*
*Gratzi/Gratzia= Gracias*
*Io= Yo *
*Respirare= Respira*
*Vacca= Baca*

And then there are words that are exactly the same... (Spanish/Italian to English)
*Dominante= Dominant*
*Comodo= Comfortable*
*Idolo= Idol* 
*Replica= Replica*

Suerte with whatever language you choose to learn. 

~~LenyZaZa~~


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## Hotu Matua

ronanpoirier said:


> EXplaining it better, I'd say Portuguese phonology is closer to Italian's than Spanish's. I've been calculating and there are more identical sounds (consonants sounds) between Portuguese and Italian than between Spanish and Italian


 
Well, we can appreciate that.
But it is not only a matter of having more sounds in common, but *how frequently similar or different sounds are used in a conversation.*

For example, vowel sounds are extremely important because of the frequency of their appearance in normal conversation. If there are significant differences in vowel pronunciation, then the languages in question sound very diffferent.
That's the case of Portuguese and Spanish.
Nasal vowels emerge constantly during a conversation in Portuguese, giving this language a peculiar character that places this language far from Italian and Spanish.
On the opposite site, Italian and Spanish vowel sounds are practically identical, so *the flow of sounds* makes the listener think they are indeed very closely related languages.

Take, as a very nice example, the word "_juntos"_ (together), which is written identical in Spanish and Portuguese, while it is "_insieme_" in Italian.
I swear that a Spanish speaking person would find more difficult to pronounce properly the word in Portuguese, despite its identical spelling, that to pronounce "_insieme_" in Italian. 
It would be easier to prononunce "_Non so_" that "_Nao sei_" ("I don't know").
And the examples are many.


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## Arrius

Since we are each giving our personal opinions it will not matter too much if I happen to say something that has already been said.

I can assure you that Spanish is much closer to Portuguese than Italian. In fact, a Portuguese can understand both spoken and written Spanish
without much practice, whereas a Spaniard would be able to work out a text in Portuguese but have considerable trouble understanding the spoken language, particularly the European version, unless he comes from Galicia where the local dialect (called gallego in Spanish) is almost the same as Portuguese. The Brazilian version of Portuguese is pronounced much closer to the way it is spelt so that, for instance _noite_ the Portuguese for night sounds like noitee instead of noitch, and all is generally much less disorted than in the old country. Thus if you want an easier task, learn Portuguese on top of your Spanish, though there is a danger of mixing them up if the first language is not well established. I do not have the statistics to hand but it is worth bearing in mind that Portuguese is far above Italian in the league of the world's most spoken languages.
Italian is pronounced close to how it is spelt slightly more so than Spanish and the standard language is crystal clear with pure vowels - that is why it is probably the most suitable language for opera. But it differs much more from Spanish than Portuguese in its grammar and vocabulary. It has been said above that some Italian dialects are closer than standard Italian is, to Spanish, which is not surprising when you consider that various Italian states were for a long while part of the Holy Roman Empire and under Spanish rule. By the way, curiously enough, it is generally agreed that Portuguese and then Spanish are closer to their ancestor, Latin, than Italian is.

To help you come to a decision, I would advise you to read and listen to the online audio-visual articles on the site of EuroNews, where there is, among others, an English version, if you get lost. The texts are not exact translations of one another but what you hear and see in any given language is the same and you have the videos to aid comprehension:
http://www.euronews.net/index.php?ln...e=accueil_info

Despite what I have said above, I have known several instances of Spaniards coming to Italy who very soon managed to communicate verbally with their Italian girlfriends! Amor vincit omnia.
Hasta luego/ até logo/ arrivederci !
Arrius 
PS You ask about online courses. Look at the sources listed at the beginning of the relevant language forum to see what online aids to learning exist - there is much available gratis.


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## Ayazid

Hotu Matua said:


> Take, as a very nice example, the word "_juntos"_ (together), which is written identical in Spanish and Portuguese, while it is "_insieme_" in Italian.
> I swear that a Spanish speaking person would find more difficult to pronounce properly the word in Portuguese, despite its identical spelling, that to pronounce "_insieme_" in Italian.
> It would be easier to prononunce "_Non so_" that "_Nao sei_" ("I don't know").
> And the examples are many.



I don´t understand what exactly would make the word "juntos" so difficult for Spanish speakers to pronounce. Actually, it´s pronounced just like "zhuntus" (with Czech ortography, I would write it like "žuntus"), whereas the "n" is slightly nasalised. The same with "não sei", the only difficulty is that the "-ão" is pronounced more or less like a slightly nasalised "-au". Indeed, the italian words would be probably somehow easier for Spanish speakers to reproduce since they don´t contain any nasal sounds, but I really don´t see anything *extraordinarily* difficult in the given Portuguese examples. There are certainly many tricky aspects of Portuguese phonology, but these words are probably not well chosen or something.


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## Vanda

> In fact, a Portuguese can understand both spoken and written Spanish without much practice, whereas a Spaniard would be able to work out a text in Portuguese but have considerable trouble understanding the spoken language, particularly the European version, unless he comes from Galicia where the local dialect (called gallego in Spanish) is almost the same as Portuguese. The Brazilian version of Portuguese is pronounced much closer to the way it is spelt so that, for instance _noite_ the Portuguese for night sounds like noitee instead of noitch, and all is generally much less disorted than in the old country. Thus if you want an easier task, learn Portuguese on top of your Spanish, though there is a danger of mixing them up if the first language is not well established


Touché Arrius! As you can figure it out, because of its proximity there are many argentinos living in Brasil, I don't know any, no matter how long they've lived here, that can pronounce our vowels and some other letters without the Spanish accent. Any Brazilian can at least get the main point of a conversation from a hispanohablante and any Brazilian that dedicates him/herself to, can speak Spanish without accent, perfectly. 
The Italians living here can get closer to our accent but a sharp ear for accents will soon detect the accent when this Italian says some vowels like* a* depending on the letter coming before or after this *a*.


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## Arrius

*I don´t understand what exactly would make the word "juntos" so difficult for Spanish speakers to pronounce.* (*Ayazid*)

It is difficult for a Spaniard to pronounce the J in Portuguese _juntos _as it is also to pronounce the English Z in azure or the second G in the usual pronunciation of English garage. But if you point out that it's the same sound as in the common pronunciation of the Ll in llueve or llama or, even more likely, the Y in yo, they get it.
I think an hispanophone could get used far more quickly to the strange pronunciation of Portuguese (which, when one hears it for the first time one could take for a slav language) than the far more often distinct vocabulary of italian. For someone who speaks Spanish to learn to talk like a Portuguese it is somewhat similar to myself as a Southern Englishman learning to speak like a Scot from some remote peak in the Scottish Highlands, possibly even less difficult.


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## Ayazid

Grekh said:


> My conclusion is that Italian is easier for Spanish speakers than Portuguese.



Easier in which aspect? Do you mean that for Spanish speakers is easier to learn Italian than Portuguese, or that they understand spoken Italian more easily than spoken Portuguese?


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## Outsider

Qcumber said:


> Once you've mastered a Romance language, you may safely assume you can understand about half if not a lot more of what you read in a newspaper in any other.


I don't think I would have been able to understand half if not a lot more of a French text if I hadn't studied it for years. I also don't think I can understand half if not a lot more of a Romanian text. 



LenyZaZa said:


> *Notte= Noche*
> *Bene= Bien*
> *Grazie= Gracias*
> *Io= Yo *
> *Respirare= Respirar*
> *Vacca= Vaca*
> 
> And then there are words that are exactly the same... (Spanish/Italian to English)
> *Dominante= Dominant*
> *Comodo= Comfortable*
> *Idolo= Idol*
> *Replica= Replica*


Except that in Spanish there are diacritics in some of those words.



Hotu Matua said:


> On the opposite site, Italian and Spanish vowel sounds are practically identical [...]


That depends. Standard Italian distinguishes between è and é, and between ò and ó, as does Portuguese. These pairs of vowels are replaced with just two vowels in Spanish, which has no such distinction.

Ultimately, though, I think these comparisons lead nowhere, because which language is closer and which one is farther depends on the linguistic features you choose to compare. Still, my overall impression is that the phonetic systems of Italian and Spanish are indeed closer to each other, while in terms of the "structure" of the vocabulary and in terms of grammar Spanish is generally closer to Portuguese.

Of course, in this comparison I am thinking of what little I know of standard Italian -- because some Italian dialects have at times surprising phonetic similarities with Portuguese.



Arrius said:


> The Brazilian version of Portuguese is pronounced much closer to the way it is spelt so that, for instance _noite_ the Portuguese for night sounds like noitee instead of noitch, and all is generally much less disorted than in the old country.


Actually, most Brazilians pronounce it "noitchi", and in Portugal no one says "noitch".



Arrius said:


> But if you point out that it's the same sound as in the common pronunciation of the Ll in llueve or llama or, even more likely, the Y in yo, they get it.


Except that it _isn't_ the same sound, for most Spanish speakers.



Arrius said:


> By the way, curiously enough, it is generally agreed that Portuguese and then Spanish are closer to their ancestor, Latin, than Italian is.


There are all sorts of opinions of that sort, all of them baseless or dubious, IMHO. In actual fact, each Romance language is more or less as close/apart from Latin as any other, though in different ways. They are all considerably closer to each other than any of them is to Latin.


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## Arrius

To *Outsider*:
European Portuguese_ noite_ ends in a palatalized T, my transcription was the closest I could get to it, and you seem to imply that the Brazilian form is not universal so that the form noit-ee may, indeed, exist as I have been told it does in course books and recall hearing.

The pronunciation of *ll* in Spanish*, *similar in sound to Portuguese _*j*untos, _is used by a great many people in Spain and if not used, will be known to them. The Y in yo similarly pronounced is even more widely used and is often heard in songs, including in South American songs. I have referred to these similarities with regard to both _ll _and _y_ when teaching the similar English sound mentioned in my post to madrileños - and I assure you it works. In Andalusia too these letters are frequently pronounced this way.

There are many people far more erudite than myself (which, of course, is not difficult) who believe that Portuguese,at least in the written form, is of the daughters of Latin the closest to the mother. I did not say that the Romance languages are not closer to one another than any given one is to Latin, so you are splitting hairs that are not even there.


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## Outsider

Arrius said:


> European Portuguese_ noite_ ends in a palatalized T [...]


What do you mean by "palatalized"? If you mean like an English or Spanish "ch", then definitely not. Furthermore, EP "noite" doesn't necessarily end with a consonant. The "e" may be pronounced.



Arrius said:


> [...] my transcription was the closest I could get to it, and you seem to imply that the Brazilian form is not universal so that the form noit-ee may, indeed, exist as I have been told it does in course books and recall hearing.


"Noitê" exists; I'm not entirely sure about "noiti", though it's possible. However, these two pronunciations are regional in Brazil. The most common by far is "noichi".



Arrius said:


> The pronunciation of *ll* in Spanish*, *similar in sound to Portuguese _*j*untos, _is used by a great many people in Spain and if not used, will be known to them. The Y in yo similarly pronounced is even more widely used and is often heard in songs, including in South American songs. I have referred to these similarities with regard to both _ll _and _y_ when teaching the similar English sound mentioned in my post to madrileños - and I assure you it works. In Andalusia too these letters are frequently pronounced this way.


I agree that it's a similar sound, and it may be a good first approximation for beginners, but it's not the exact same sound.



Arrius said:


> There are many people far more erudite than myself (which, of course, is not difficult) who believe that Portuguese,at least in the written form, is of the daughters of Latin the closest to the mother.


That must depend on how one measures the "closeness"...


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## JGreco

> I agree that it's a similar sound, and it may be a good first approximation for beginners, but it's not the exact same sound.


I greatly disagree. If someone who studies the variation of Latin American Castellano would realize there are several approximate pronunciation for the "Ll" or "y" combination. It can be  pronounced as the "y" in English, a "dj" sound very similar to "d" of Brazilian Portuguese, a "sh" sound similar to the pronunciation of "ch" in Portuguese, and a "zh" similar to the "j" of Brazilian Portuguese. I know this from experience with my mother who is Brazilian married to a Panamanian American and she has interacted and has friends from all over Latin America who speak in Castellano to her in their regional accents. She would either speak Brazilian Portuguese to them or a Portunhol but never in exact Castellano since she never learned how to formally speak it. I know the European Portuguese approximates might be different but at least according to my mother you do have Brazilian approximates to certain pronunciations in Castellano Latinoamericano because that was how she survived in the United States mostly only having Castellano speaking friends around her because there wasn't many Portuguese speakers around her in the places she lived in the United States.


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## Outsider

But Arrius spoke about "the common pronunciation" of Spanish. Argentinisms are hardly universal across the Spanish-speaking world. Not to mention that the Argentinians themselves can pronounce the "y" in different ways.


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## HUMBERT0

Ayazid said:


> I don´t understand what exactly would make the word "juntos" so difficult for Spanish speakers to pronounce. Actually, it´s pronounced just like "zhuntus" (with Czech ortography, I would write it like "žuntus"), whereas the "n" is slightly nasalised. The same with "não sei", the only difficulty is that the "-ão" is pronounced more or less like a slightly nasalised "-au". Indeed, the italian words would be probably somehow easier for Spanish speakers to reproduce since they don´t contain any nasal sounds, but I really don´t see anything *extraordinarily* difficult in the given Portuguese examples. There are certainly many tricky aspects of Portuguese phonology, but these words are probably not well chosen or something.


 I don’t think that the problem lies in reproducing sounds as so much in hearing them, the Portuguese vowels tend to throws us off when we hear them, and some times we don’t recognize a similar word because of the different vowels involved or to us sound like truncated words. If not for the vowel system and spelling this to languages would almost look more like twins. 
By the way did any body saw the last Miss Universe beauty pageant when the Girl from Brazil was interview in the question round, she answered in Portuguese, and before it was even translated, all of the Spanish speaking people in the audience clapped because they liked her answered and didn’t even needed a translation, I notice that because I as well understood perfectly her Portuguese, and I don’t speak the language.


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## Arrius

*What do you mean by "palatalized"? If you mean like an English or Spanish "ch"* *then definitely not*.(*Outside*r)
No, I dont. By "palatized" I am thinking of those softened consonants so common in Russian, for example, as in съездить [ˈsje.zʲdʲɪtʲ] (_to go/ travel_) where what looks like a reduced lower case b in the Russian script and is represented by a faint raised lower case italic _j _in the phonetic transcription softens the final T. If I had used such phonetic symbols in answer to the original questioner, he would probably have been even less likely to grasp what I meant, so I approximated with the _ch_.

*But Arrius spoke about "the common pronunciation" of Spanish.* (*Outsider*)
What I said was that the pronunciation described was common (i.e. of frequent occurrence) not that it was _*the *_common pronunciation. If it were, it would be the one I use - which is not the case.
  A.


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## Outsider

Arrius said:


> By "palatized" I am thinking of those softened consonants so common in Russian, for example, as in [...] (_to go/ travel_) where what looks like a reduced lower case b in the Russian script and is represented by a faint raised lower case italic _j _in the phonetic transcription softens the final T. If I had used such phonetic symbols in answer to the original questioner, he would probably have been even less likely to grasp what I meant, so I approximated with the _ch_.


I have never heard of European Portuguese having palatalized consonants. What is your source?



Arrius said:


> What I said was that the pronunciation described was common (i.e. of frequent occurrence) not that it was _*the *_common pronunciation. If it were, it would be the one I use - which is not the case.
> A.


I just don't see how you can call a pronunciation that practically only exists in Argentina, and not even everywhere in Argentina, "frequent". I think such statements are more likely to be misleading than helpful to the vast majority of Spanish speakers, who will not be familiar with the sound, but will tend to think of _their_ pronunciation for "y" instead.


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## Arrius

I give up!
Adeus! A.


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## JGreco

> By the way did any body saw the last Miss Universe beauty pageant when the Girl from Brazil was interview in the question round, she answered in Portuguese, and before it was even translated, all of the Spanish speaking people in the audience clapped because they liked her answered and didn’t even needed a translation, I notice that because I as well understood perfectly her Portuguese, and I don’t speak the language.



I definitely noticed that. I had a friend from Puerto Rico that was shocked by that she could completely understand her. People don't realize that their are several regional accents in Brasil. Some very close to Spanish to the point of having almost complete intelligibility.


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## JGreco

Moderators I think its time to create a new topic.


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## Lugubert

I have had no formal training in Spanish, but had looked into it, and I am interested in languages. When I visited Spain with my then wife, who had studied Italian in Italy, I did the talking when we for example negotiated renting a car, and she understood rather all of it, but didn't dare to join the conversation, because when she did, the Spaniard didn't quite understand her.

She did try, but generally, I think it is much of a question of how much you really want to comunicate.

A lovely example, when I, having had minimal exposure to Spanish speaking countries/people, viewed a Swedish TV reporter interviewing an elderely lady in a Portuguese shop queue. He spoke Spanish, and the lady answered in Portuguese, and as far as I could tell, there was a perfect mutual understanding.

I could compare that to many an interscandinavian encountrer.

She was often irritated by my efforts to use Danish. Then, we were on a day trip to neighbouring Aarhus and wanted to buy some local fluid produce, and were approaching closing hours. We bumped into a couple of local elderly ladies, and I asked them in plain Swedish where we might find a supermarket or any similar store. They looked just blank. Then I tried my fake Danish, and they promptly gave us proper directions. Need I tell you that she never ever has complained on my using foreign languages afterwards?

I should perhaps tell you that we, although after being married for some years, separated some 20 years ago, still are the best of friends, and still see one another quite frequently, despite both of us (perhaps even because of?) having (and have had) other relationships by now. And she's fluent in four foreign languages.


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## r_daneel

senza dubbio le due lingue sono distinte, ma non è molto difficile abituarsi alle differenze.  il portoghese scritto e' molto piu' simile allo spagnolo che l'litaliano.  Nel mio caso (sono americano), io ho studiato lo spagnolo prima che avessi studiato l'italiano e non era difficile (per me) capire l'italiano scritto. 

Io non ho molta esperienza nel parlare, ma capisco meglio l'italiano parlato perche' posso distinguere le parole distinte meglio di che posso fare rispetto allo spagnolo.

In oltre, prima che avessi studiato il portoghese, poteva leggerlo facilmente (ma non poteva capire il portoghese parlato per niente)


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## concafeina

moodywop said:


> One of the Spanish foreros once said that it's quite easy for a Spaniard to understand written Italian and vice versa. I've never studied Spanish and yet I can understand everything in aedude's post. Technical/scientific language is probably the easiest to understand.
> Fast-spoken, colloquial Spanish is quite another matter.


 

Hi!
If you speak Catalan it's more easy, because words in many cases words are the same.

Regards


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## Idiomático

Interesting conversation!  I am a native Spanish speaker who once attempted to learn Portuguese and has now been studying Italian for three years.  Although I can understand simple written Portuguese relatively well, the spoken language completely escapes me.  The phonetic differences between Spanish and Portuguese were an insurmountable obstacle for me.  With Italian, however, I've been much more successful.  During a recent trip to southern Italy, when Italians heard me speaking their languange they often asked me, "Ma, lei è italiano?"  I had no trouble at all understanding them (except when they spoke to each other).  I have also lived in France and and studied French and am able speak that language fairly well.  I find that sometimes, although certainly not always, Italian grammar is closer to French than it is to Spanish.  During a boat tour of the Chicago lakefront I took just two weeks ago I struck a conversation with three Italian tourists who were sitting next to me and the same question came up again, "Ma, lei è italiano?"  I know Italians are a very polite and gracious people...  but I still love to hear that question!


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## Ayazid

Idiomático said:


> Interesting conversation!  I am a native Spanish speaker who once attempted to learn Portuguese and has now been studying Italian for three years.  Although I can understand simple written Portuguese relatively well, the spoken language completely escapes me.  The phonetic differences between Spanish and Portuguese were an insurmountable obstacle for me.  With Italian, however, I've been much more successful.  During a recent trip to southern Italy, when Italians heard me speaking their languange they often asked me, "Ma, lei è italiano?"  I had no trouble at all understanding them (except when they spoke to each other).  I have also lived in France and and studied French and am able speak that language fairly well.  I find that sometimes, although certainly not always, Italian grammar is closer to French than it is to Spanish.  During a boat tour of the Chicago lakefront I took just two weeks ago I struck a conversation with three Italian tourists who were sitting next to me and the same question came up again, "Ma, lei è italiano?"  I know Italians are a very polite and gracious people...  but I still love to hear that question!



Interesting. You studied Portuguese and gave it up because of the phonetic differences between Spanish and Portuguese and despite it you claim to speak French quite well with all its phonetic difficulties and overall character which is certainly more distant from Spanish than Portuguese is?  Now, I have really impression that some people overestimate differences between these 2 languages (Spanish and Portuguese) and make rather unfair generalisations. In many instances it is just a question of habit. For example many Uruguaians, Argentinians and Paraguaians claim to understand quite well their Southern Brazilians, just as there are certainly many Spaniards living close the border with Portugal who, I guess, understand their neighbours better than let´s say some people from Madrid or Catalonia who don´t have any regular contact with Portugal and its language. Similar situation in Latin America would be a Mexican trying to communicate with somebody from interior of Northeastern Brazil in comparision with Uruguayan communicating with some Southern Brazilian 

It´s also a matter of exposure


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## Horazio

Among latin languages ,especially italian ,spanish and portuguese there's very good mutual intelligibility.

But don't get too much excited about this. This similarities may be handy only on a vacation or when reading a short flyer.

By the way I'm uruguayan and I don't understand a word of portuguese.


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## Ayazid

Horazio said:


> *Among* latin languages ,especially italian ,*spanish and portuguese there's very good mutual intelligibility*.
> 
> But don't get too much excited about this. This similarities may be handy only on a vacation or when reading a short flyer.
> 
> By the way I'm uruguayan *and I don't understand a word of portuguese*.




Desculpa tchê mas agora não entendi muito bem o que pensaste. Escreveste que mesmo assim que sejas Uruguaiano não entendes nada de português, nem uma palavra?  Eu nem sou falante nativo desta língua e não a domino extremamente bem e apesar disso consigo entender boa parte de textos escritos em castelhano e italiano, por exemplo neste forum. Também penso que as differenças fonéticas entre estas línguas não sejam tão grandes para os falantes de uma (nesse caso castelhano) não conseguirem entender nem uma palavra de outra. Actually, just as you said, the similarities between these languages are so great that to say that they are sufficient just to read some short flyer or on vacation is at least serious understatement. When you wrote that you don´t understand a word of portuguese, you meant its Brazilian or European variant? Both written and spoken language? I still recall what I was told half year ago by one Italian guy who spent more than 2 months in your neighbour Brazilian state Rio Grande do Sul and he was able to communicate with local people in Italian whereas they used their native language and this communication worked and he understood them although Italian is certainly more distant from portuguese than castelhano.

O mundo é estranho


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## wsxxsw

Sorry but my english is not so good yet.

Well, talking about the first question, I know both spanish and italian.

I can say that it's easy at the beginning, just for saying simple things but it's not so easy if you want to be a professionist, or if you want know very well both the languages. It's depend about what you want to express and about what you need to read and to understand very well. 

Because, at the same time, we have same words that they are similar in the meaning and we have same words that mean 2 things completely diffent.
We have a looooooooooooooot of false friends.
So, lot of the time, people think to understand but actually they don't understand very well the expressions.
We have same adverbs, but there are cases who we use them is different way...and it's not so easy to know it and to understand it!!!!

So, I think that you have to know very well one latin language for starting another one, otherwise it's very easy to mix both. And to do a lot of mistakes!!!

Also, for me, for knowing well 2 or 3 latin languages (because I know french too), you have to do a good effort of memorization. Because when you write you have always to change something...BUT...not always...so you have to remember when you have to do it and when not!!!

salir   -  salire  :   completely different
subir  -  subire :   completely different
mirar  - mirare  :   completely different
guardar - guardare : completely different
esperar - sperare/aspettare : one the same, the other one completely different

and a lot of other details that are not so easy to remember.

I told you, maybe it's easier at the beginning, but after that you have to spend a lot of time to perfection both the languages, using a good memorization, and paying attention about a lot of different way to express the same thing.

of course, if it's just for tourist occasion, there's no problem; but if you want to speak and to write without mistakes....well....you will have to study a lot and you will have to use you memory!

In any case, at least it's very easy to pronounce


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## Horazio

Ayazid said:


> you meant its Brazilian or European variant? Both written and spoken language? I still recall what I was told half year ago by one Italian guy who spent more than 2 months in your neighbour Brazilian state Rio Grande do Sul and he was able to communicate with local people in Italian whereas they used their native language and this communication worked and he understood them although Italian is certainly more distant from portuguese than castelhano.
> 
> O mundo é estranho


 
1) If I read portuguese I can guess some words or even grasp some concepts. But I can't understand spoken portuguese.

2) Your friend forgot to mention that in the uruguayan / brazilian border people are proficient in both spanish and portuguese. This factor helped them a lot, I bet.
(they also speak a mixed language called portuñol ).


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## Ayazid

Horazio said:


> 1) If I read portuguese I can guess some words or even grasp some concepts. But I can't understand spoken portuguese.
> 
> 2) Your friend forgot to mention that in the uruguayan / brazilian border people are proficient in both spanish and portuguese. This factor helped them a lot, I bet.
> (they also speak a mixed language called portuñol ).



_*Olá, como vais, tudo bem? *_

1) Well, you mean that you are unable to understand even the simplest spoken sentences in Portuguese, no matter in what accent they are said (I guess you know them all) and also the written language is so obscure that you can only guess meaning of some things? Vamos por partes: primeiro, I think it´s absurd and wrong to claim that phonetic "distortions" of spoken portuguese (in this case namely that spoken in Southern Brazil) are so big and overall pronunciation so murmurous that they can make it totally incomprehensible for Spanish and Italian speakers. Actually many speakers of these languages have confirmed the right opposite. Segundo, the written forms of these languages are so similar that even me, learner of portuguese can understand (not only guess, mas sim entender) considerable part of written Spanish and with a little bigger effort also Italian, although I have never learnt them before, speak nothing about native speakers (or most of them).

2) According to what he said, they were speaking with him in portuguese (it was in city Caxias do Sul in RS, it wasn´t close to the border) and he in Italian, however as he told me, when he visited Rio de Janeiro, the carioca accent was so difficult that he couldn´t understand virtually anything. It´s quite clear that with such great differences which exist between various portuguese accents it´s hard to make generalisations.

Afinal de contas, I think that it´s also a matter of some personal effort and good will. If one is aware of at least the most prominent differences between these languages and has some (at least the most basic) knowledge of the other language, to understand it will be easier for him. I am sure that for any Spanish or Italian person would be quite different to guess what is "no","na","mão" etc., or what exactly a Brazilian mean by "híku" or "mortchi", but after they learn that it´s the same as "en el" (em+o), "en la" (em+a), "mano" (-ano --> -ão), that the strong double r mostly change to h sound and di ti to dji, tchi in Brazilian portuguese (so it´s "rico" and "morte"), simply if they get some knowledge of portuguese pronunciation and sound shifts, it will be much clearer and they shouldn´t have so many problems to get used to it + the pronunciation is not always so different. Obviously, if they don´t make the slightest effort to understand many things will stay obscure...


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## Oluja

Spanish and Italian are similar indeed, but if you really want to speak and understand both, you need to study both!! I also think that italian grammar is more difficult than spanish, because we have a lot of irregular verbs and forms. On the other hand, I actually think that for an italian speaker, Spanish is the easiest language to learn...that's my experience, at least.


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## Grosvenor1

I mentioned on another WordReference thread that I was able to use the similarity once. I was in Turkey, some Italians were visiting a Turkish family and someone had to translate. I had very limited Italian at the time but much better Spanish, so I translated to and from Turkish and Spanish (nobody but me knew English). The Italians more or less understood my Spanish, so long as the conversational level was simple. When I had to go to the toilet, communication did break down until I returned.


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## MORTIMER

Front my point of view:

Italian spoken is more similar to Spanish 
Portuguese written is more similar to Spanish


I speak Spanish, I can speak in Italian and this year I want to learn Portuguese but there`s no many academies in Spain


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## olaszinho

Hi, I think every specialist in the romance languages could explain that Portuguese and Spanish are much more similar than Italian. First of all both languages are spoken in the same peninsula and from a grammatical, lexical and syntactic point of view they are really closed. They share more than 80% of the roots of their words. Many people think that Spanish and Italian are more similar from a phonological point of view, but I would like to point out:
There are many sounds in italian that don't exist in Spanish and viceversa:
Italian: 7 vowels, e and o can be pronounced closed or open
consonants: sh, dz, tz, z, gl and all the double consonants.
Spanish: Jota, the ci/ce sound (european spanish) , the particolar sound of g and d between vowels. Even the  sound of the letter s  is quite different in the two languages.
At first hearing Spanish and Italian might sound more understandable than Portuguese but I think only an expert can explain all the peculiarities and subtelities of the two languages. 
Bye


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## Paulfromitaly

concafeina said:


> Hi!
> If you speak Catalan it's more easy, because words in many cases words are the same.
> 
> Regards



The first time I read some Catalan I was quite surprised by how similar it was to my dialect (Brescia - Bergamo dialect): I could get most of the words although I don't speak and I've never studied neither Catalan nor Spanish.
Being Italian, I can understand a fair amount of written Spanish and some spoken Spanish too, if the speaker cares to be understood.
I personally find Portuguese harder to understand than Spanish.
After a while Spanish and Portuguese people who have studied some Italian can also speak it very well to the point I really have to concentrate on their pronunciation to tell they are not native Italians.
The only other people who can pronounce Italian so well are Slavonic speakers.


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## olaszinho

I don't agree, Spanish and portuguese people never loose their accent even though they have been living in Italy for many years, unless They came to Italy as a child and they have been attending Italian schools. For instance they can hardly pronounce italian double consonants and some sounds like ts and dz, not  to mention the intonation.....
Anyway it's the same for the italians speaking Spanish and portuguese. 
Bye


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## Paulfromitaly

olaszinho said:


> I don't agree, Spanish and portuguese people never loose their accent even though they have been living in Italy for many years, unless They came to Italy as a child and they have been attending Italian schools. For instance they can hardly pronounce italian double consonants and some sounds like ts and dz, not  to mention the intonation.....
> Anyway it's the same for the italians speaking Spanish and portuguese.
> Bye



Opinions, my friend 
Of course I didn't mean that all the Spanish speakers can pronounce Italian very well, but they are one of the few example of people who can pronounce Italian almost perfectly (have you ever heard Vanessa Encontrada for example? She speaks Italian much better than some Italians I know ).
Only a native could tell she's not Italian by the way she speaks, whereas I can't remember of any English, German, French native speakers whose Italian pronunciation (I'm not on about fluency of course) is so good that I can't tell what's their native language.


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## olaszinho

Hi again,
As for Vanessa Incontrada, her father is from Rome and even if she was born in Spain she had attended an italian school in Barcelona. I could hear this in an interview of hers.
 Bye


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## avok

I think Brazilians or Catalans pronounce Italian better than the Spanish lot, just an idea though.


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## Horazio

olaszinho said:


> I don't agree, Spanish and portuguese people never loose their accent even though they have been living in Italy for many years


 
That depends only on your personal lingusitic skills and it does not have anything to do with your native tongue.
Some people will get foreing accent with just a "small" exposure while others won't get it even if their lives depended upon it.


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## Paulfromitaly

olaszinho said:


> Hi again,
> As for Vanessa Incontrada, her father is from Rome and even if she was born in Spain she had attended an italian school in Barcelona. I could hear this in an interview of hers.
> Bye



Whatever.  She's Spanish and Spanish is her mother tongue.
It was just an example of a native Spanish who speaks Italian really well and I'm not denying that the fact she's been living in Italy for a long time makes a difference.
If regardless of the blatant evidence, you want to argue that Spanish speakers can't speak Italian very well, go on: I'm afraid it'd just be a waste of time trying to make you change your mind, so I'll simply leave you to it.


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## Horazio

Vanessa Incontrada and Michelle Unziker are kinda "native" now...They speak perfect italian.


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## MarX

Hello!

Somehow I find French is closer to Italian than Spanish, at least in the written form.

As to answer the question, on a party last week an Italian could understand much of Spanish. But I think Italian is pretty complicated. I would even say the most complicated amongst the Neo-Latin languages. To learn Portuguese is much easier for a Spanish speaker, the main hurdle being the pronunciation, but if you pick Brazilian Portuguese it is way easier than Portugal Portuguese.

Salam.


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## Horazio

It also depends on what your goals are : a lot of people (italians) go to Ibiza for holidays and then come back and brag about how they could speak/interact with the locals...whoa! 
In that case yes, italian and spanish are very close....
Otherwise,if your want to be a "pro" (translator,professor,linguist etc etc) things are gonna get a lot harder and the closer the languages seem, the trickier they are!


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## Josita

Spanish = easy,cause i speak portuguese
English = hard =cause is very different from portuguese
Italian is not easy to me.I think that one spanish-speaker,can learn Italian without problem,once the both languages are similar but it is relative,cause every language has different kinds of difficult.


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## Horazio

Becoming proficient in a language that's very similar to your own native tongue can be even harder because you feel confident about the target language since "it sounds similar"....Man,it's so tricky you don't wanna know.


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## Grosvenor1

I think the problem of "false friends" is greater in closely related languages. 

I remember a scene in the Spanish film _Ay Carmela! _which is set in 1938, in the latter part of the Spanish Civil War. A few Spanish Republican entertainers have been captured by the Nationalists and are being guarded by one of the Italian soldiers sent by Mussolini to fight on Franco's side. They can communicate up to a point, though the Italian complains about their pronunciation, referring to "Macedonia" cigarettes - "They're not pronounced _Mathedonia_, they're pronounced _Machedonia - _why can't you speak Italian?"


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## Jeedade

Horazio said:


> Vanessa Incontrada and Michelle Unziker are kinda "native" now...They speak perfect italian.


Yes, but Incontrada, as mentioned, has an Italian father. Hunziker was born in Ticino (the Italian speaking part of CH).


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## Lusitania

MarcB said:


> Try this site http://www.lancs.ac.uk/staff/letchfoa/comparison.htm
> All of the romance languages have some similarity. But some are closer to others. In my opinion Spanish-Portuguese and Italian-Portuguese are closer than Spanish-Italian. I would say of these three Spanish-Portuguese are the closest.For native spaekers who only know one of these they are able to communicate with the other with varying degrees of difficulty, if spoken slowly.Some vocabulary is identical in all three some in two out of three. The grammar is also similar but Sp and Po are closer also.


 

I fully agree. I learnt Spanish and it was a bit hard because we have some words in Portuguese that are masculine in Spanish and vice versa, or similar words with a completly different meaning. With Italian it gets easier as the usually the vocabulary is similar as in Portuguese. 
I will probably take a quick course on Italian as I already can read it and understand it without difficulties. So I just have to learn to write and speak.
Just study all of them, but not at the same time, it can be a huge mess


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## xeneize

Hi, I speak Italian, Spanish and Sardinian at the same level, so I guess i can give my opinion.
Each of these languages helps a lot while learning another one, I guess, and I noticed that in many people trying to learn one language or the other.
Sardinian language may help a lot a Sardinian person who wants to learn proficient spanish I guess, because, even if Sardinian is very different from both Italian and Spanish, it's got a lot of words of Spanish descent.
But, as for the similarities, Spanish and Italian sure are much closer between them than any of them to Sardinian, no doubts about that.
About Portuguese, of course as for the structure, the words and the grammar it's really closer to Spanish than to any other language, but Spanish is closer to Italian than to Portuguese in pronunciation.
Portuguese pronunciation seems to me closer to Catalan, instead.
French is quite a lot different from any of these, but perhaps is closer to Italian for the grammar, and to Catalan or Portuguese for the pronunciation, at least in some features, i think.
Anyways, speaking Spanish always helped me a lot while speaking Portuguese or Catalan, even if i make a lot of Spanish-based mistakes (I speak both of them far from well), in effect I came to learn some Portuguese without having never attended a course (while I studied a bit of catalan).
Brasilian Portuguese is easier to me than Portugal's one as for the pronunciation.
As for the attitude of people regarding the accents and the pronunciation, I agree with those of you that said that it depends on every single speaker, and picking up an accent is something about personal attitudes or tastes, it doesn't even depends on your knowledge of the language. Personally, i really like trying to change my accent depending on which language I speak, because I've been training that since many years, while changing between Sardinian and Argentinian accent.
Personally, I notice that is not common that a Spanish speaker loses his accent while speaking Italian and viceversa.
As for the case of Vanessa Incontrada, or even Natalia Estrada, they seem to me exceptions that confirm the general rule 
And Michelle Hunziker was born in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland, if I'm not wrong (she speaks even Ticinese, I guess...).
But, you can have a look at Spanish, or better Argentinians or Uruguayans, players in Italy: i cannot single out any of them who lost his accent, nor those of them who have been living for a long time in Italy, and you can also notice their slight mistakes when speaking Italian, as the "e" in front of words beginning with "st", or the "z" pronounced as "s" or whatever...
I can recall any of them, without finding anyone for whom you couldn't say by the way he speaks "he's undoubtedly Argentinian" (or "Spanish", for those who are not used to the Argentinian accent).
As for those who have been since (or were for) many years in Italy: Zanetti, Crespo, Verón, Camoranesi, Recoba, Batistuta, Maradona...Same applies to Brasilians or Portuguese, anyways: even the one which I consider the most educated one, Leonardo, wich speaks some 5 or 6 langueges including Japanese (!), has got his Brasilian _sotaquinho_...
And you can say that even for some who moved definitely to Italy and are (or were) even considered "almost italians": Altafini and the Great Sívori (Rest In Peace).
They got his Brasilian and Argentinian accent and way of speaking all way long 
Ayways, it *doesn't* want to mean that they don't or didn't speak a good italian, and of course anybody could lose his accent, even if learning a language not in the childhood, I'm sure, but it just doesn't seem, in these cases, the most common thing.
By the way, I always noticed a bigger tendency in Slavonic people, compared to Latin or Germanic one, when doing that, as well as regarding the learning of foreign languages in general, but it could just be a generalization, and anyways is just my own opinion.
As for the most difficul Romance language, I have to say that about grammar it seems to me Romanian, while about fonetics I guess Sardinian.
Chau


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## xeneize

Hi Olaszinho ("little italian", huh? cool name ), yes you are right: I was indeed talking about Sardinian fonetics, not grammar.
Grammar is not so difficult compared to other romance languages I guess, even if it's not all that easy, though.
I cannot really say if it's the most regular one between romance languages, I didn't really compare them, but it could be, yes.
It's true that simple past only remains in poems and songs, and has disappeared in the normal language (as it did in Romanian, and it's kinda doing in Italian and even more in French...).
The tricky thing in Sardinian could be the periphrastic forms of future and conditional, but once you've got a clue, they are really regular.
The plurals are regular, as in Spanish, but we've got some uncountable names and even adjectives, usually singular, kinda difficult to manage for a learner, I guess, because they are never like that in any other romance language.
Anyways, again, once you've got that it may seem easier than what expected, 'cause you don't have to decline those names 
But we've got a lot of irregular verbs, in the present, just as Italian or Spanish.
And we've also got two different standard forms of imperfect, and people can switch from one to another. Sometimes, there are two forms even in present, as it can happen in some Italian or (less frequent) Spanish verbs.
The imperative is not so difficult, and the negative form is based on subjunctive, as in Spanish, Portuguese or Catalan.
As for the compound tenses, we've got two verbs, _to be_ and _to have_, as in Italian, but our use can be different from the Italian one.
The problem about fonetics is that the Sardinian pronunciation can vary unexpectedly, as it never happens in any romance language or dialect I have a clue of, at least.
The same word can lose the end or the beginning in different manners simply depending on the word that goes before or after, or, in plurals, you've got to add an _euphonic_ vocal at the end of the words, again not always the same, but depending on _the last vocal of that particular word_ , but it's not always like that, it depends on the position of that word in the phrase: sometimes you've got just to pronounce the word as it's written, other times you've got to cut off a part, etc...always talking about the same word, of course...
Believe me: it's totally a mess , and even native speakers, as in my personal case, can get confused sometimes while pronunciating some words, and it never happens to me something like that neither in Spanish nor in Italian.
Also, the pronunciation of single consonants, usually at the beginning of the words, can vary between the singular and plural form of that word, or in other situations, unexpectedly (sometimes, I couldn't almost understand why, but again it depends on the vocal that goes before..), which makes I dare to say impossible for a learner to pronounce them properly even once he's got the correct singular and plural form.
Again, that doesn't happen in any romance language I know, perhaps to some extent in Corsican or Sicilian, but not to the point as it does in Sardinian, no ways.
But I don't have a clue about Furlan or other languages of northern Italy or Switzerland, as Ladin, Rheto Romanic, Venetian, etc, so I don't know if it happens also in some other one.
If you are interested in that, just let me know and I'll send to you examples, etc.
So, I believe learning Sardinian it's not perhaps more difficult than learning any other romance language, but to pronunciate it properly, hum...it's totally another thing 
As for Romanian, i just know very little of it, and i don't know at all about subjunctives, so I rely on what you said.
I knew about the compound tenses stuff, though, and yes, plurals are a mess 
Bye


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## olaszinho

Hi, why on earth did my last post disappear? The one about Sardinian and Romanian. Which of you knows the reason? 
Yes I'd be very interested in learning something more about Sardinian and I'd love to learn some basic grammar as well. Could you suggest me a good Sardinian Grammar?
I know Italian and Spanish ( portuguese and other languages as well) and I'd say that the two languages are quite similar but from a grammatical point of view they possess some basic and peculiar differences. On the whole, it seems to me that the italian grammar is a bit more complicated but it's just an opinion that I'll try to explain:
ITALIAN
Both definite articles and undetermine articles are a bit trickier in Italian than in Spanish. Besides Italian has got a partitive article like French.
Plurals are more complicated in Italian even though they're rather regular compared to other languages. Italian has some irregular plurals and some of them come from the neuter latin (uovo - uovA / dito- ditA) egg, eggs / finger fingers. 
The italian language has two sets of prepositions: simple and contracted that is joined with articles. Moreover, the use of the prepositions is in italian a bit more illogical than in Spanish.
Italian has some tricky pronominal particles such as : ci, vi, ve, ce, ne. These particles don't  exist neither in Spanish nor in Portuguese.
As for the verbal system, the main difference is that Italian makes use of two different auxiliary verbs to form all compound tenses. Sometimes, the choice of the right auxiliary verb may be hard, even for an italian. 
Past tenses are much more irregular in Italian. I'm referring to the past participle and Simple past. I've to say that the simple past is much more widespread in Spanish but In the centre and in the south of Italy It's commonly used in italian as well. For instance I normally use the two tenses.
Last but not least, Italian can use the Apostrophe and apocopation: some words can drop their last vowel according to the position in the sentence, for example: bene/ben, migliore/miglior, fare/ far; vuole/ vuol, mare/ mar. and so on.
SPANISH
IT's got two verbs to translate te English verb to be ( estar and ser) Italian also has the verb "stare", but its use is easier than in Spanish.
Another feature of Spanish is the neuter article LO. It's used mainly with adjectives and some adverbs.
The neuter pronouns esto, eso, aquello can be a bit tricky sometimes.
Spanish makes use of the preposition A for the personal accusative : I love my mother: Amo A mi madre.
As for the verbal System:
Spanish has lots of irregular verbs in the present tense with a caracteristic diphthongization of many verbs: ex. perder (to lose) yo pIErdo, jugar (to play) yo jUEgo and so on.
The imperative is harder than in Italian
The imperfect of the subjunctive has two distinct series of endings
-ase -ara ex yo cantase/ yo cantara .
Sorry if this post it's too long .
Bye


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## Horazio

Very good description Olazinho.
Also some words are tricky since they sound the samen,mean the same but have a different gender so you could be tempted to use the wrong article.
Example : "la sal" "vs "il sale".


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## xeneize

Hi, perhaps they removed the post because we were going off-topic, as it's a thread about spanish...
So, I won't talk about other things...And about your description, good job , and I agree on what you said. I can just add that Sardinian has got almost any of the Italian features you put (except the irregular plurals), but simply in different ways, and also the mayority of Spanish ones. Pronominal particles is another big problem, as they are much more and really trickier than Italian ones.
As for the grammar, I'll send you a private mesage with a grammar that i Kknow (even if I've never studied the language from any grammar....of course ).
Bye


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## Ayazid

À propos, sometimes I wonder if knowledge of some regional language/dialect spoken in Italy and Spain would make substantially easier for Spanish/Italian speaker to understand the other language. For example, it´s estimated that there is a greater lexical similarity between Catalan and Italian than between Catalan and Spanish/Portuguese, therefore does this fact make for Catalan speakers easier to understand Italian than for Castellano monoglotes? It is also possible that some Italian regional languages as Ligurian, Napoletano or Veneto bear greater similarity with Iberian languages than Italian does. For instance, once I was told by one Italian of Southern Italian origin that his knowledge of Napoletano helped him to understand better Portuguese.


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## brau

Ayazid said:


> À propos, sometimes I wonder if knowledge of some regional language/dialect spoken in Italy and Spain would make substantially easier for Spanish/Italian speaker to understand the other language. For example, it´s estimated that there is a greater lexical similarity between Catalan and Italian than between Catalan and Spanish/Portuguese, therefore does this fact make for Catalan speakers easier to understand Italian than for Castellano monoglotes? It is also possible that some Italian regional languages as Ligurian, Napoletano or Veneto bear greater similarity with Iberian languages than Italian does. For instance, once I was told by one Italian of Southern Italian origin that his knowledge of Napoletano helped him to understand better Portuguese.



I recall talking about this, in another post. 

For speakers of Catalan, learning Italian is much, much easier than for someone that speaks only Spanish. I'll give a real example to illustrate this: when I was in this Italian course in the city of Alicante, we got to the lesson about the Italian pronouns "ne" and "ci", one of the major difficulties for Spaniards who are learning Italian. After 10 minutes of lesson, the teacher asked those who spoke Valencian to please keep silent and not to answer her questions, since it was obvious that the topic was of no difficulty for us (the catalan pronouns "en" and "hi" are used almost identically). In terms of vocabulary, there are far more similarities than between Spanish-Italian (finestra-finestra-ventana, vergonya-vergogna-vergüenza, parlare-parlar-hablar, tornare-tornar-volver, ascoltare-escoltar-escuchar, pisciare-pixar-mear, fottere-fotre... well, you get the point ). In terms of pronunciation, speaking catalan helps a lot, with varying degrees depending on the dialect. Standard Valencian has almost the same phonetic system as Italian. I said almost, but actually I can't recall finding problems with any Italian sound when I was learning it, like I had with English or German. The Italian sounds that Spaniards struggle to pronounce properly (those of *gi*usto, ca*s*a, me*gli*o, *v*ia, *o*tto, b*e*llo) are present in all or some of the Catalan dialects, all of them in Standard Valencian. Double consonants are a whole different story, though.

So yes, I would say speaking Catalan is a major boost in the process of learning Italian.


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## xeneize

The more languages you know, the more you will be advantaged in learning another one.
It's just a general rule, though, that doesn't necessarily applies to all the people.
Always depends on the subject, but normally of course there is a plus if you know Spanish and Catalan, and not just Spanish, while learning Italian, Portuguese or French.
But, I guess there is the same advantage also comparing to those who by chance know only Catalan. The issue is that in this case it's not so easy to demonstrate, because there are almost no speakers of just Catalan, and not any other language (Spanish, French or Italian).
The same way, knowing Sardinian and Italian, helps you while learning Spanish, Catalan or Portuguese, more than happens if you just know Italian.
Same thing if you know Sicilian and Italian, or Napolitan and Italian, and so on with any one that keeps a certain similarity with another language.
But, I'm always talking about a good knowledge of the language and of its characteristics, syntax, lexic, etc: if you just know a few perhaps amusing words of Napolitan, for example, or if you just mix up Napolitan and Italian without having a deep knowledge of the first (or sometimes of any of them), then I bet you will not take so much advantage of that...
So, anyways, first it depends on people, but as a general concept, you may say yes, more that you know, easier would be to learn another one.


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## OldAvatar

> It's true that simple past only remains in poems and songs, and has disappeared in the normal language (as it did in Romanian, and it's kinda doing in Italian and even more in French...)



If you consider simple perfect as a simple past tense, then, it did not disappear in Romanian at all. It is the main linguistical characteristic of Oltenia, a region with about 1.5 million inhabitants.


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## Arrius

I can recognise Romanian by its predominant Romance element laced with bits of Slavic, but know little else about it. I could not easily trace the quote as the poster's name was not given by *Old Avatar**,* but what is this "*simple perfect*" you speak of, which seems to me a contradiction in terms? The preterite or passé simple in French as well as its equivalents in every other language I know consists of one word (that's why its called _simple_ i.e. _not multiple_), as opposed to the perfect or passé composé which consists of a past participle plus an auxiliary verb. Please enlighten me.


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## OldAvatar

Arrius said:


> I can recognise Romanian by its predominant Romance element laced with bits of Slavic, but know little else about it. I could not easily trace the quote as the poster's name was not given by *Old Avatar**,* but what is this "*simple perfect*" you speak of, which seems to me a contradiction in terms?



Perhaps, he was refering to something else and I didn't get the idea right... But, as far as I understood, the statement was that Romance languages didn't keep any simple form of past tenses.
Here is an example of *simple perfect* in Romanian:

a mânca - mâncare (to eat)

Eu mâncai - I ate
Tu mâncaşi - You ate
El / Ea mâncă - He / She
Noi mâncarăm - We 
Voi mâncarăţi - You (plural)
Ei / Ele mâncară - They (masc./fem.)

So, it is called *simple perfect* because it consists of one word.

Examples of *compound perfect*:
Eu _am mâncat_ 
Tu _ai mâncat_
El _a mâncat_
etc.

Best regards


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## Outsider

That seems to be what is called the *simple preterite* in other Romance languages ("simple past" in French). It's still active in Portuguese.

amar - to love

Eu amei
Tu amaste
Ele amou
Nós amámos
Vós amastes 
Eles amaram


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## Arrius

I thank both *OldAvatar*and *Outsider* for their explanations and examples.  The personal pronouns in Romanian could hardly be misunderstood by anyone knowing other Romance languages, and the stem of _mân_c_ai_ is clearly similar to Spanish _manjares_, italian _mangiare_, French_ manger_ and even English _to munge (_familiar_)_ and _blancmange_.


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## sopdit

Hotu Matua said:


> I fully agree.
> If you are a Spanish speaking person and you are listening to Italian, even for your first time, you get a feeling of close familiarity with the sounds. Except by maybe a couple of sounds, the phonetic system of Italian is identical to the Spanish one.
> When you listen to Portuguese, however, you get a very different picture. Portuguese is full of nasal sounds unknown to Spanish speaking people, and also closed and open vowels, besides some few consonantic differences.
> 
> Having said that, when it comes to glossary and grammar, Portuguese proves to be by far the closest relative to Spanish.
> 
> Now a word of caution: It is very easy to START learning another Romanic language if you already know one, but to achieve a full command of it is a very hard task, as the similarity becomes a trap full of "false friends": words that you would guess to convey a meaning when they mean something radically different.


 
Just bear in mind how theese languages spread, geographically speaking:

I feel they are somehow understandable, specially from West to East; since Portuguese came from ancient (Castillian) Spanish, and Castillian evolved from "latin vulgar". Out of three, Italian is closest to Latin, of course. It's quite easy for a Portuguese to understand Spanish and for a Spaniard to understand Italian. Speaking is just a little bit more tricky...

In terms of pronunciation, I think Spanish and Italian are closer, since both them have just 5 vowel sounds, while Portuguese has 9.

Remember also Spain and Portugal were under the same crown 3 times, last of them in 1656. If TV had existed by then, Spanish and Portuguese would be the same thing  Apart from pronunciation, they are quite similar anyway.

When it comes to read/write them, bear in mind Spanish grammar rules were inherited from French ones in XVIII century! By that time (even before), English was also very influenced by French, and English has a lot of vocabulary from French. In the other hand, Spanish and Portuguese, took bunch of words from Arabic, while French didn't (at least not that much).

To sum up, I think if you already speak English and Spanish, French would be the option for a third language. If you speak just Spanish, then Italian is the easiest. And if you can speak just Portuguese, Spanish would be the quickest to learn...


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## Outsider

Hello, Sopdit, welcome to the forum. I must correct a few things in your post.



sopdit said:


> [...] since Portuguese came from ancient (Castillian) Spanish


I'm afraid it did not.



sopdit said:


> Remember also Spain and Portugal were under the same crown 3 times [...]


_One_ time (under three successive kings).



sopdit said:


> If TV had existed by then, Spanish and Portuguese would be the same thing


During the union with Spain under the Philips, the Spanish and Portuguese languages were kept strictly separate. This was in fact a precondition expressly accepted by Philip II.


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## sopdit

Outsider said:


> Hello, Sopdit, welcome to the forum. I must correct a few things in your post.
> 
> I'm afraid it did not.
> 
> _One_ time (under three successive kings).
> 
> During the union with Spain under the Philips, the Spanish and Portuguese languages were kept strictly separate. This was in fact a precondition expressly accepted by Philip II.


 
Hello Outsider,

Thank you for your corrections. I tried to simplify my post, but I forgot accuracy. By the way, year is 1640, not 1656. I was just joking when talking about TV. It has such a big influence on languages that it's difficult to keep them "pure"... think on Spanglish ;-)

Thanks for your comments. I love to learn, again and again.


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## olaszinho

Italian doesn't have 5 vowels as spanish but 7 e and o can be pronounced open or closed like Portuguese, Catalan and French. As I wrote in another post there are  many differences in pronunciation between Italian and Spanish:
Sh, dz, tz, v, gl, gi  z sounds and almost all the peculiar sounds of double consonants don't exist in Spanish.
Jota, ce/ci (European Spanish) the intermediate sound of v/b and d and g sounds between vowels don't exist in Standard italian. Even the pronunciation of the letter s is quite different in the two languages.


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## olaszinho

In my view for a Spaniard, Portuguese is much easier to learn than italian at least from a grammatical and syntactic point of view. The two iberian languages are much closer than Italian.


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## JGreco

> Italian doesn't have 5 vowels as spanish but 7 e and o can be pronounced open or closed like Portuguese, Catalan and French. As I wrote in another post there are many differences in pronunciation between Italian and Spanish:
> Sh, dz, tz, v, gl, gi  z sounds and almost all the peculiar sounds of double consonants don't exist in Spanish.
> Jota, ce/ci (European Spanish) the intermediate sound of v/b and d and g sounds between vowels don't exist in Standard italian. Even the pronunciation of the letter s is quite different in the two languages.




No, No, No...... You can not say don't exist. Some of these peculiarities do exist in the Castellano of many varieties in Latin America and even Canary Islands speech. They only do not exist in "_*In the standards based on the pronunciation guidelines of the RAE."*_ You seem not to have traveled in Latin America or the Canary Islands since you seem to no anything about the speech patterns of the rest of the Castellano speaking world other than in standardized form. There were many Italian immigrants who immigrated all over Latin America especially in Uruguay and Argentina (remember Rio Platense??) but also to Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, Puerto Rico, and even Mexico and they did leave a definite changes in the speech patterns to all the local populations of that region. So please when talking about _*"**Patterns that do not exist"*_ refer only to standard pronunciation please.


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## olaszinho

Every language has got its local variants, but these do not belong to the standard language. I would never say that Italian has the "jota" sound even though in Tuscany is normally pronounced more or less like in Spanish. I could mention examples like this for almost every language.......


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## Lusitania

LenyZaZa said:


> *Note= Noche Noite*
> *Bene= Bien Bem*
> *Gratzi/Gratzia= Gracias Obrigada*
> *Io= Yo EU*
> *Respirare= Respira Respirar*
> *Vacca= Baca Vaca*
> 
> And then there are words that are exactly the same... (Spanish/Italian to English)
> *Dominante= Dominant Dominante*
> *Comodo= Comfortable Comodo/Confortável*
> *Idolo= Idol* *Ídolo*
> *Replica= Replica Replica*
> 
> Suerte with whatever language you choose to learn.
> 
> ~~LenyZaZa~~


 

So you can see in green the translation to Portuguese. It's not that far from Italian I think. And regarding the vocabulary I find it even more close. Ex: Espantoso (it's awfull in Spanish) but marvelous in Italian as in Portuguese.


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## olaszinho

diz-se e escreve-se NOTTE em italiano e grazie. Esses exemplos nao querem dizer nada. As palavras de uso comum sao bem diferentes entre as duas linguas.


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## olaszinho

According to linguists and experts in the romance languages the features that show the similarities and differences between two or  more languages refer to some morphological and lexical aspects like: forming of plurals, articles, conjugation of verbs and so on.
Take a look at the articles and forming of plurals in Spanish, Portuguese and Italian
Definite articles
Spanish:
el, la, los, las
Portuguese:
o, a, os, as
Italian:
il, lo, la, l', i, gli (gl'), le
Forming of plurals:
Sp.
amigo - amigos (friend/s)
casa - casas (house/s
huevo- huevos (egg/eggs)
hombre -hombres (man/men)
pt.
amigo -amigos
casa - casas
ovo - ovos
homem - homens
it.
amico - amici (ci pronounced like English ch)
casa - case
uovo -uova
uomo - uomini

Conditional mood of Cantar ( to sing) I would sing
sp.                    pt.                       it.
cantarìa          cantaria                   canterei
cantarìas         cantarias                  canteresti
cantarìa          cantaria                   canterebbe
cantarìamos     cantarìamos              canteremmo
cantarìais        cantarieis (not used)   cantereste
cantarìan        cantariam                  canterebbero

Last but not least 
Some words of common use:
sp. cada (every) pt. cada  it. ogni
sp. nada (nothing) pt. nada it. niente/nulla
sp. algo (something) pt. algo (alguma coisa) it qualcosa
sp. hermano (brother) pt. irmao  it. fratello
sp. hermana (sister) pt.irma it. sorella
sp. flor (flower) pt. flor it. fiore


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## demalaga

I think all romance languages are more o less at the seme level of difficulty to learn, let aside the artificial difficulties introduced by spelling rules, in this respect French is the more difficult, but also Portuguese has enough difficulties.
Understanding a language has more to do with the habits of pronuntiation of people than the language itself.In this respect most italian speakers have a gift for speaking in a very clear and melodic way.Some of it has gone also to Argentina with the inmigrants that moved there.I like very much listening to those people.It's a pleasure.
Portuguese in some places has sounds that must come from oriental languages that people that moved to Brazil.It is difficult to understand untill you get used to it
Italian belongs to the group of romance that derived from nominative case.Thats the reason plurals end in i not is huomini versus hommes hombres etc,Also Romanian dereves from nominative.copaci, carti, etc.


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## Funihead

Te sugiero que aprendas francés primero y después, aprendas italiano porque francés e italiano son más cerca y se va fácil para aprender.


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## carloscarlo

_*Italian Spanish French Portuguese similarities:*_
*French and Spanish are more similar in that:*
  They only contract the masculine
  All prepositions are generally the same
  They do not maintain the possessive with an article
*Italian & Portuguese are more similar in that:*
  They contract both the feminine and masculine
  Prepositions change as to gender and plurality
  They maintain the possessive in addition to the article


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## carloscarlo

Similitudes portugaises françaises espagnoles italiennes : Les Français et les Espagnols sont plus semblables en ce que : Ils contractent seulement le masculin. Toutes les prépositions sont généralement identiques. Ils ne maintiennent pas le possessif avec un article. L'Italien et les Portugais sont plus semblables en ce que : Ils contractent le féminin et masculin. Les prépositions changent quant au genre et à la pluralité. Ils maintiennent le possessif en plus de l'article.
 Somiglianze portoghesi francesi spagnole italiane: I francesi e gli Spagnoli sono più simili in quanto: Contraggono soltanto il maschile. Tutte le preposizioni sono generalmente le stesse. Non effettuano il possessivo con un articolo. L'italiano & i Portoghesi sono più simili in quanto: Contraggono sia il femminile che maschile. Le preposizioni cambiano quanto al genere ed alla pluralità. Effettuano il possessivo oltre che l'articolo.
 Similaridades portuguese francesas espanholas italianas: Os franceses e os espanhóis são mais similares naquele: Contraem somente o masculine. Todas as preposições são geralmente as mesmas. Não mantêm o possessivo com um artigo. O italiano & os portuguêses são mais similares naquele: Contraem o feminine e masculine. As preposições mudam a respeito do gender e do plurality. Mantêm o possessivo além ao artigo.
 Semejanzas portuguéas francesas españolas italianas: Los franceses y los españoles son más similares en ése: Contraen solamente el masculino. Todas las preposiciones son generalmente iguales. No mantienen el posesivo con un artículo. El italiano y los portugueses son más similares en ése: Contraen el el femenino y masculino. Las preposiciones cambian en cuanto a género y pluralidad. Mantienen el posesivo además del artículo.


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## Mañolandia

carloscarlo said:


> Similitudes portugaises françaises espagnoles italiennes : Les Français et les Espagnols sont plus semblables en ce que : Ils contractent seulement le masculin. Toutes les prépositions sont généralement identiques. Ils ne maintiennent pas le possessif avec un article. L'Italien et les Portugais sont plus semblables en ce que : Ils contractent le féminin et masculin. Les prépositions changent quant au genre et à la pluralité. Ils maintiennent le possessif en plus de l'article.
> Somiglianze portoghesi francesi spagnole italiane: I francesi e gli Spagnoli sono più simili in quanto: Contraggono soltanto il maschile. Tutte le preposizioni sono generalmente le stesse. Non effettuano il possessivo con un articolo. L'italiano & i Portoghesi sono più simili in quanto: Contraggono sia il femminile che maschile. Le preposizioni cambiano quanto al genere ed alla pluralità. Effettuano il possessivo oltre che l'articolo.
> Similaridades portuguese francesas espanholas italianas: Os franceses e os espanhóis são mais similares naquele: Contraem somente o masculine. Todas as preposições são geralmente as mesmas. Não mantêm o possessivo com um artigo. O italiano & os portuguêses são mais similares naquele: Contraem o feminine e masculine. As preposições mudam a respeito do gender e do plurality. Mantêm o possessivo além ao artigo.
> Semejanzas portuguéas francesas españolas italianas: Los franceses y los españoles son más similares en ése: Contraen solamente el masculino. Todas las preposiciones son generalmente iguales. No mantienen el posesivo con un artículo. El italiano y los portugueses son más similares en ése: Contraen el el femenino y masculino. Las preposiciones cambian en cuanto a género y pluralidad. Mantienen el posesivo además del artículo.


Este texto es perfectamente comprensible en cualquiera de las cuatro lenguas. Da una idea de la situación real


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## olaszinho

Tutte le traduzioni mi paiono abbastanza sgrammaticate. Mi spiace ma è la verità


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## Miguel Antonio

Arrius said:


> ...Galicia where the local dialect (called gallego in Spanish) is almost the same as Portuguese.



I BEG YOUR PARDON, Galician is a language in its own right, *not a dialect,* and it has written literature from the Middle Ages that pre-dates Castillian literature.



yujuju said:


> My theory is this:
> 
> Spanish is Portuguese, spoken in an Italian way



_My_ theory is that Basque, Castillian as spoken in Northern Spain, Italian and Greek share phonetic similarities that are distinctly different from the phonetic similarity existing between European Portuguese and Catalan.



sopdit said:


> J ...since Portuguese came from ancient (Castillian) Spanish, and Castillian evolved from "latin vulgar".



Galician and Portuguese were the same language, spoken in North-western Iberia before Portugal even existed, eventually deriving into two different yet close languages. Castillian was in those days a minority language, not worthy enough to be chosen by the king of Castile himself -Alfonso the 10th- to compose a book of poems to Our Lady: http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantigas_de_Santa_Mar%C3%ADa  a masterpiece of Galician medieval literature.

I speak Spanish, Portuguese and Galician, I can get by in French and I am learning Italian. I see that Italian, French and Catalan have a lot more in common than they do with Spanish, Galician or Portuguese, notwithstanding the fact that they all started out as dialects of dog Latin

MA _dixit_


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## rogelio

Miguel Antonio said:


> I BEG YOUR PARDON, Galician is a language in its own right, *not a dialect,* and it has written literature from the Middle Ages that pre-dates Castillian literature.
> 
> 
> 
> _My_ theory is that Basque, Castillian as spoken in Northern Spain, Italian and Greek share phonetic similarities that are distinctly different from the phonetic similarity existing between European Portuguese and Catalan.
> 
> 
> 
> Galician and Portuguese were the same language, spoken in North-western Iberia before Portugal even existed, eventually deriving into two different yet close languages. Castillian was in those days a minority language, not worthy enough to be chosen by the king of Castile himself -Alfonso the 10th- to compose a book of poems to Our Lady: http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantigas_de_Santa_Mar%C3%ADa  a masterpiece of Galician medieval literature.
> 
> I speak Spanish, Portuguese and Galician, I can get by in French and I am learning Italian. I see that Italian, French and Catalan have a lot more in common than they do with Spanish, Galician or Portuguese, notwithstanding the fact that they all started out as dialects of dog Latin
> 
> MA _dixit_


I salute you sir!  Spanish is my second language (although I love it dearly and now probably use it more than my native English) and I have very little trouble understanding my Brasilian friends speaking Portuguese.  Also, while I can get the meaning, more or less, of what my Italian speaking friends are saying, I had not a clue the entire time I was in France.  Couldn't understand a word.  My only respite came when I met a waiter from Spain at a restaurant in Paris!  


Rogelio


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## HUMBERT0

carloscarlo said:


> Similitudes portugaises françaises espagnoles italiennes : Les Français et les Espagnols sont plus semblables en ce que : Ils contractent seulement le masculin. etc...


This is what I understood just by reading these texts using Spanish.


FRENCH.
Similitudes portugaises françaises espagnoles italiennes : Les Français et les Espagnols sont plus semblables en ce que : Ils contractent seulement le masculin. Toutes les prépositions sont généralement identiques. Ils ne maintiennent pas le possessif avec un article. L'Italien et les Portugais sont plus semblables en ce que : Ils contractent le féminin et masculin. Les prépositions changent quant au genre et à la pluralité. Ils maintiennent le possessif en plus de l'article.

My 1st Draft. Similitudes portuguesas francesas españolas italianas: Los Franceses e los españoles son mas similares en “se” que: El contiene solamente el masculino. Todas las preposiciones son generalmente idénticas. El no mantiene “pas” el posesivo con articulo. El Italiano e el Portugués son más semejantes en “se” que: El contiene el femenino e masculino. Las preposiciones “changent” cuando un genero e a la pluralidad. El mantiene el posesivo en mas del articulo.

As I was reading it felt that that "Ills" maybe the plural not singular, so on my second draft I used the plural and adjusted the text, “changent” looks like English Change so I would venture and extrapolate that’s the French for “cambio”, "et" I'm reminded of the old Spanish "e" and then I changeed the old spanish “e” for our modern “y”, the “pas” looks like our “pos” so I assumed -maybe incorrectly- it means “pues”. That “ce” that I read as “se” doesn’t bother me in Spanish but since I don’t know what it means, I find no use for it and I will remove it…

My 2nd. atempt at a Draft. Similitudes portuguesas francesas españolas italianas: Los Franceses y los españoles son más similares en que: Ellos tienen solamente el masculino. Todas las preposiciones son generalmente idénticas. Ellos no mantienen pues el posesivo con un artículo. El Italiano y el Portugués son más semejantes en que: Ellos contienen el femenino y masculino. Las preposiciones cambian cuando un genero y a la pluralidad. Ellos mantienen el posesivo en más del artículo.
****************

ITALIAN.
Somiglianze portoghesi francesi spagnole italiane: I francesi e gli Spagnoli sono più simili in quanto: Contraggono soltanto il maschile. Tutte le preposizioni sono generalmente le stesse. Non effettuano il possessivo con un articolo. L'italiano & i Portoghesi sono più simili in quanto: Contraggono sia il femminile che maschile. Le preposizioni cambiano quanto al genere ed alla pluralità. Effettuano il possessivo oltre che l'articolo.

My 1st. Draft. “Somiglianza” portuguesa Francesa Española Italiana: Y el Francés y “gli” Español son “piu” similares en cuanto: “Contraggono” soltando el “maschile”. Todas las preposiciones son generalmente las estas. No efectuando el posesivo con un artículo. El italiano y el portuguese son “piu” similar en cuanto: “Contraggono” sea el femenino que “maschile”. La preposición cambiando cuando al género y a la pluralidad. Efectuando el posesivo al otro que el articulo.

I don’t know what “Contraggono” and “maschile” are, by context “gli” might be “el”, piu by context and sounds like the French “Plus” I read as “muy”.

My 2nd draft. “Semejanza” portuguesa Francesa Española Italiana: Y el Frances y el Español son muy similares en cuanto: “Contraggono” soltando el “maschile”. Todas las preposiciones son generalmente estas”. No efectuando el posesivo con un artículo. El italiano y el portugués son muy similar en cuanto: “Contraggono” sea el femenino que “maschile”. La preposición cambiando en cuanto al género y a la pluralidad. Efectuando el posesivo al otro que el artículo.
**********

PORTUGUESE. 
Similaridades portuguese francesas espanholas italianas: Os franceses e os espanhóis são mais similares naquele: Contraem somente o masculine. Todas as preposições são geralmente as mesmas. Não mantêm o possessivo com um artigo. O italiano & os portuguêses são mais similares naquele: Contraem o feminine e masculine. As preposições mudam a respeito do gender e do plurality. Mantêm o possessivo além ao artigo.

My 1st. Draft. Similaridad portuguesas, francesas española italianas: Los franceses y los españoles son muy similares en que: Contraen solamente lo masculino. Todas las preposiciones son generalmente las mismas. No mantienen lo posesivo con un “artigo”. Los italianos y los portugueses son mas similares en que: Contraen lo femenino y masculino. Las preposiciones mudan al respecto de género y de pluralidad. Mantienen lo posesivo “alem” a el “artigo”.

Changed the “lo” as I understood at first for “el” since it reads better, a more common way to say “mudar” is “cambiar”, “similares” I changed it to “parecidos” , in the 2nd. Draft.

My 2nd. Draft. Similitudes portuguesas, francesas española italianas: Los franceses y los españoles son muy similares en que: Contraen solamente el masculino. Todas las preposiciones son generalmente las mismas. No mantienen lo posesivo con un “artigo”. Los italianos y los portugueses son más parecidos en que: Contraen el femenino y masculino. Las preposiciones cambian con respecto a género y pluralidad. Mantienen el posesivo “alem” a el “artigo”.
**********
These are the translations into English of what I think the original texts say:

What I understood from the French text, based on my Spanish, I don’t speak French…
Portuguese French Spanish Italian similarities, The French and the Spanish “languages” are more similar in that: They have only the masculine. All of the prepositions are generally identical. They don’t keep the possessive with the article. The Italian and Portuguese are more similar in that: They have the feminine and the masculine. The prepositions change when a gender and plural. They keep the possessive more of the article.

What I understood from the Italian text, based on my Spanish I don’t speak Italian…
Portuguese French Spanish Italian similarity: And the French and the Spanish "languages" are very similar in that: “Contraggono?” freeing the “maschile?“. All prepositions generally are these. Not doing the possessive with an article. Italian and in Portuguese are very similar in that: “Contraggono?” the feminine be that “maschile?”. The preposition changing in gender and plurality. Doing the possessive to the other that the article”.

What I understood from the Portuguese text, based on my Spanish, I don’t speak Portuguese…
Portuguese French Spanish Italian similarities, The French and the Spanish “languages” are very similar in that: Contract only the masculine. All of the prepositions are generally the same. They don’t keep the possessive with one “artigo?”. The Italian and Portuguese are more similar in that: They contract the feminine and the masculine. The prepositions change with respect to gender and plurality. They keep the possessive “alem?” to the “artigo?”.

In these small examples, Portuguese was the easiest to read using Spanish, and then French, I don’t know why I found Italian more difficult…


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## Poligloton421

Hola Aedude 94, yo hablo ingles, italiano, espanol, portuguese y frances.  Aprendi espanol primero...te diria que, dependiendo de tu nivel de espanol, es muy facil aprender el portugues e menos facil el italiano y frances.  Empieza primero con la pronuciacion, luego la conjugacion de verbos.  Una vez dominados esos dos elementos, compra un libro basico de gramatica y busca oportunidades de practicar con gente "nativa."  Buena suerte!!


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## In Vino Veritas

They are deeply similars...so as Portuguese and Italian are deeply similars (of course also Portuguese and Spanish)...in some cases is even possible to write or to speak directly in dialect...as someone has already underlined.


Paulfromitaly said:


> The first time I read some Catalan I was  quite surprised by how similar it was to my dialect (Brescia - Bergamo  dialect): I could get most of the words although I don't speak and I've  never studied neither Catalan nor Spanish.



Oji cca chiovia.
Hoje cá chovia.

It is just an example...


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## merquiades

Although aspects of Italian are remarkably similar to Spanish, especially pure pronunciation, some vocabulary words, the maintaining of all latin endings in verbs and nouns (o, a for example), I think the grammar (ne, ci, intransitive verbs conjugated with essere)and vocabulary (mangiare, formaggio, bere just to name a few) actually resemble French much more.  The two cannot be understood by the other though due to the radically different pronunciation.


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## federicoft

merquiades said:


> Although aspects of Italian are remarkably similar to Spanish, especially pure pronunciation, some vocabulary words, the maintaining of all latin endings in verbs and nouns (o, a for example), I think the grammar (ne, ci, intransitive verbs conjugated with essere)and vocabulary (mangiare, formaggio, bere just to name a few) actually resemble French much more.  The two cannot be understood by the other though due to the radically different pronunciation.



I wouldn't be so imperative. When speaking clearly and slowly, and with the explicit purpose of being understood, it does exist a good degree of mutual understanding between French and Italian.


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## merquiades

federicoft said:


> I wouldn't be so imperative. When speaking clearly and slowly, and with the explicit purpose of being understood, it does exist a good degree of mutual understanding between French and Italian.



Ok.  I won't.  I'll let you be the judge of what Italians can understand of French.  I thought the pronunciation difference and all those endings cut off would be a major obstacle.  If not, I celebrate being wrong.


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## Sepia

Miguel Antonio said:


> I BEG YOUR PARDON, Galician is a language in its own right, *not a dialect,* and it has written literature from the Middle Ages that pre-dates Castillian literature.
> .
> MA _dixit_



Right. Lots of the socalled "dialects" of Italian are languages in their own right as well. Just as well as Low-German languages are. And as someone pointed out, Danish and Norwegian are similar but considered different languages. There is less difference between Norwegian and Danish than there is between Castellano and Galician or Català.

It is only a political thing - a means of opressing smaller cultures. And why is Norwegian a language of its own? They gained autonomy over a century ago. Also politics.


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## dfrederick

Here's the thing, I lived in Italy for 3 years.  my first 3 mos in Italy I used full blown Spanish to get around.  In fact, I was stationed aboard a military vessel and served as a translator, basically translating Italian to English, by using Spanish.   Anyway many Spanish speakers get confused by Italian because the sing song accent throws them off, but to me Spanish and Italian are essentially the same language, minus a few small change.   While portuguese and Spanish are generally closer (portanol) because the prononunciation is so different a Native Spanish Speaker will have a quicker progression in Italian.  I would also say that  Verbs In Italian and Spanish are about 95 percent the same  ej.  correr/correre, andar/andare, leer/lire, mirar/mirare, caminar/caminare, with conjugation really close.   an Italian speaker will probably understand a spanish speaker easier though.  Portugues on the other hand is really more a mixture of Spanish, Italian and French.   The accent (the bravado of Italian, using Spanish words with the endings changed ej (cancao/cancion, hermao/hermano, etc) using a somewhat french tone.  If this makes sense to you. 

     In closing, if you want to explore the romance languages here is the progression you should take and here's why
          spanish, to Italian, to French, to Portuguese  ,  Why  in Italian what doesn't look like spanish looks like english or French, in French what doesn't look like italian looks like english, and in portuguese it is a mixture of all three, the words will look either spanish italian or French.  In fact if you have a strong base in spanish/Italian or Italian/French or French/Spanish then portuguese will be a breeze for you.  If you go in a different order it will take longer.  My experience using this route I was able to be really good in each language in 3-4 months.   Lastly,  The stronger your vocabulary in english (that is british english)  the easier time you will have.   Why? there are words in Latin languages that exist in English but are more often used in british, not american english.  Just in case your are wondering, no.  I didn't feel like hitting the caps button   oh yeah if your thinking of learning Romanian, then it's best you learn two of these first and perhaps an eastern european language as Romanian is sort of a mixture of 50 percent Italian and the rest east. european.   Hope this helps...


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## dfrederick

TimLA said:


> Spanish is my second language, and there are similarities between the two. Often, in Italy I see Spaniards speaking Spanish to Italians, and the Italians speaking Italian back to them, and they get along. But I must tell you, Italian is MUCH more difficult. I've been working on it for quite a while now, and I do OK, but the subtleties are very complex -- you'll need to work very hard. In my opinion, you get about 20% of Italian if you speak Spanish...the rest is hard labor


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## dfrederick

This must come down to a matter of opinion or a different understanding of language.   my first few mos in italy I used Spanish to get around (as you have mentioned)  then slowly converted it to Italian.  It will be easier for you as a second language Spanish to first figure out the main differences and then line up the similarities.  generally speaking spanish and Italian are within the 90 percentile range where similarities are concerned.  After seperating the differences, you will need to revert back to english because in Italian if it doesn't look like spanish, more often it draws a strong similiarity to english.  Example  ej.  disubbidiente/disobedient, suocera/ sorcerist (mother in law a witch).  cugino/cousin  etc you get the picture.  so again if you don't see spanish look for english and you will do fine.  I think it only takes about 3 mos to make a strong conversion from Spanish to Italian.


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## Ben Jamin

Sepia said:


> Right. Lots of the socalled "dialects" of Italian are languages in their own right as well. Just as well as Low-German languages are. And as someone pointed out, Danish and Norwegian are similar but considered different languages. There is less difference between Norwegian and Danish than there is between Castellano and Galician or Català.
> 
> It is only a political thing - a means of opressing smaller cultures. And why is Norwegian a language of its own? They gained autonomy over a century ago. Also politics.



Danish and Norwegian (Bokmål) are similar only in writing, the pronunciation is much more different than betwen Spanish and Portuguese, the spoken forms differ almost as much as Italian and French. For an untrained Norwegian ear only about 40% of spoken Danish is comprehensible.


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## dfrederick

yeah true.  but more simply said, if it does not look like spanish it will look like french.    further in French if it doesn't look like Italian it looks like and english word.   yes also this is where many people get tripped up.   first you need to figure out the similarities and derivatives,  then after that it's all vocab differences because I would say the verbs are about 90 percent the same.  Over complicating the situation with intrans, preterito, etc only complicates the matter as most italian couldn't even begin to tell you about this stuff.  The same goes for english,  the av. english speaker would struggle with what is an article (def or indef).


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## Hulalessar

Miguel Antonio said:


> I speak Spanish, Portuguese and Galician, I can get by in French and I am learning Italian. I see that Italian, French and Catalan have a lot more in common than they do with Spanish, Galician or Portuguese, notwithstanding the fact that they all started out as dialects of dog Latin



Not "dog Latin" but "Vulgar Latin". "Dog Latin" is mock Latin, like this:
_
Caesar ad sum jam forti
__Brutus et erat
__Caesar sic in omnibus
__Brutus sic in at
_
Caesar (h)ad some jam for tea
Brutus ate a rat
Caesar sick in omnibus
Brutus sick in (h)at


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## Hulalessar

dfrederick said:


> This must come down to a matter of opinion or a different understanding of language.



Absolutely.

In my case:

· I have never studied Italian
· When I was a boy I learned French, Spanish and Latin
· When I was a boy I learned to play the piano
· I love opera and have followed many Italian operas with the libretto or score in Italian
· I have watched quite a few Italian films with English sub-titles
· I have been to Italy twice on holiday and picked up a bit from reading bilingual menus and signs

Quite apart from the above, English and Italian share many words because English has many words derived from Latin, either directly or indirectly.

The extent to which I can understand Italian when spoken depends on what is being spoken about and how clearly it is articulated. The extent to which I can understand Italian when written depends on what the text is about. In some cases I achieve (or think I achieve) complete comprehension. In some cases the understanding is partial. In some cases I am left puzzled.

If I found myself among monolingual Italians I think I could achieve a reasonable level of basic communication where nothing important was at stake. However, if buying a house I would want an interpreter.


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## Giorgio Spizzi

Hullo, everyone.  

*Q: **Italian/Spanish: How similar are they? 

A: Very. They are the most similar among the Romance languages.

GS*


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## olaszinho

In my opinion, French and Catalan grammar and vocabulary are much more similar to Italian than the Castilian ones. Some Spanish speaking people may have difficulty in learning some particles such as _ci, ce, ne, vi ve_ or some verbs like _caversela, farcela, mettercela essercene, averne_ and so on. The correct use of the auxiliary verbs is also tricky sometimes. Besides, there are lots of false friends between Italian and Spanish, some words sound similar but have a completely different meaning. In three months a person could learn to speak a good _spanitalish,_ but speaking the other language properly is a different matter. Some people have been living in Italy for decades and they still mix up some words, can't pronounce double consonants properly and even the structure of the language is essentially Spanish. Obviously, the opposite is true, too. I agree that the mutual intelligibility between the two languages is rather high but as I said above it is extremely easy to get hold of the wrong end of the stick.


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## francisgranada

Let me tell you some indirect experiences of a non native speaker (neighter Spanish nor Italian):

1. My Argentinian friend, whom I met the first time in the Politecnico of Turin about 3-4 weeks after his arrivial in Italy, had absolutely no problems to communicate with people in Italy. He did not speak Italian at all, but with his Spanish (and later with some kind of improvisation) he was spontaneousely able to undersand/express almost everything. Even more, he often understood better some "situations" than me, although I spoke Italian (to a certain degree, of course) already in those times ... 

2. My Italian friend who speaks only Italian, the Bolognese dialect and some very basic French (from school), generally understood better the news from a Mexican Spanish speaking TV channel than me, though I already had some knowledge of Spanish (and Italian) ...

3. My Bolognese friend (mentioned in the previous point) and his wife (she speaks only Italian, Ferrarese and some French from school) after their holiday in Northern Spain (traveling by motor-bike) have told me that they didn't have any communication problems in Spain, but they didn't understand people speaking Catalonian and Bask (the Bask - of course, but I was a bit surprised by the Catalonian).


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## Cynical

Italian sounds more smooth to my ears than Spanish.


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## killerbee256

francisgranada said:


> 1. My Argentinian friend, whom I met the first time in the Politecnico of Turin about 3-4 weeks after his arrivial in Italy, had absolutely no problems to communicate with people in Italy. He did not speak Italian at all, but with his Spanish (and later with some kind of improvisation) he was spontaneousely able to undersand/express almost everything. Even more, he often understood better some "situations" than me, although I spoke Italian (to a certain degree, of course) already in those times ...


I speak Spanish and portuguese and I was able to do the same after 2 weeks of "adjusting my ear" Thought I got funny looks some times. For instance, using _Quero_.


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## Nino83

Cynical said:


> Italian sounds more smooth to my ears than Spanish.



It could be because of the absence of plural _s_ (more vowels) and of the _jota_ sound. 



killerbee256 said:


> I speak Spanish and portuguese and I was able to do the same after 2 weeks of "adjusting my ear" Thought I got funny looks some times. For instance, using _Quero_.



I went eight years ago to Barcelona without speaking Spanish and had no problems in conversations (basic vocabulary, ask and reply).


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## killerbee256

I think if someone can speak one Romance language competently, with the likely exception of spoken French, you can learn to understand and conduct basic communication with speakers of other romance languages as long as you are immersed in the other language for a time. How long that takes depends on the person and the language one's trying to learn to understand.


Nino83 said:


> I went eight years ago to Barcelona without speaking Spanish and had no  problems in conversations (basic vocabulary, ask and reply).


 Did you find Spanish or Catalan harder to understand?


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## Nino83

killerbee256 said:


> I think if someone can speak one Romance language competently, with the likely exception of spoken French, you can learn to understand and conduct basic communication with speakers of other romance languages as long as you are immersed in the other language for a time. How long that takes depends on the person and the language one's trying to learn to understand.



Yes, I think the same. 
After one month watching (1 hour per day circa) Rtp I can understand European Portuguese (that is the Romance language with the most reduced vowels in pronunciation) if it's not spoken very fast. 
Understanding spoken Spanish is a lot more natural. 



killerbee256 said:


> Did you find Spanish or Catalan harder to understand?



If we're speaking about Eastern Catalan (as in Barcelona), Spanish is easier for sure (catalan vowel reduction is similar to the european portuguese one). Spanish has the same vowel system of sicilian accent (5 vowels, sicilian _e_ and _o_ are more open). I haven't ever been in Valencia, so I don't know how Western Catalan sounds but probably it should be easier than Catalan spoken in Barcelona.


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## merquiades

Catalan is rather close to French.  It poses no problem for French speakers.  So actually much of the French-Italian vocabulary is shared with Catalan.  Knowing these languages, I'm sure you can discern easily what menjar, beure, taula, voler, fromatge, pernill mean. Nowadays Spanish is the most language spoken in Barcelona so when a lot of people speak it they don't have the authentic eastern accent.  Eastern Catalan reduces unaccented a and e to /ə/ and o and u to /ʊ/.  The Western accent has the same vowels as Spanish.


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## Nino83

merquiades said:


> Nowadays Spanish is the most language spoken in Barcelona so when a lot of people speak it they don't have the authentic eastern accent.



I didn't know that there were this shift in eastern accent. 

Wikipedia says that:
_In the Barcelona metropolitan area unstressed schwa is lowered to a near-open central vowel [ɐ], sounding closer to b*u*t in RP or Californian English_.

That's very interesting. 

The problem of French and Catalan, for an italian ear, is syllabic elision (more in French, adding that final consonants are not pronounced), so a lot of words are very similar in the written form but very different in speech. 

Could you tell me some Catalan television site (from Barcelona or Valencia)? I'm very curious to ear spoken Catalan. Then I could be more accurate about understanding.  

Thank you for these informations 

P.S. 

_Pernil_ is _prosciutto_ in Italian.  
The other words you said are very discernable


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## merquiades

Nino83 said:


> I didn't know that there were this shift in eastern accent.
> 
> Wikipedia says that:
> _In the Barcelona metropolitan area unstressed schwa is lowered to a near-open central vowel [ɐ], sounding closer to b*u*t in RP or Californian English_.
> 
> That's very interesting.
> 
> The problem of French and Catalan, for an italian ear, is syllabic elision (more in French, adding that final consonants are not pronounced), so a lot of words are very similar in the written form but very different in speech.
> 
> Could you tell me some Catalan television site (from Barcelona or Valencia)? I'm very curious to ear spoken Catalan. Then I could be more accurate about understanding.
> 
> Thank you for these informations
> 
> P.S.
> 
> _Pernil_ is _prosciutto_ in Italian.
> The other words you said are very discernable



The change is occurring because in the Barna Metropolitan area most people speak Spanish nowadays and the schwa is unknown in that language.  In Catalan in the singular you have, for instance, _la casa blanca_ and the plural changes to _les cases blanques_.  In Eastern all the unaccented vowels become schwa, but if schwa becomes [ɐ] almost verging on [a] then both singular and plural sound close to the Spanish la(s) casa(s) blanca(s).  In Western dialect /a/ and /e/ are distinguished like in Italian so there is a big difference between sing/plur.

Here is the list of all the radio stations in Spain.  Catalunya Radio is pretty standard and has interesting programming.  Radio Quatre (4) is Barcelona with music too.  I can't find a Valencia station anymore.  It appears that the ones I listened to have gone bankrupt.  There are just the regular Spanish stations there now.  I'll keep looking.


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## Angelo di fuoco

Lusitania said:


> So you can see in green the translation to Portuguese. It's not that far from Italian I think. And regarding the vocabulary I find it even more close. Ex: Espantoso (it's awfull in Spanish) but marvelous in Italian as in Portuguese.


For the various meanings of _spaventoso_ in Italian:

http://www.treccani.it/vocabolario/spaventoso/

A way more nuanced.



merquiades said:


> Catalan is rather close to French. It poses no problem for French speakers. So actually much of the French-Italian vocabulary is shared with Catalan. Knowing these languages, I'm sure you can discern easily what menjar, beure, taula, voler, fromatge, pernill mean. Nowadays Spanish is the most language spoken in Barcelona so when a lot of people speak it they don't have the authentic eastern accent. Eastern Catalan reduces unaccented a and e to /ə/ and o and u to /ʊ/. The Western accent has the same vowels as Spanish.



The Western accent still has 7 vowels with the opposition of open and closed e & o, hasn't it?

Which French or Italian word should pernill be similar to?

Anyway, the non-distionction of unstressed a & e in Catalan drives me nuts, be it [ə] or [ɐ] - not as much as when I just had started learning Catalan (but then I conceived the opinion that Catalan phonology & its divergence from actual spelling is almost as perverse as in French), but still enough.


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## olaszinho

I find Catalan very easy to learn and understand. Even though Catalan is being heavly influenced by Castilian nowadays it is still  a sort of brigde Language between Spanish and French and to a lesser extent Italian. Essentially, it is just a matter of exposure, after a few days Catalan can be easily understood by Italians and even European Portuguese, which can boast the most difficult pronunciation among all the Romance languages, in my humble opinion. If you know other languages (English, Russian, Portuguese, French, German and so on) vowel reduction is not a problem at all. As regards Spanish and Italian, they are mutual intelligible to some degree, but grammatically and phonetically speaking, they are not so similar despite all the clichés in this regard.
I have forgotten to say that a lot of Italian dialects have vowel reduction too


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## Ben Jamin

olaszinho said:


> I have forgotten to say that a lot of Italian dialects have vowel reduction too.


 Do you mean the *dialects of Italian,* or the regional languages of Italy (like Emiliano Romagnolo, Napolitano or Veneto)?


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## Nino83

Ben Jamin said:


> Do you mean the *dialects of Italian,* or the regional languages of Italy (like Emiliano Romagnolo, Napolitano or Veneto)?



Gallo-Italian dialects have syllabic elision and rounded front vowels (like French) while South dialects (from Naples to Bari and Cosenza) have reduced vowel "schwa". 
Tuscan, Central and Southern dialects (Sicilian, in Sicily, South Calabria and Salento) haven't vowel reduction. 

@Olaszinho 

I'm watching right now Catalan television TV3 and it's very much undestandable (for example, the word_ persona_ is pronounced [persona], and all non tonic _a_ are pronounced as [a]).


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## olaszinho

Ben Jamin said:


> Do you mean the *dialects of Italian,* or the regional languages of Italy (like Emiliano Romagnolo, Napolitano or Veneto)?



Is there a difference between Italian dialects and dialects of Italian or the former is simply wrong? I can find both forms on the Internet...


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## Nino83

*Ben Jamin*, if you mean _Italian regional accents_, no. When speaking Italian, the Italians don't reduce vowels. 
If we're speaking about dialects (languages), the situation is as I said in comment #132.


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## olaszinho

Nino83, Neapolitan and most dialects of Apulia and Basilicata do have vowel reduction....


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## Nino83

As I said in #132. 

To clarify: 

a) Gallo-Italian *languages* (Emiliano-Romagnolo, Ligurian, Lombard, Piedmontese) and South Italian *languages* (Abruzzese, Neapolitan, Northern Calabrian or Cosentino, Barese) have reduced vowels. 

b) But when an Emiliano speaks Italian, he doesn't reduce vowels. 

In Italy we call a) *languages (or dialects)* and b) *accents*. 

Wikipedia calls b) *Regional Italian* or *dialects of Italian*. 

So, if you mean b) (*Regional Italian* in Wikipedia's style,), no, there's no vowel reduction.


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## Ben Jamin

Nino83 said:


> As I said in #132.
> 
> To clarify:
> 
> a) Gallo-Italian *languages* (Emiliano-Romagnolo, Ligurian, Lombard, Piedmontese) and South Italian *languages* (Abruzzese, Neapolitan, Northern Calabrian or Cosentino, Barese) have reduced vowels.
> 
> b) But when an Emiliano speaks Italian, he doesn't reduce vowels.
> 
> In Italy we call a) *languages (or dialects)* and b) *accents*.
> 
> Wikipedia calls b) *Regional Italian* or *dialects of Italian*.
> 
> So, if you mean b) (*Regional Italian* in Wikipedia's style,), no, there's no vowel reduction.


Thanks for the explanation!

I tend not to use the term "accent", because it is often leads to confusion, and is seldom applicable to European languages. The term itself was coined in the USA where the grammatical differences between dialects are very small, and dialects differ mostly phonetically. In Europe there are many countries where dialects differ grammatically, lexically and phonetically, and calling them simply accents haven't got  much sense. In Italy the situation is especially complicated, as there exist both dialects and distinct languages according to newer linguistic classification (earlier all were called dialects of one language).


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## merquiades

Angelo di fuoco said:


> For the various meanings of _spaventoso_ in Italian:
> The Western accent still has 7 vowels with the opposition of open and closed e & o, hasn't it?
> 
> Which French or Italian word should pernill be similar to?
> 
> Anyway, the non-distionction of unstressed a & e in Catalan drives me nuts, be it [ə] or [ɐ] - not as much as when I just had started learning Catalan (but then I conceived the opinion that Catalan phonology & its divergence from actual spelling is almost as perverse as in French), but still enough.



I was referring to unstressed syllables where it is 5.  It's not so perverse if you speak Western dialect.  Pronunciation corresponds almost perfectly to the spelling: A is /a/,  E is /e/, and in the stressed syllables we have é or è.


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## ESustad

The similarities between Spanish and Italian are relatively superficial, considering their common origin, and strongest in pronunciation and cadence of speech.  On a deeper level (especially grammar and lexicon), Italian is closest to French, and to a lesser degree Catalan.


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## Nino83

Ben Jamin said:


> Thanks for the explanation!
> 
> In Italy the situation is especially complicated, as there  exist both dialects and distinct languages according to newer linguistic  classification (earlier all were called dialects of one  language).



You're welcome! 

Dialects of Italian (or Regional Italian) are mutually intelligible at 100%. When you ear [stassjone] instead of [statsjone] (for _stazione_) you simply realize that who's speaking is Romagnolo or if one have only open mid vowels he's probably Sicilian (from Sicily, Calabria, Salento). Other differences (grammatical, lexical) are very few, very little but, yes, slang can be different. 
Contrary, Italian languages are not completely intelligible. Tuscan, Central and Sicilian languages are easier to understand (because of their greater proximity to Standard Italian phonology) while South Italian (with schwas) and Gallo-Italian languages (with elision of final syllables and rounded front vowels, similary to French) are more difficult to understand.


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## merquiades

Nino83 said:


> You're welcome!
> 
> Dialects of Italian (or Regional Italian) are mutually intelligible at 100%. When you ear [stassjone] instead of [statsjone] (for _stazione_) you simply realize that who's speaking is Romagnolo or if one have only open mid vowels he's probably Sicilian (from Sicily, Calabria, Salento). Other differences (grammatical, lexical) are very few, very little but, yes, slang can be different.
> Contrary, Italian languages are not completely intelligible. Tuscan, Central and Sicilian languages are easier to understand (because of their greater proximity to Standard Italian phonology) while South Italian (with schwas) and Gallo-Italian languages (with elision of final syllables and rounded front vowels, similary to French) are more difficult to understand.



Ciao Nino, could you give me an example of a word with rounded front vowels?  With elision of final syllables do you mean something like _quest'uomo_ or _quell'amica_?
As far as the southern schwa,  I think I have heard it in the Italian speaking community in France.  I often overhear people speaking Italian as if it were Portuguese and I don't rightly understand it.


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## Nino83

ESustad said:


> The similarities between Spanish and Italian are relatively superficial, considering their common origin, and strongest in pronunciation and cadence of speech.  On a deeper level (especially grammar and lexicon), Italian is closest to French, and to a lesser degree Catalan.



Ethnologue says that lexical similarity is equal to 89% between Italian and French and 82% between Italian and Spanish, so, if these calculations are plausible (reading French, Spanish and Portuguese newspapers, I think that they are not too distant to reality) there's no a such great difference (7%). 
About grammar, it depends. For example, South and Southern Italian languages form compound tenses (in active form) only with the auxiliar _habere_ (for example Sicilian: _avìa pattutu_, Spanish: _había partido_, Italian:_ ero partito_, French: _j'etais parti_), or _there is_ is said _avi_ (Sicilian), _hay_ (Spanish), _il y a_ (French) instead of _c'è_ (Italian). With verbs of the second and third conjugation, indicative imperfect tense has _ìa_ inflection (_avìa_, Sicilian, _había_, Spanish) instead of _eva/iva_ (_aveva_, Italian) and conditional mood is formed by _infinitive + imperfect of the verb habere_ (_avirìa_, Sicilian, _habría_, Spanish) instead of _infinitive + preterite of the verb habere_ (_avrebbe_, Italian) and so on. 
In any case grammatical differences between Italian and Spanish are very few.


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## Nino83

merquiades said:


> Ciao Nino, could you give me an example of a word with rounded front vowels?  With elision of final syllables do you mean something like _quest'uomo_ or _quell'amica_?



For example _fuoco_ (Italian), _fuego_ (Spanish), _fogo_ (Portuguese) have two syllables while _feu_ (French) and feù (Piedmontese) [fø] have one syllable (the secon syllable was elided), so these words are not mutually intelligible. 

Rounded front vowels are [y], [ø], [oe]. 



merquiades said:


> As far as the south*ern* *(Southern languages, like Sicilian, don't have schwa)* schwa,  I think I have heard it in the Italian speaking community in France.  I often overhear people speaking Italian as if it were Portuguese and I don't rightly understand it.



For example, in Neapolitan _'O fuoco aiuta 'o cuoco e l'acqua 'o perde_ (a proverb) sounds like [o fuok ajut o kwok e lakkw o perd].


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## Angelo di fuoco

Nino83 said:


> Ethnologue says that lexical similarity is equal to 89% between Italian and French and 82% between Italian and Spanish, so, if these calculations are plausible (reading French, Spanish and Portuguese newspapers, I think that they are not too distant to reality) there's no a such great difference (7%).
> About grammar, it depends. For example, South and Southern Italian languages form compound tenses (in active form) only with the auxiliar _habere_ (for example Sicilian: _avìa pattutu_, Spanish: _había partido_, Italian:_ ero partito_, French: _j'etais parti_), or _there is_ is said _avi_ (Sicilian), _hay_ (Spanish), _il y a_ (French) instead of _c'è_ (Italian). With verbs of the second and third conjugation, indicative imperfect tense has _ìa_ inflection (_avìa_, Sicilian, _había_, Spanish) instead of _eva/iva_ (_aveva_, Italian) and conditional mood is formed by _infinitive + imperfect of the verb habere_ (_avirìa_, Sicilian, _habría_, Spanish) instead of _infinitive + preterite of the verb habere_ (_avrebbe_, Italian) and so on.
> In any case grammatical differences between Italian and Spanish are very few.



When we speak about things such as auxiliary verbs derived from _sum_ and _habeo_ and point out that in language A & B they use only one of them, whereas in language C & D they use both, we shouldn't forget that it hasn't always been so (and the more we go back in time, the more similar do the languages grow). E. g. Castilian lost ser as auxiliary verb (except in the passive voice) quite early, whereas Catalan lost it later. I'm not a specialist in Catalan language, but right now I can tell that this didn't happen before the 16th century, because right now I'm reading _Tirant lo Blanc_ (written between 1460 & 1490) and the auxiliary verbs ser/ésser are everywhere. Besides, the inflection of the past participle for number & gender is obligatory in all cases - a trait which is disappearing in Catalan, in a somewhat better state in Italian (but dwindling, obligatory in some cases and facultative in others, obsolete in yet another group of cases) and quite well preserved in written French.
In Italian, avvi/havvi/v'ha (corresponding to avi in Sicilian), as well as v'è /vi sono is to be found as late as the 19th century. We all know to whom we owe the reinstation of v in the imperfect forms of -ere and -ire verbs in Italian.

We can extend your opinion ("grammatical differences between Italian and Spanish are very few") to almost all Romance languages except perhaps Romanian (with extra points for Portuguese for retaining future subjunctive, mesoclisis & enclisis according to the Tobler-Mussafia law - and for Brazilian Portuguese for developing a completely different grammar of the spoken language). That's all quite useful in the beginning and for passive command of several Romance languages
In any case, this was my opinion after reaching and advanced level in French, Spanish & Italian, which prompted me to get involved with Chinese (really different & really tough, I had to learn it from the scratch). However, if the basic grammatical structures of the Romance languages are essentially the same, the finer points (noun gender, some endings, auxiliary verbs for certain verbs, differences between ser/estar/ficar in the various languages, esp. Catalan, a & en in Catalan, differences in usage of the subjunctive mood) - and keeping them apart (which includes both grammar, vocabulary and speech patterns) - can drive one to despair. By the way, I find Catalan spelling an almost greater desaster than French spelling (not quite sure where to place Portuguese spelling).


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## Nino83

Angelo di fuoco said:


> That's all quite useful in the beginning and for passive command of several Romance languages.
> However, if the basic grammatical structures of the Romance languages are essentially the same, the finer points [...] can drive one to despair.



Yes, but if one has a Romance language as native language, this is not a big problem (while for a Germanic or Slavic speaker, this could lead to some confusion). 



Angelo di fuoco said:


> By the way, I find Catalan spelling an almost greater desaster than French spelling (not quite sure where to place Portuguese spelling).



Both European and Brazilian Portuguese spelling are very predictable and vowel reduction is regular. 
French language tries to keep Latin morphology in writing so, seeing the phonetic evolution of this language, it is very unpredictable. 
Catalan seems to be a little more predictable than French because it seems that final consonant are pronounced (while French retains a lot of not pronounced final consonants), but I'm not so expert about Catalan.


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## Angelo di fuoco

Nino83 said:


> Yes, but if one has a Romance language as native language, this is not a big problem (while for a Germanic or Slavic speaker, this could lead to some confusion).



Being a native speaker of a Romance language gives you no immunity against linguistic interferences when learning other Romance languages. You surely know Nanon: she'll tell you something about confusing Spanish & Portuguese, while the Catalans can tell you something about confusing Spanish & Catalan.
Your native language (Italian? or were you socialized in the _volgare_ of your region?) may be immune against influences from other Romance languages (as long as you don't move to another Romance-speaking country, especially at an early age), but that does not mean that you are incapable of making errors in the other direction, that Italian or your regional language doesn't influence your other Romance language, both positively and negatively. I mean, if there weren't the local volgari, Italian pronunciation (geminate, apertura/chiusura delle vocali, raddoppiamento fonosintattico ecc.) & vocabulary would be uniform throughout Italy, but, as you know, they are not.



Nino83 said:


> Both European and Brazilian Portuguese spelling is very predictable and vowel reduction is regular.
> French language tries to keep Latin morphology in writing so, seeing the phonetic evolution of this language, it is very unpredictable.
> Catalan seems to be a little more predictable than French because it seems that final consonant are pronounced (while French retains a lot of not pronounced final consonants), but I'm not so expert about Catalan.



Not quite: [s] may be written s, ss, ç and even x. You cannot be sure whether qui is [ki] or [kwi], you cannot be sure if the stressed vowel is open or closed unless it is indicated by the stress marker.
Catalan spelling is essentially a compromiss between the Western & Eastern dialects. Western Catalan mostly keeps final consonants (except the infinitive final r before enclitic pronouns).
Eastern Catalan reduces unstressed [o] to . E & a are reduced to the same vowel - some things are predictable, like singular a -> plural e (this being a concession to the Western dialects), other things are not (a & e in all the other positions). The first time I heard  the verb [ǝskul'ta] and knowing Spanish escuchar & Italian ascoltare, it was quite difficult to figure out that the actual spelling is escoltar. Plus the confusion b/v (except in some of the Western dialects), and it doesn't make things easier if you know that words which have exactly the same pronunciation in Catalan & Spanish may be spelled differently (CAT biga vs. ES viga).
Final consonants: in Barcelona you don't pronounce final t after l & n (the past participle molt -> moldre being an exception, whereas t in molt -> as in Italian molto - is silent) and you also don't pronounce final r (except in some monosyllabic word). The final r in infinitives is pronounced when the infinitive is followed by enclitic pronounced (the contrary of Valencian). However, this (about the final r) is a rule of thumb because there are many regional differences. As a rule of thumb, you don't pronounce the first r in prendre [pendrǝ] and its compounds (but you do pronounced it in all the other forms), the s in aquest (at least when the folloing word begins with a consonant) & aquests, but it is not silent in aquesta & aquestes, quaranta is pronounces curanta...
València is pronounced Valenci in Balear....

So no, Catalan spelling is a mess.


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## merquiades

Angelo di fuoco said:


> Not quite: [s] may be written s, ss, ç and even x. You cannot be sure whether qui is [ki] or [kwi], you cannot be sure if the stressed vowel is open or closed unless it is indicated by the stress marker.
> Catalan spelling is essentially a compromiss between the Western & Eastern dialects. Western Catalan mostly keeps final consonants (except the infinitive final r before enclitic pronouns).
> Eastern Catalan reduces unstressed [o] to . E & a are reduced to the same vowel - some things are predictable, like singular a -> plural e (this being a concession to the Western dialects), other things are not (a & e in all the other positions). The first time I heard  the verb [ǝskul'ta] and knowing Spanish escuchar & Italian ascoltare, it was quite difficult to figure out that the actual spelling is escoltar. Plus the confusion b/v (except in some of the Western dialects), and it doesn't make things easier if you know that words which have exactly the same pronunciation in Catalan & Spanish may be spelled differently (CAT biga vs. ES viga).
> Final consonants: in Barcelona you don't pronounce final t after l & n (the past participle molt -> moldre being an exception, whereas t in molt -> as in Italian molto - is silent) and you also don't pronounce final r (except in some monosyllabic word). The final r in infinitives is pronounced when the infinitive is followed by enclitic pronounced (the contrary of Valencian). However, this (about the final r) is a rule of thumb because there are many regional differences. As a rule of thumb, you don't pronounce the first r in prendre [pendrǝ] and its compounds (but you do pronounced it in all the other forms), the s in aquest (at least when the folloing word begins with a consonant) & aquests, but it is not silent in aquesta & aquestes, quaranta is pronounces curanta...
> València is pronounced Valenci in Balear....
> 
> So no, Catalan spelling is a mess.




What you say is, of course, absolutely correct but you can safely pronounce everything as it is written if you so desire.  There are people who keep to spelling and do pronounce _molt_, _aquest_, all final r, t after l & n, distinguish b and v, reduce to a minimum.   And Westerners go beyond that and would pronounce _escultar _as /escultar/, _quaranta_ as /quaranta/.  
Another issue is having to understand those who do drop letters, reduce to a max and confuse different phonemes, but on the whole understanding is less difficult than replicating.

Do you have an example of when X represents /s/?   I can see /ks/ intervocalically and /ʧ/ in Western and /ʃ/ in Eastern at the beginning of a word, after n or when written IX.
Qui, Que as /ki/ or /ke/ usually contrasts Qüi, Qüe as /kwi/, /kwe/.  Same with gue,gui and güe, güi.

What is probably the most complicated issue is all the pesky spelling changes because of the alternations of _a_ and _e_ like ca, que; ça, ces; ja, ges; ga, gües, etc. or  final consonants becoming voiced when they are not in final position  cansat, cansada, cansats, cansades,  llop- lloba,  n appearing out of nowhere  vi blanc, vins blancs  and about a thousand more examples of spelling changes here and there.  At least in Western the difference is audible though.


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## Cynical

The pronunciation is rather close, but I think Italian sounds better. 

This is Italian (look up Distratto by Francesca Michielin)
This is Spanish (look up Amor Prohibido by Selena)



Since YT links aren't allowed etc


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## Nino83

Angelo di fuoco said:


> Being a native speaker of a Romance language gives you no immunity against linguistic interferences when learning other Romance languages. You surely know Nanon: she'll tell you something about confusing Spanish & Portuguese, while the Catalans can tell you something about confusing Spanish & Catalan.



Yes, but a native speaker have to remember only the differences between language A and language B, as a Dutch who learns English. 80% of vocabulary and even more of grammar is the same. It's a good starting point. Anyway, everybody can make errors  



Angelo di fuoco said:


> Not quite: [s] may be written s, ss, ç and even x. You cannot be sure whether qui is [ki] or [kwi], you cannot be sure if the stressed vowel is open or closed unless it is indicated by the stress marker



I agree about /x/ (double _ss_ is used to differenciate the [s] intervocalic sound from the [z] intervocalic sound, noted with a single _s_, the _ç_ is used with _a, o, u_) but stressed mid vowels (_e, o_) are not predictable also in Italian language, which is considered a language with an accurated orthography. I didn't get the [ki]/[kwi] question. 



Angelo di fuoco said:


> Catalan spelling is essentially a compromiss between the Western & Eastern dialects.



I didn't know it. Thank you. 

P.S. 

I've never seen two Italians who don't understand each others or who misunderstand. 
As I said in another post:
- Italian vocabulary is one
 - regional varieties of Italian (or dialects of Italian) are mutually intelligible at 100%. 
- Italian languages (which we call _dialetti_) are not mutually intelligible. 

"_Dall'indagine ISTAT del 1995 risulta che circa il 60% dei cittadini italiani conosce ed è in grado d'usare un dialetto_" so 1 Italian out of 2 can speak _dialetto_ (so I'm not the only ), it's normal.


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## Angelo di fuoco

Nino83 said:


> Yes, but a native speaker have to remember only the differences between language A and language B, as a Dutch who learns English. 80% of vocabulary and even more of grammar is the same. It's a good starting point. Anyway, everybody can make errors



 And then you get phenomena like portunhol/portuñol.



Nino83 said:


> I agree about /x/ (double _ss_ is used to differenciate the [s] intervocalic sound from the [z] intervocalic sound, noted with a single _s_, the _ç_ is used with _a, o, u_) but stressed mid vowels (_e, o_) are not predictable also in Italian language, which is considered a language with an accurated orthography. I didn't get the [ki]/[kwi] question.



It's quite obvious: you know that quaranta in Italian is pronounced [kwaranta], whereas quinientos in Spanish is pronounced more or less [kinjentos]. In Poruguese its quarenta & quinhentos, qua in quarenta is pronounces like in Italian, qui in quinhentos like in Spanish. They are written exactly the same way (quV/quV), although in Brazilian orthography quarenta was written qüarenta before the last spelling reform. There's no way to know.


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## Nino83

They are different languages, so one can make errors, mispronunciations and so on. 

Excuse me, but I know that _qu + a, o, u = kw_ and _qu + e, i = ki_ (unless there is _q̈ü + e, i_). It's quite simple. I took it for granted, so I didn't get the problem. 

If one doesn't know that _gn_ = [ɲ] (in Italian or French) one pronouces it [gn]. 
Latin alphabet has less letters than Cyrillic so there must be some diagraph. 
If one diagraph has always the same sound, I wouldn't say that there is an inconsistent spelling. 

If this were your reasoning also Spanish and Italian would have an inconsistent spelling. 
ca, co, cu = ka, ko, ku 
ce, ci = se, si (Spanish) 
ce, ci = ʧe_,_ ʧi (Italian) 

The adjective inconsistent is too much strong.


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## Angelo di fuoco

I think you don't get it yet: the u in quinhentos is silent ([kinjentos] or [kinjentuʃ]), but you do pronounce it in tranquilo ([trankwilu]). There's no trema anymore in the spelling of any Portuguese-spelling country, not even in Brazil, since the Acordo Ortográfico became valid.


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## Nino83

Angelo di fuoco said:


> I think you don't get it yet: the u in quinhentos is silent ([kinjentos] or [kinjentuʃ]), but you do pronounce it in tranquilo ([trankwilu]). There's no trema anymore in the spelling of any Portuguese-spelling country, not even in Brazil, since the Acordo Ortográfico became valid.



Ah, ok, got it.


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## merquiades

Nino83 said:


> If this were your reasoning also Spanish and Italian would have an inconsistent spelling.
> ca, co, cu = ka, ko, ku
> ce, ci = se, si (Spanish)
> ce, ci = ʧe_,_ ʧi (Italian)
> 
> 
> 
> The adjective inconsistent is too much strong.



Nino, I think both Spanish and Italian are very consistent.  The rule revolves around a given sound.


Italian  /k/ -  ca  che  chi  co  cu
Italian  /ʧ/ -  cia  ce  ci  cio  ciu

Spanish /k/ -  ca  que  qui  co  cu
Spanish /θ/ -  za  ce  ci  zo  zu



			
				Angelo di fuoco said:
			
		

> There's no trema anymore in the spelling of any Portuguese-spelling country, not even in Brazil, since the Acordo Ortográfico became valid.



Are you sure they have removed the trema?  The wordreference Portuguese dictionaries have them in all cases when the pronunciation is /kw/.  Example:  tranqüilo

I asked here if the accord was being applied and what has happened to the beautiful trema.  Stay tuned.


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## leotato56

I'm italian and for me is easy to say that italian, french, portuguese, castilian, catalan, galician, aragonese, corsican, sicilian, sardinian etc... are nothing but the same language! Every one with its own characteristics, geographical and anthropological evolution and history, but nothing more. You could say a language is closer to another phonetically or structurally, but nothing more. Everybody in Europe could say the same thing meaning about swedish, danish and norwegian (nynorsk) or german, bavarian, austrian, flamish and dutch. Or the same thing between russian, polish, bulgarian, ukrainian, serb, croate, slovenian etc... etc... Such a clear evidence for me! (About rumanian language the things are more complicated because of the strong influence of the slavic neighbors. Believe me that rumanian is not so easy to read and heard for an italian, probably it is easier the contrary). About english, it's a language apart: in same way it's a sort of german-latin mixed language because of the strong norman-french influences (more than 70% of modern english words are original norman) and that's the reason why of the enormous and incomparable success of english language worldwide. Anyway the fact that an italian as me can read and heard french, spanish, portuguese, catalan, galician etc... and understand a good 85% without studying is a reality. And the same thing could say a swedish about danish language. Books and books of professors cannot better explain this.  Sorry for my english
 I wish to were simple and clear!!!!


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## leotato56

yes correct! when you say that italian written in spanish way could be easier to understand you say a great truth! the differences depend of the fact that growing up as a vulgar latin after barbaric invasion spanish language remembered the 3rd latin declination, italian the 2nd and the 4th. And more: modern italian was born in a divided nation (after the fall or roman empire Italy never found a unity until 1870 during Garibaldi's era) has been strongly influence by the two powerful nations which dominated the peninsula for centuries, the spanish and the french empires!


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## leotato56

I think I could easy explain: in fact italian vocabulary is the most rich and you can ever find at less 2 or 3 words to say the same thing: for CHEESE you can say CACIO as a spanish or portuguese or even a german and english QUESO, QUEJO, KAESE, but you can also use FORMAGGIO as well as in french FROMAGE. There are hundred and hundred of examples of this richness of italian. Another example? You can say CARRO or COCCHIO  to say an ancient CAR as in english or spanish or portuguese CARRO, COCHE but to say a modern car you say MACCHINA or AUTOMOBILE as in french or german. And another: to say VILLAGE or small town you find in italian both the terms VILLAGGIO (english or french) and BORGO (french or german). The italians dialects, in the 20 historical italian regions (21 with Corsica) have been the real language in Italy until the recent diffusion of radio and Tv programs (1954) and they are very strong related with spanish-portuguese or french in the south and north of the country. I have no time but you could be astonish if I could show here some examples of it!!!!...and so and so.....


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## killerbee256

leotato56 said:


> I'm italian and for me is easy to say that italian, french, portuguese, castilian, catalan, galician, aragonese, corsican, sicilian, sardinian etc... are nothing but the same language! Every one with its own characteristics, geographical and anthropological evolution and history, but nothing more. You could say a language is closer to another phonetically or structurally, but nothing more. Everybody in Europe could say the same thing meaning about swedish, danish and norwegian (nynorsk) or german, bavarian, austrian, flamish and dutch. Or the same thing between russian, polish, bulgarian, ukrainian, serb, croate, slovenian etc... etc... Such a clear evidence for me! (About rumanian language the things are more complicated because of the strong influence of the slavic neighbors. Believe me that rumanian is not so easy to read and heard for an italian, probably it is easier the contrary). About english, it's a language apart: in same way it's a sort of german-latin mixed language because of the strong norman-french influences (more than 70% of modern english words are original norman) and that's the reason why of the enormous and incomparable success of english language worldwide. Anyway the fact that an italian as me can read and heard french, spanish, portuguese, catalan, galician etc... and understand a good 85% without studying is a reality. And the same thing could say a swedish about danish language. Books and books of professors cannot better explain this.  Sorry for my english
> I wish to were simple and clear!!!!


I kind of agree on the sentiment, but some of the more diverged romance languages don't fit in. Spoken french is unintelligible with out study and Romansh has so much German influence that it is as well.


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## Angelo di fuoco

leotato56 said:


> I'm italian and for me is easy to say that italian, french, portuguese, castilian, catalan, galician, aragonese, corsican, sicilian, sardinian etc... are nothing but the same language!
> Every one with its own characteristics, geographical and anthropological evolution and history, but nothing more.


Not "the same language," but rather a _dialect continuum_ (i. e., dialects of Vulgar Latin), with the rather isolated Sardinian and the particular case of Romanian (completely different superstrata, adstrata & substrata). However: if A is mutually comprehensible with B and B is mutually comprehensible with C, which in turn is mutually comprehensible with D, that does not mean that A is mutually comprehensible with D.


leotato56 said:


> You could say a language is closer to another phonetically or structurally, but nothing more. Everybody in Europe could say the same thing meaning about swedish, danish and norwegian (nynorsk) or german, bavarian, austrian, flamish and dutch. Or the same thing between russian, polish, bulgarian, ukrainian, serb, croate, slovenian etc... etc... Such a clear evidence for me! (About rumanian language the things are more complicated because of the strong influence of the slavic neighbors. Believe me that rumanian is not so easy to read and heard for an italian, probably it is easier the contrary).


Sorry, but if someone speaks plain Bavarian to me, I won't understand a word. The same with Dutch or Flemish. I will be able to read a short text, with some difficulties.
And while I understand something in other Slavic languages (often only from context or through etymology), it takes time and rarely approaches complete understanding, sometimes due to different grammar, sometimes due to phonetic evolution or other things. Exposure helps, yes.


leotato56 said:


> About english, it's a language apart: in same way it's a sort of german-latin mixed language because of the strong norman-french influences (more than 70% of modern english words are original norman) and that's the reason why of the enormous and incomparable success of english language worldwide. Anyway the fact that an italian as me can read and heard french, spanish, portuguese, catalan, galician etc... and understand a good 85% without studying is a reality. And the same thing could say a swedish about danish language. Books and books of professors cannot better explain this.  Sorry for my english
> I wish to were simple and clear!!!!


The enormous and incomparable success of English worldwide is not due to its nature or origins, but to its status and history of the English-speaing countries, at least in first place.


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## leotato56

I think that only a romance mother tongue as me can be find easy to compare ita, sp, fre and por as well as it could do a swedish with norwegian or danish languages or a german with dutch or english one. About portuguese and italian (my language) I can say that some pronunciation is identical (la casa, a casa) othr words pronunciation is similar to french with a particular "R" and nasal accents. Spanish is too close of italian as vocabulary. Any way studying italian first will open you easy the road to the other latin languages!


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## leotato56

Yes in southern Italy the dialects are close to iberian ones while in northern Italy they are (or were because young people don't remember it) closer to french. The reason why is the political domination of these two great nations for centuries. Italy is a united nation from 1870 only, thanks to Garibaldi adventurer and the royal house of Savoy with a little help of its friend the british Masonry! But there are two great exceptions in northern Italy: Liguria (Genoa) where dialect sounds strictly as catalan-portuguese-french occitan and Venetian region in northern east where it sounds as castilian! If you need to read some examples ask to me and it will be a pleasure to answer!


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## leotato56

A slavic native with musical talent will read, hear and learn easy all the slavic languages. A german native will do the same with dutch, english, swedish and danish. A latin native will read, hear and learn italian, spanish portuguese french catalan corsican napolitan sicilian etc..... It depends of our talent and musicality. So act by instinct and do not lose your time in long and heavy analysis, start to buy newspapers and watching tv all the time. It 's the way!


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## leotato56

MarcB said:


> Try this site http://www.lancs.ac.uk/staff/letchfoa/comparison.htm
> All of the romance languages have some similarity. But some are closer to others. In my opinion  Spanish-Portuguese and Italian-Portuguese are closer than Spanish-Italian. I would say of these three Spanish-Portuguese are the closest.For native spaekers who only know one of these they are able to communicate with the other with varying degrees of difficulty, if spoken slowly.Some vocabulary is identical in all three some in two out of three. The grammar is also similar but Sp and Po are closer also.



Italian language has the most rich dictionary: you 'll be sure to find the same word used in spanish or portuguese even in a little different use. Just one example: many professors say the word 'quemar' in spa and por is different in ita where in fact we use 'bruciare'. But in ita we use also the term 'cremare' particulary talking about the burning of death persons....so it is relatively easy to an ita native understand the iberian 'quemar' and making a reconstruction of the phrase. And that's easy thanks to the rich italian vocabulary. Another small example? 'queso' in ita is not only 'formaggio' but you can find also the word 'cacio' ! I hope to explain clearly...sorry for my english!


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## leotato56

Italian.dictionary is the most rich between the other latin (or romance) languages because modern italian derives from at last 20 different dialects (21 including corsican that's very close to tuscan). All these dialect have been strongly influenced by the languages of the political dominators as french and iberian empires. You can well understand how much the study of history should be important before learning a language!!!!


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## Ben Jamin

leotato56 said:


> Italian.dictionary is the most rich between the other latin (or romance) languages because modern italian derives from at last 20 different dialects (21 including corsican that's very close to tuscan). All these dialect have been strongly influenced by the languages of the political dominators as french and iberian empires. You can well understand how much the study of history should be important before learning a language!!!!


Can you give some examples?


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## Nino83

Ben Jamin said:


> Can you give some examples?



Albicocca (it), albicoque (sp, pt) but apricot/abricot (en/fr) is similar to pricopa (sicilian). 
Bottiglia (it), botella (sp), bottle/boutille (en/fr) but garaffa (pt, also botelha), caraffa (it). 
Bicchiere (it) but vaso (sp) and copo (pt), vaso/coppa (it). Verre (fr), no corrispondent word. 
Pentola (it), casserole (fr), cacerola (sp), caçarola (pt), casseruola (it). 
Sedia (it), chaise (fr), silla (sp) but cadeira (pt), cadrega (milanese). 
Tavolo (it), table (en/fr) but mesa (sp, pt), mensa (it). 
Tovagliolo (it) but serviette/servilleta (fr, sp), savvietta/sabbietta (siciliano). Guardanapo (pt), no corrispondent word. 
Prenotato (it), rerved/reservé/reservado (en, fr, sp, pt), riservato (it). Es. tavolo riservato. 
Mela (it) but pomme (fr), puma (sicilian). Manzana and maça, no corrispondent word. 
Acciugha /it), anchois/anchoa/anchova (fr, sp, pt), ancioa (sicilian). 
Freezer (it, loan), freezer (fr), congelador (sp, pt), congelatore (it, frequent). 
Vasca da bagno (it), bagnoire/bañera/banheira, bagnarola (sicilian). 
Ciabatta (it), pantoufle/pantufa (fr, pt), pantofola (it). Zapatilla (sp) no corrispondent word. 
Giacca (it), jacket (en), chaqueta (sp), giacchetta/o (it), casaco (pt), casacca (it). 
Gonna (it), falda (sp), faddetta (sicilian). 
Telo da mare (it), toalla de baño/toalha de banho (sp, pt), tovaglia (da mare) (regional italian, Sicily). 
Macchina, automobile, auto, vettura (it), voiture (fr), carro (sp, pt), carro (intelligible, carro). 
Ciascuno (it), chacun (fr), cada (sp, pt), cada (it). Es. Il prezzo è di 5 euro cada uno (per ciascun esemplare). 
Stesso (it), même/mesmo (fr, sp, pt), medesimo (it). 

These are some examples. 

Another information. 
Some verbs of movement, as _salire, scendere_ are transitive in Portuguese (_subir, descer_) and Spanish (_subir, descender_) and also in Southern (Sicilian) and South (Neapolitan) languages (and in spoken Regional Italian) but are not transitive (except that for _salire, scendere le scale_) in Italian and French. 

So _scendere/salire i libri, subir, descer os livros, subir, descender los libros_, are wrong in Italian and French. 



killerbee256 said:


> I kind of agree on the sentiment, but some of the more diverged romance languages don't fit in. Spoken french is unintelligible with out study and Romansh has so much German influence that it is as well.



That's true. French phonology went too far. 
From Vulgar Latin: 
- open stressed syllables -> a → ɛ (iè, c + a), an (ain) → æ̃, ɛ → iè, ɛn → jæ̃  e → wa (written oi) but en (ein) → æ̃ (and not wæ̃/wɒ̃, because nasalization happened before ei → oi → wa),  ɔ, o → ø but on → õ (and not ø̃ because nasalization happened before uò, ou → ø) , u → y (but not ỹ, because of the shift ỹ → œ̃/ɛ̃) 
- closed stressed syllables -> o  → u (written ou), u → y 
- vowel + l: al → o, ɛl → jø, el, ol → ø, il → i, ol → u, ul → y 
- vowel + ɲ: aɲ, ɛɲ, eɲ (ain, ein, in) → æ̃, oɲ (oin) → wæ̃, uɲ (uin) → ɥæ̃ 
- vowel + ct (later it): ait → ɛ, ɛit → i, eit oit → wa (oi)  ɔit, uit → ɥi (uit) 

In other romance languages these are the changes: 
- open stressed syllables: nothing (Potuguese), ɛ → iè (Italian, Spanish), ɔ → uò (Italian) uè (Spanish) 
- closed stressed syllables: nothing (Italian, Portuguese), ɛ → iè (Spanish), ɔ → uè (Spanish) 
- vowel + ct: vowel + tt (Italian) + ct (Spanish, Portuguese) + ch (Spanish) + it (Portuguese) 

So, these changes (plus the loss of final vowels and syllables in French) make spoken French unintelligible to other Romance speaker. Too much different.


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## Angelo di fuoco

In Spanish, it's albaricoque/damasco/chabacano (Mex.), not albicoque. In Brazilian Portuguese, its aLbricoque, in Madeiran Portuguese, it's albucoque, in Standard European Portuguese, it's alperce & alperche (both fruit & tree). Of course, you can say damasco & damasqueiro. Words beginning with al- (at least, in Spanish & Portuguese) usually come from Arabic.

Verre comes ultimately from vitrum, and if you take into account that in Germanic languages "glass" (material)and "a glass" (product) are homonyms, you've got it. Bicchiere is akin to the German Becher. In Spanish, you have vaso (sin pie) & copa (con pie) - roughly bicchiere & bicchiere da vino.

Sedia & silla belong in one group, but chaise (corruption of chaire) belongs with cadeira & cadrega, all of them ultimately from the Greek kathedra (sorry, don't have Greek keyboard). Ultimately they all come from the same Indo-European root, but not so directly.

In Italian, you have not only mela, but also the - rare or obsolete - pomo.
Per mela e manzana vedi:
http://etimologias.dechile.net/?manzana
http://www.etimo.it/?term=melanzana
(and Spanish berenjena)

In Italian, you have tavolo (desk) & tavola ((eating) table). In Spanish, you usually say escritorio for the first & mesa for the second.

Ciabatta & zapatilla are related, zapatilla being a diminutive of zapata. Ultimately both ciabatta & zapata (& French savate and maybe also sabot) come from either Turkish or Arabic (I don't remember which).

Automóvil, coche (Spanish Spanish) & cocchio (Italian, somewhat different meaning).

In Spanish, you have not only chaqueta, but also casaca (with a somewhat different meaning).

Spelling: cada uno in Spanish, but cadauno in Italian.

Descender is rather literary & rare in Spanish, you usually say bajar. Salire (It.) & salir (Sp.) & salir (Fr.) are false friends, the Italian & Spanish verbs are somewhat related, but the French stands apart.


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## Nino83

Hi Angelo, thank you for the etymological suggestions. 



Angelo di fuoco said:


> Descender is rather literary & rare in Spanish, you usually say bajar. Salire (It.) & salir (Sp.) & salir (Fr.) are false friends, the Italian & French verbs are somewhat related, but the French stands apart.



Yes. I compared _salire, monter, subir_ and _scendere, descendre, descer/descender_ (also _bajar _is both transitive and intransitive).


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## francisgranada

Angelo di fuoco said:


> ... Automóvil, coche (Spanish Spanish) & cocchio (Italian, somewhat different meaning)...


 Coche, cocchio, coach, etc ... come from the Hungarian kocsi. As far as I know, only in Sapnish and Hungarian is it used also in the sense of "automobile".


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## Angelo di fuoco

francisgranada said:


> Coche, cocchio, coach, etc ... come from the Hungarian kocsi. As far as I know, only in Sapnish and Hungarian is it used also in the sense of "automobile".


Thanks! Didn't know that. I knew, of course, the German "Kutsche", but wasn't aware that it was a Hungarian word.


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## Yuzer

Defining similarity according to phonetics is misleading.

Considering them as two different languages, Jewish Sephardic might sound like any other Iberian language other than Spanish, because of its sibilants. Yet for its speakers Castilian is the most similar. As for intelligibility? Castilian is intelligible to Sephardic speakers, not sure if otherwise. I know Castilians can definitely read Sephardic texts, but hearing might be a problem.


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## Angelo di fuoco

leotato56 said:


> I think that only a romance mother tongue as me can be find easy to compare ita, sp, fre and por as well as it could do a swedish with norwegian or danish languages or a german with dutch or english one. About portuguese and italian (my language) I can say that some pronunciation is identical (la casa, a casa) othr words pronunciation is similar to french with a particular "R" and nasal accents. Spanish is too close of italian as vocabulary. Any way studying italian first will open you easy the road to the other latin languages!



Scusa, ma quello che stai scrivendo qui nei tuoi messaggi è fortemente carico d'emozioni. Non ho bisogno di cominciare a studiare le lingue romanze perché (se guardi il mio profilo, lo vedrai) ne parlo già diverse.
Capisco il tuo entusiasmo: cominciai a studiare il cinese proprio perché, dopo aver studiato a scuola due lingue romanze e parallelamente una terza di propria iniziativa (mi parevano tutte abbastanza vicine), volli studiare qualcosa di radicalmente diverso. Comunque, a conti fatti, non condivido (più) il tuo punto di vista: le basi sono le stesse e all'inizio è abbastanza facile (soprattutto la comprensione), ma ad un livello superiore e se vuoi essere capace d'esprimerti di maniera corretta anziché in una mescolanza di varie lingue della stessa famiglia, t'avvedi che le cose si complicano. Se non mantenessi un approccio storico-etimologico ed analitico sarebbe un casino.

Non c'è bisogno alcuno di essere un madrelingua italiano per vedere che le lingue romanze, malgrado tutte le somiglianze, non sono una stessa lingua, ma hanno delle identità proprie ben definite.
Io mi considero a tutti effetti bilingue russo-tedesco, per cui posso risponderti che le lingue germaniche settentrionali sono una cosa, il tedesco e l'olandese ne sono un'altra e l'inglese, pur facendo parte dello stesso gruppo (lingue germaniche occidentali), è un caso molto _sui generis_. Tra le lingue slave alcune sono piú facili ed altre piú difficili.
Lo studio di _qualsiasi_ lingua romanza (non solamente dell'italiano) renderà lo studio d'altre lingue romanze (e del latino) piú facile. I latinisti dicono sempre che il latino è il fondamento di tutte le lingue romanze e aiuta nello studio. È verissimo, ma si possono imparare varie lingue romanze senza conoscerlo. 



leotato56 said:


> A slavic native with musical talent will read, hear and learn easy all the slavic languages. A german native will do the same with dutch, english, swedish and danish. A latin native will read, hear and learn italian, spanish portuguese french catalan corsican napolitan sicilian etc..... It depends of our talent and musicality. So act by instinct and do not lose your time in long and heavy analysis, start to buy newspapers and watching tv all the time. It 's the way!



Senti, se m'indugio in lunghe e pesanti analisi lo faccio proprio perché so di cosa parlo:
- parlo e scrivo il francese, l'italiano e lo spagnolo quasi come un madrelingua,
- parlo e scrivo il catalano a un livello molto avanzato,
- ho una buona padronanza del portoghese scritto (ma non di quello parlato),
- ho un'infarinatura di varî volgari regionali italiani (un po' a livello teorico, un po' a livello pratico), dell'occitano (grazie al catalano) e del gallego (grazie allo spagnolo e al portoghese).

Posso leggere senza difficoltà un quotidiano in qualsiasi delle lingue romanze che ho studiato (ma preferisco i romanzi), posso guardare senza problemi dei film francesi (salvo quando parlano troppo presto o con una dizione poco curata), spagnoli ed italiani (in lingua standard), ma se mi metti davanti qualcosa in napoletano, romanesco o siciliano stretto (senza parlare dei volgari settentrionali), ho bisogno di sottotitoli perché quando ho capito qualche cosa, ne hanno detto tre o quattro in piú. Parlo per esperienza perché feci quest'esperienza con "La terra trema" (siciliano) di Visconti, "Mamma Roma", "La ricotta" (entrambi in romanesco) e "Decameron" (napoletano) di Pasolini.
Il gallego invece lo capisco abbastanza bene, ma dipende fors'anche dalla scelta del lessico.
In catalano dipende: quando parlo con le persone, non c'è problema alcuno, ma alla TV, nelle serie e nei film è un'altra cosa perché il catalano è una lingua pluricentrica e fino a un secolo fa non aveva uno standard scritto, e poi in catalano ho un vocabolario meno ricco e variegato che nelle altre lingue romanze che ho studiato.


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## Angelo di fuoco

leotato56 said:


> Italian language has the most rich dictionary: you 'll be sure to find the same word used in spanish or portuguese even in a little different use. Just one example: many professors say the word 'quemar' in spa and por is different in ita where in fact we use 'bruciare'. But in ita we use also the term 'cremare' particulary talking about the burning of death persons....so it is relatively easy to an ita native understand the iberian 'quemar' and making a reconstruction of the phrase. And that's easy thanks to the rich italian vocabulary. Another small example? 'queso' in ita is not only 'formaggio' but you can find also the word 'cacio' ! I hope to explain clearly...sorry for my english!



Lo spagnolo è parlato in una ventina di paesi: in Spagna (con notevoli differenze regionali, dovute ai dialetti storici del latino volgare, basco e sostrati prelatini ecc.) e in America dall'Argentina e dal Cile fino agli Stati Uniti, con influenze di varie lingue autoctone ed altre lingue europee. Pensi che ciò non arrichisca il vocabolario altrettanto come i vari volgari parlati nel Bel Paese?


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## Nino83

Yuzer said:


> Defining similarity according to phonetics is misleading.



You're right. 
However killerbee was speaking about this statement: 



leotato56 said:


> Anyway the fact that an italian as me *can read and heard french*, spanish, portuguese, catalan, galician etc... *and understand a good 85% without studying* is a reality.



I can read and write in French but even though I studied it at school (between 11 and 14 years old) I can't understand 85% of what is said when it is spoken very fast. I can understand what Holland says during a press conference (because in these cases one speaks slowly) but not a film. (I studied also the French phonology) 

On the contrary, when reading Le Monde, one can understand very well. The loss of final vowels and syllables (as well as phonetic changes) limits mutual intelligibility. 

If, during a picnic one said [alymə lə fø], I think that an untrained Italian speaker wouldn't know what to do but if one said [ɐsẽndɨ u fogu], [asẽnʤi ʊ fogʊ] (pt) [enθjende el fweɣo] (pt), it is more likely that the Italian speaker understands what to do. 
But, as Angelo says, it is not always so easy. 
If one said [apaɣa la luθ] (sp) [ɐpagɐ ɐ luʃ] (pt) the Italian would understand _paga la luce_, _paga la bolletta della luce_ (in Italian there is the verb _pagare_ but not the verb _apagar_, so _apagar_ could be a false friend). If a French said [etẽ la lymjɛʁ] the Italian would probably understand _tieni la lumiera, la lampada_.  

So the Italian will probaly understand 1 out of 2 sentences in Spanish or Portuguese and zero sentences in French. 

Romance languages are (as it is obvious) different languages.

@Angelo 
Ad esempio ieri sera in una trasmissione televisiva ho ascoltato un'intervista dell'attuale allenatore della Roma (non seguo molto il calcio, era un talk show) ed ho capito subito, senza conoscerlo, che fosse francese, dalla pronuncia delle /a/ seguite da /n/ come [ɒ̃] (es. [ɒ̃ke] per /anche/) e dal fatto che nelle frasi impersonali (completive soggettive) mettesse sempre un _di_ di troppo (es. _è importante di giocare bene _etc.). 
Le preposizioni sono la cosa più facile da sbagliare, quando si passa da una lingua romanza ad un'altra.


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## Angelo di fuoco

C'è il verbo appagare, ma significa un'altra cosa, sebbene ci sia una relazione etimologica tra apagar e appagar: appagare=soddisfare un desiderio, "spegnerlo". Comunque nel contesto del tuo esempio un italiano interpreterebbe il verbo apagar probabilmente come lo dici tu.

Grazie, Nino!
Sí, le preposizioni sono un vero incubo. E siccome studiai la grammatica delle varie lingue romanze moltissimo tempo fa, mi chiedo spesso: ma com'era, quale preposizione devo usare? Lo stesso vale per alcune parole che esistono in questa lingua ma non esistono in codesta, le forme precise delle parole (desinenze!), il genere grammaticale (e. g. dente e diente sono maschili in italiano, ma dent è femminile sia in francese sia in catalano) ecc. ecc.


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## Ben Jamin

leotato56 said:


> A slavic native with musical talent will read, hear and learn easy all the slavic languages.



I don't know how a musical talent could help to understand another language, even if it can help in learning a good pronunciation and intonation.
And, no, he will not understand much of a language of another Slavic family, except for single words here and there. Listening or reading a language of the same Slavic family (West, East or South) the mutual understanding wil never exceed 20-25 % without a period of study or practice. The vocabulary of the Slavic languages differs much more than that of the Romance languages.

Coming to the Germanic languages: the mutual understanding of Norwegian and Swedish is good (N->S 70%, S->N 90%), Danish - Norwegian 60-90%, Danish - Swedish 30-60%. Most German and Anglophone people understand zero spoken Norwegian after coming to the country. The same most probably applies to Danish and Swedish.

To illustrate how different the Slavic languages are compared to Romance, an example of 10 popular words:



*English**Polish**Bulgarian**Italian**Spanish*housedomkushtacasacasaairpowietrzevuzdukhariaairefoodjedzeniekhranacibocomidacountrykrajstranapaesepaisstate (country)państwodurzhavastatoestadowindowoknoprozoretsfinestraventanarunbiegamtikhamcorrocorroI ggoidęotivamvadovoychickenkurczakpilepollopollobadzłyloshmalemalo


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## Nino83

In this order: Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, French. 

casa, casa, casa, chez (maison) 
aria (f.), ar (m.), aire (m.), air (m.) 
cibo/alimento, comida/alimento, comida/alimento, nourriture/aliment
paese, país, país, pays 
stato, estado, estado, état 
finestra, janela, ventana, fenêtre 
corro, corro, corro, cours 
vado, vou, voy, vais 
pollo, frango, pollo, poulet 
cattivo (sin. malvagio), mau, malo, mauvais (adjective) 
male, mal, mal, mal (adverb)


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## leotato56

The corrispondent italian word for french "verre" is very easy to find in italian, it's nothing but the material glass, it. "vetro", sp. "vidrio" and port. "vidro"!
Another word for italian "tovagliolo" is "salvietta" and not only the sicilian "savvietta"!
In italian for "freezer" people use commonly not only "frigorifero" but also "frigo" and "frigidèr" (north-west).
The term "bagnarola" is not only sicilian but common all over Italy!
In tuscan dialect you use "ciascheduno" to say "ciascuno"! and "questo" (near to me) or "codesto" (near to you)- qui (near to me) and "costì or costà" (near to you).
The word "carro" in italian means also a vehicle trailed by horses or cows!


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## leotato56

Gentile Angelo di fuoco, vorrei farti notare che il tuo modo di scrivere in italiano è un po' vecchio: mi sembra di leggere un testo del 1800! per esempio "indugiare" o "avvedersi" fanno molto ridere oggi in italiano) Ti faccio comunque i miei più sinceri complimenti, come molti slavi hai una grande facilità con le lingue che ti invidio. Hai ragione, molte difficoltà partono esattamente dall'assenza di una ortografia codificata ufficiale per molte lingue o dialetti. Tuttavia lasciami dire che la lingua è musica e istinto ed è in continua evoluzione, non resterà sempre la stessa, cambia sempre e, si spera, si arriverà un giorno ad una ortografia compatibile. Infatti tu mi insegni che ad esempio chi usa gli ideogrammi in estremo oriente non è ancora convinto di passare al sistema alfabetico proprio per l'aletorietà e la variabilità di quest'ultimo a seconda delle lingue. Grazie, Ettore (Leotato56)


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## leotato56

No, sorry, romansh could be felt as "german" because of its rude pronunciation but, believe me, it has nothing to do with german and it is totally romance as ladin and friulan.


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## leotato56

I think one of the best innovations the italian language did in the XVIII century is to clean up its orthography from original "greek ethimological letters": all the languages, latin o german in particular use still today PH, TH, PHY, RH, where italian use only F, T, FI, R etc.... in italian we do not write RHYTHM but simply RITMO or not PHOTOGRAPHY but simply FOTOGRAFIA; not THECHNICAL but simply TECNICO etc....


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## Nino83

leotato56 said:


> The corrispondent italian word for french "verre" is very easy to find in italian, it's nothing but the material glass, it. "vetro", sp. "vidrio" and port. "vidro"!



So an Italian who has never studied French would associate the sound of [vɛʁ] with that of [vetro]? 
And [œ̃'vɛʁ d'væ̃] with that of [un'vetro di'vino]? 
I can think that an Italian would easily understand [ũ'kopu dɨ'vinu], [un'kopo de'βino] but not [œ̃'vɛʁ d'væ̃]. Non esageriamo!  



leotato56 said:


> Infatti tu mi insegni che ad esempio chi usa gli ideogrammi in estremo oriente non è ancora convinto di passare al sistema alfabetico proprio per l'aletorietà e la variabilità di quest'ultimo a seconda delle lingue.



Per il cinese è complicato, visto il ricco sistema tonale. Verrebbe una cosa del tipo "Shī Shì shí shī shǐ".  
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-Eating_Poet_in_the_Stone_Den


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## francisgranada

Nino83 said:


> ...  but if one said [ɐsẽndɨ u fogu], [asẽnʤi ʊ fogʊ] (pt) [enθjende el fweɣo] (sp), it is more likely that the Italian speaker understands what to do.


I think that there is also an other factor that makes the spoken Spanish understandable for an Italian. 

For example, the Spanish _fuego _prounced by Spaniards often sounds near to [fwoɣo] or even _quasi _[foɣo]. On the other hand, the Southern Italian (including Roman and Neapolitan) pronounciation tends to sonorize the consonants _p,t,c_, thus _fuoco _can sound more or less [fwoɣo]. Or the intervocalic "s" is prounced [s] and not [z] in the South of Italy. And more, _di, in, il_ ... have the form _de, en, el_ ... and the verbs _stare _and _tenere _are used the similar way as in Spanish in some regions of Italy. 

 Even if these are regional phenomena, the "common Italian ear" _is used _to hear them on tv and also in the everyday life, so the "practical" Spanish and Italian pronouciation  may be sometimes nearer or more understandable to each other than it seems to be when comparing only the standard versions.

P.S. cibo/alimento, comida/alimento - there is also _cebo _in Spanish (though used rather for animals than people)


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## Nino83

francisgranada said:


> I think that there is also an other factor that makes the spoken Spanish understandable for an Italian. For example, the Spanish _fuego _prounced by Spaniards often sounds near to [fwoɣo] or even _quasi _[foɣo].



I didn't know it (I'm concentrating my efforts mainly on Portuguese), thank you!



francisgranada said:


> On the other hand, the Southern Italian (including Roman and Neapolitan) pronounciation tends to sonorize the consonants _p,t,c_, thus _fuoco _can sound more or less [fwoɣo]. Or the intervocalic "s" is prounced [s] and not [z] in the South of Italy. And more, _di, in, il_ ... have the form _de, en, el_ ... and the verbs _stare _and _tenere _are used the similar way as in Spanish in some regions of Italy.
> 
> Even if these are regional phenomena, the "common Italian ear" _is used _to hear them on tv and also in the everyday life, so the "practical" Spanish and Italian pronouciation  may be sometimes nearer to each other than it seems to be when comparing only the standard versions.



Yes. 
For example unstressed pronouns (direct and indirect) _mi, ti, ci, vi_ are _me, te, ce, ve_ in Roman, _mə, tə, cə, və_ in Neapolitan and _mi, ti, nni, vi​ _in Sicilian (mɨ, tɨ, nnɨ, vɨ_,_
 in Messina, in faster speech). 
The Roman language/dialect/accent (?) is the most similar, from a phonetic point of view, to Spanish. 

After thinking a little about it, it's probable that if an Italian heard [œ̃'vɛʁ d'væ̃] he'd probably understant _un vero divano_ (lit. _a real sofa, a great sofa_).


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## leotato56

With all my humility I just would like to repeat to everybody that for an italian native is very itelligible every latin language only because modern italian is formed by 21 or more dialects containing deeply inside french, spanish, portuguese, catalan, corsican, sicilian and more.... that's the real advantage an italian has.


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## Angelo di fuoco

No, no e no. E adesso vammi a tradurre spontaneamente un testo romeno mediamente complesso.


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## Nino83

Honestly, leotato56 said that "About rumanian language the things are more complicated because of the strong influence of the slavic neighbors. Believe me that rumanian is not so easy to read and heard for an italian, probably it is easier the contrary". 
Written Rumanian is the only Romance language (among official national languages) that is almost unintelligible. 
But, I insist, spoken French is not intelligible for the persons (Italian, Spanish, Portuguese) who haven't studied it. 




leotato56 said:


> The term "bagnarola" is not only sicilian but common all over Italy!



No. "*bagnaròla* s. f. [der. di bagnare], *region*. – Tinozza, vasca da bagno." http://www.treccani.it/vocabolario/bagnarola/ 
It is a Regional (not an Italian) term. 



leotato56 said:


> With all my humility I just would like to repeat to everybody that for an italian native is very itelligible every latin language only because modern italian is formed by 21 or more dialects containing deeply inside french, spanish, portuguese, catalan, corsican, sicilian and more.... that's the real advantage an italian has.



Search on youtube, for example "On n'est pas couchés - 50 cent - 28 novembre 2009" and listen from minute 7.00 to 8.00 when Delphine Rollin and Laurent Ruquier speak each other very quickly. What have you understood and what would an untrained Italian understand?


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## Youngfun

Nino83 said:


> _me, te, ce, ve_ in Roman


Once some exchange students from Spain arrived at our class. One of them introduce himself saying that he comes from "perifería de Madrid". The teacher corrected him saying that it's "periferia _di_ Madrid". The students argued that it's correct, because he said it in Roman "periferia _de_ Madrid".


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## Nino83

Hi youngfun. 
Being more accurate, in Roman, Neapolitan and Sicilian languages we have contracted forms when there is a _preposition + article_ (like in Portuguese). 
_Vengo do (de + o) Sud Italia_ (Roman), _vegnu du (i + u) Sud Italia_ (Sicilian) (that sounds like Portuguese _venho do_, but with a double [ɲ], [vɛɲɲu du] instead of [vɛɲu du]). 
_Vado a (a + a) partida da (de + a) Roma_ (Roman), _vaiu a (a + a) pattita du (i + u) Missina__/Palemmu/Catania _(Sicilian).


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## Youngfun

I agree that Portuguese articles kind of resemble those of Roman: masculine '_o_ and feminine '_a_.
In modern Roman it's preferred _dar Sud Italia_. It tends to follow the same rules as Italian with _er_ = "il" and _'o_ = "lo". 

The contraction in rapid speech only occurs with _di _(making the vowel long), not with _da_. So _vengo da 'o Stato __*daa* California _or _o studio *doo* psicologo_.
While with _er_ it can only become _dar_ (=dal) and _der_ (=del)


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## Nino83

Yes, you're right. Also in Neapolitan the preposition _a (= da) _doesn't have a contracted form. 
So, on this aspect, Sicilian is closer to Portuguese while Roman and Neapolitan are in the middle (da + o = dao and not do)


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## killerbee256

Nino83 said:


> Yes, you're right. Also in Neapolitan the preposition _a (= da) _doesn't have a contracted form.
> So, on this aspect, Sicilian is closer to Portuguese while Roman and Neapolitan are in the middle (da + o = dao and not do)


Does greek have much influence on Sicilian or Neapolitan phonology? I know there are many unique loan words from Greek in southern Italian dialects.


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## leotato56

Have you never heard some song of neapolitan tradition? For generations, until the years 1980, people from north and south of Italy followed with passion this classical kind of music, as well as for example portuguese people follow today the "Fado" tradition. I remember there was a Music Festival on national TV channels when I was young until the end of 80ies.... hearing that music you can well understand how much italian languages or dialects contain together iberian and french soul and the reason why italian natives c,oming up from this dialectical tradition have a great advantage to share a lot in common with romance languages.


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## merquiades

Romance languages are easy to learn for speakers of another sister language but you still need to make the effort to learn the other language.  I would not say it's natural, but easy.  It can be like relearning the same language set up in a different way, you can have a pleasant sense of déjà vu when you realize how another Romance language is working, but some study, perhaps minimal is obviously needed, even for very close languages like Spanish and Portuguese.

I think Italians probably should find French easier than Spanish.  When I think of words being similar, Italian/French share a core vocabulary: _prendere/prendre, bere/boire, mangiare/manger, parlare/parler, lasciare/laisser, volere/vouloir, tavola/table, forchetta/fourchette, letto/lit, cane/chien_... and perhaps about several hundred or so more words are pure cognates. They should pose no problem to recognize and learn. The most commonly used Spanish words, however, are noticeably different in many cases:  _Coger, beber/tomar, comer, hablar, dejar, querer, mesa, tenedor, cama, perro_. There is no way to recognize them; these words need to be memorized.  Grammar is also closer between Italian and French... use of present perfect instead of simple preterite, past tenses formed with _essere/avere_, _ne (en), ci (y)_, agreement of participles, all of which is different in Spanish... It's true that Spanish pronunciation might be somewhat easier for an Italian, probably because of the simplified vowels and the maintaining of final syllables, but the _ge/jota_ must greatly throw off an unaware Italian. However, besides that aspect, comparing Italian/French/Spanish, the overall essence of the language of the first two is much closer.  French could be easily acquired by an Italian...despite the different pronunciation (nasal vowels, rounded frontal vowels, guttural r, lack of tonic accent)... but you need a few good French lessons.


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## Nino83

merquiades said:


> However, besides that aspect, comparing Italian/French/Spanish, the overall essence of the language of the first two is much closer.  French could be easily acquired by an Italian...despite the different pronunciation (nasal vowels, rounded frontal vowels, guttural r, lack of tonic accent)... but you need a few good French lessons.



These grammatical differences (_essere/avere, ne (en), ci (y), agreement of participles) _ are difficult to understand for a Spanish speaker but not for an Italian speaker because he only needs to eliminate _ne (en), ci (y), agreement of participles_ and to use _avere_ always (if the Italian speaks Sicilian, he just conjugates present perfect with _avere_). So, on this aspect these grammatical differences are difficult for the Spanish, not for the Italians. 

Merquiades, I agree with you on written language but in spoken language it is all so different. 
For example: _if you're thirsty, drink some water_. 
Italian: [seai sete bevi uɱpoko dakkwa]
French: [si tya swaf bwaœ̃ pødo], an Italian can't get one single word. All these words sound strange. 
Spanish: [si tienesed beβe unpoko deagwa] Portuguese: [sɨtẽ sedɨ bɛbɨ ũpoku dɨagwa], in this case the only change is _tenere_ instead of _avere_, but if an Italian hears some Neapolitan, he has no problems (a Neapolitan would say _tengo sete_). 

So, from written to spoken language, intelligibility is reversed. 

About lexical similarity: it's true that _vouloir_ is similar to _volere_ but [jə vø] is totally different from _voglio_, [li] from _letto_ so [ve oli] doesn't sound like [vai alletto] but it is more similar to [vai li] (go there!). 

An untrained Italian wouldn't understand these words, he needs to memorize that [vø] is _voglio_, [li] is _letto _and so on. 
The diference is that when an Italian hears a Spanish or a Portuguese speaking, he'll understand all the words which have the same Latin origin while this doesn't happen when listening to a French speaker. 
So, seeing that the difference in lexical similarity is small (89% vs 82%), I'd say that this advantage is lost in spoken language. 



killerbee256 said:


> Does greek have much influence on Sicilian or Neapolitan phonology? I know there are many unique loan words from Greek in southern Italian dialects.



No. For example, the only differences between Sicilian and Standard Italian are: 
retroflex /dd/ [ɖɖ] instead of double /ll/: gallina [jaɖɖina], colla [coɖɖa] but corda [codda], it is phonemic 
[ʈɽ] as the English _try_ (similar to [ʧɹ]: treno [ʈɽenu], not phonemic
[ʂɽ] as the English _shrink_ (similar to [ʃɹ]): strano [ʂɽanu], not phonemic 

As far as I know there aren't these sounds in Greek (Ancient or Modern). 
Greek was spoken 2000 years ago, so it's difficult to find phonetic influences. 
But Latin borrowed a lot of Greek words.


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## Angelo di fuoco

leotato56 said:


> Gentile Angelo di fuoco, vorrei farti notare che il tuo modo di scrivere in italiano è un po' vecchio: mi sembra di leggere un testo del 1800! per esempio "indugiare" o "avvedersi" fanno molto ridere oggi in italiano) Ti faccio comunque i miei più sinceri complimenti, come molti slavi hai una grande facilità con le lingue che ti invidio. Hai ragione, molte difficoltà partono esattamente dall'assenza di una ortografia codificata ufficiale per molte lingue o dialetti. Tuttavia lasciami dire che la lingua è musica e istinto ed è in continua evoluzione, non resterà sempre la stessa, cambia sempre e, si spera, si arriverà un giorno ad una ortografia compatibile. Infatti tu mi insegni che ad esempio chi usa gli ideogrammi in estremo oriente non è ancora convinto di passare al sistema alfabetico proprio per l'aletorietà e la variabilità di quest'ultimo a seconda delle lingue. Grazie, Ettore (Leotato56)



Ciao Ettore, grazie per la segnalazione, ma non è per me niente di nuovo: mi sa che leggo troppo librettese e non abbastanza letteratura contemporanea. Vada per "avvedersi", non sarei cosí categorico con "indugiare".
Non so dove ti venga l'idea che tra gli slavi ci sia una maggiore facilità che tra altri: tra i parlanti di tutte le lingue c'è gente piú o meno dotata di questa facoltà e c'è chi ha avuto la felice opportunità di scoprire questo dono (e ti dico che non l'avrei scoperto se non mi fossi trasferito in Germania).
Ti dico che una grafia compatibile per tutte le lingue è un'utopia: su questo pianeta se ne parlano tra 6000 e 7000 di diversissime tipologie. Un intento di creare una lingua universale che non privilegiasse nessuno fu l'esperanto: eppure, nonostante la nobiltà dell'idea, era e rimane una lingua incredibilmente eurocentrica.
Se i cinesi non sono passati ad un alfabeto basato su lettere, non è a causa dell'aleatorietà dei sistemi alfabetici, ma perché il sistema ufficiale di romanizzazione (Pinyin, che anche i cinesi devono imparare) e qualsiasi altro sistema di romanizzazione basato unicamente sulla fonologia, anche il piú preciso, rimane vago ed ambiguo nella resa di concetti, idee o contenuti. La lingua cinese ha un inventario sillabico ristrettissimo ed è piuttosto parca nell'uso d'elementi ausiliari di qualisasi tipo. Che ad una sillaba corrispondano varie decine di caratteri differenti, a seconda del significato, è la regola anziché un'eccezionel Che un carattere abbia piú d'una lettura (due, piú raremente tre o quattro) a seconda del significato succede, ma non troppo sovente.
La lingua non è solamente musica ed istinto, è anche moltissime altre cose, e per me personalmente sarebbe una catastrofe se un giorno s'arrivasse ad un'ortografia compatibile perché è possibile solamente in un mondo prima della costruzione della torre di Babele.
Come t'hanno già scritto gli altri: l'istinto nell'apprendimento di varie lingue della stessa famiglia aiuta certo, ma non basta. Il senso del déjà vu di cui parla Merquiades non m'è ignoto (come ho scritto, fu il motivo per cui iniziai ad imparare il cinese). Anche se una relazione etimologica c'è, non è sempre evidente a semplice vista, bisogna spesso aver una nozione delle corrispondenze tra le varie evoluzioni fonetiche. Proprio il francese s'è moltissimo allontanato fonologicamente dalle altre lingue romanze ed anche il portoghese e i volgari gallo-romanzi dell'Italia settentrionale non scherzano perché la lenizione di certi consonanti, apocope, dittongazione, riduzione di vocali ed altri elementi di mutazione fonomorfologica ostacolano la comprensione. Anche la preferenza per un certo vocabolo che magari è scomparso in una lingua, ha cambiato il senso o è stato sostituito da un altro sono tutti elementi da considerare. Per chi ama le lingue queste cose sono appassionanti, ma c'è gente che non può o non vuole fare lo sforzo necessario per scoprire o capire certe cose.


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## Angelo di fuoco

Ben Jamin said:


> I don't know how a musical talent could help to understand another language, even if it can help in learning a good pronunciation and intonation.
> And, no, he will not understand much of a language of another Slavic family, except for single words here and there. Listening or reading a language of the same Slavic family (West, East or South) the mutual understanding wil never exceed 20-25 % without a period of study or practice. The vocabulary of the Slavic languages differs much more than that of the Romance languages.
> 
> Coming to the Germanic languages: the mutual understanding of Norwegian and Swedish is good (N->S 70%, S->N 90%), Danish - Norwegian 60-90%, Danish - Swedish 30-60%. Most German and Anglophone people understand zero spoken Norwegian after coming to the country. The same most probably applies to Danish and Swedish.
> 
> To illustrate how different the Slavic languages are compared to Romance, an example of 10 popular words:
> 
> 
> 
> *English**Polish**Russian**Bulgarian**Italian**Spanish*housedomdomkushtacasacasaairpowietrzevozdukhvuzdukhariaairefoodjedzeniejed*a*khranacibocomidacountrykrajstrana, krajstranapaesepaisstate (country)państwostrana, gosudarstvo, derzhavadurzhavastatoestadowindowoknooknoprozoretsfinestraventanarunbiegambeg*u*tikhamcorrocorroI ggoidęid*u*otivamvadovoychickenkurczaktsyplënokpilepollopollobadzłyzloj, plokhojloshmalemalo


I've added Russian...


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## Youngfun

Angelo di fuoco said:


> Ciao Ettore, grazie per la segnalazione, ma non è per me niente di nuovo: mi sa che leggo troppo librettese e non abbastanza letteratura contemporanea. Vada per "avvedersi", non sarei cosí categorico con "indugiare".
> Non so dove ti venga l'idea che tra gli slavi ci sia una maggiore facilità che tra altri: tra i parlanti di tutte le lingue c'è gente piú o meno dotata di questa facoltà e c'è chi ha avuto la felice opportunità di scoprire questo dono (e ti dico che non l'avrei scoperto se non mi fossi trasferito in Germania).
> Ti dico che una grafia compatibile per tutte le lingue è un'utopia: su questo pianeta se ne parlano tra 6000 e 7000 di diversissime tipologie. Un intento di creare una lingua universale che non privilegiasse nessuno fu l'esperanto: eppure, nonostante la nobiltà dell'idea, era e rimane una lingua incredibilmente eurocentrica.
> Se i cinesi non sono passati ad un alfabeto basato su lettere, non è a causa dell'aleatorietà dei sistemi alfabetici, ma perché il sistema ufficiale di romanizzazione (Pinyin, che anche i cinesi devono imparare) e qualsiasi altro sistema di romanizzazione basato unicamente sulla fonologia, anche il piú preciso, rimane vago ed ambiguo nella resa di concetti, idee o contenuti. La lingua cinese ha un inventario sillabico ristrettissimo ed è piuttosto parca nell'uso d'elementi ausiliari di qualisasi tipo. Che ad una sillaba corrispondano varie decine di caratteri differenti, a seconda del significato, è la regola anziché un'eccezionel Che un carattere abbia piú d'una lettura (due, piú raremente tre o quattro) a seconda del significato succede, ma non troppo sovente.
> La lingua non è solamente musica ed istinto, è anche moltissime altre cose, e per me personalmente sarebbe una catastrofe se un giorno s'arrivasse ad un'ortografia compatibile perché è possibile solamente in un mondo prima della costruzione della torre di Babele.
> Come t'hanno già scritto gli altri: l'istinto nell'apprendimento di varie lingue della stessa famiglia aiuta certo, ma non basta. Il senso del déjà vu di cui parla Merquiades non m'è ignoto (come ho scritto, fu il motivo per cui iniziai ad imparare il cinese). Anche se una relazione etimologica c'è, non è sempre evidente a semplice vista, bisogna spesso aver una nozione delle corrispondenze tra le varie evoluzioni fonetiche. Proprio il francese s'è moltissimo allontanato fonologicamente dalle altre lingue romanze ed anche il portoghese e i volgari gallo-romanzi dell'Italia settentrionale non scherzano perché la lenizione di certi consonanti, apocope, dittongazione, riduzione di vocali ed altri elementi di mutazione fonomorfologica ostacolano la comprensione. Anche la preferenza per un certo vocabolo che magari è scomparso in una lingua, ha cambiato il senso o è stato sostituito da un altro sono tutti elementi da considerare. Per chi ama le lingue queste cose sono appassionanti, ma c'è gente che non può o non vuole fare lo sforzo necessario per scoprire o capire certe cose.


Per un certo periodo il cinese fu scritto con i caratteri latini: il Sinwenz Latinhua.
Mi viene in mente il vietnamita che si scrive con i caratteri latini, ma è piena di omofoni a causa del grandissimo vocabolario sino-vietnamita. Lo stesso dicasi per il coreano.
Per il cinese auspicherei un sistema misto alla giapponese: si scriva tutto in ideogrammi, ma si usi di rado un sistema fonetico (che sia a caratteri latini, cirillici, kana, hangul o bopomofo, è questione di gusti) per rappresentare quelle parole dialettali (perfino il dialetto di Pechino ne ha) che esistono nel parlato ma non hanno un ideogramma associato in letteratura.

Un alfabeto universale per scrivere tutte le lingue del mondo esiste: l'Alfabeto Fonetico Internazionale (AFI, o in inglese: IPA).


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## Angelo di fuoco

Infatti, quando scrivevo il messaggio che citi ho pensato al vietnamita ed agli stessi problemi che potevano sorgere dal passaggio all'alfabeto latino (ma comunque minori, dato che il vietnamita ha piú toni che il cinese), ma siccome non ne so quasi niente, non ne ho scritto niente. Nel coreano invece c'è sempre la possibilità d'usare il carattere cinese a scanso d'equivoci...
Come già(o non?) detto: l'Alfabeto Fonetico Internazionale non rende che i suoni d'una lingua, ma la sua capacità di trasportare il senso del discorso è limitatissima quando si tratti di lingue come il cinese, il cantonese od altre che si parlano nella regione.


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## leotato56

Ok, it may be that this is the wrong forum for me: you are all too technical. Anyway blood beats in my head reading strangers who, thanks of their technical culture, go ahead with their ideas and convinctions and they do not pay attention to a simple fact: a mother tongue, not linguistically graduated at University, can you explain better than any other people. I repeat, just let meditate my simple idea of mother tongue. Italian is richer than you can imagine because it comes from 21 or more dialects. It is correct that in italian today we use formaggio (cheese) but we also can use cacio, caciotta, casaro, it is correct that in italian we use testa (head) but it's already true that we can use also capo or cavezza or capa or capoccia, it is correct that we use today tavolo (table) but is very common to use also mensa, it is correct that we use auto or macchina in the sense of english car, but we use today frequently, specially in south areas, the terms cocchio or carro! So, please, when I say that in some way italian includes imside all romance varieties....please believe me. Thanks, a no linguistic professor.


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## merquiades

leotato56 said:


> Ok, it may be that this is the wrong forum for me: you are all too technical. Anyway blood beats in my head reading strangers who, thanks of their technical culture, go ahead with their ideas and convinctions and they do not pay attention to a simple fact: a mother tongue, not linguistically graduated at University, can you explain better than any other people. I repeat, just let meditate my simple idea of mother tongue. Italian is richer than you can imagine because it comes from 21 or more dialects. It is correct that in italian today we use formaggio (cheese) but we also can use cacio, caciotta, casaro, it is correct that in italian we use testa (head) but it's already true that we can use also capo or cavezza or capa or capoccia, it is correct that we use today tavolo (table) but is very common to use also mensa, it is correct that we use auto or macchina in the sense of english car, but we use today frequently, specially in south areas, the terms cocchio or carro! So, please, when I say that in some way italian includes imside all romance varieties....please believe me. Thanks, a no linguistic professor.



I believe you.  Just one simple question.  Would the average Italian understand all these words?  For example, could I go to Milan, Rome, Naples and Palermo and say _mensa_ rather than _tavolo_?


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## Nino83

Excuse me leotato but do you think that if you say "_o!"_ to an Italian speaker, he'll understand that you're saying "_acqua!" _(instead of à_gua_)? 
Can an Italian understand words like _bo_ for _bello _(instead of _belu_), _buà_ for _bevi_ (instead of _bebi_), _ogn__õ_ for _cipolla_ (instead of s_ebòla_), _lapẽ_ for _coniglio_ (instead of _coelho_), _sitrõ_ for _limone_ (instead of _limãw_), _pêsh_ for _pesca_ (instead of _pesegu_), _corbejə_ for _cesta, cestino_ (instead of _cestu_), _culuàr_ for _corridòio_ (instead of _corredor_), _fur_ for _forno_ (instead of _fornu_), _nap_ for _tovaglia_ (instead of _toalha_), _bo frer_ for _cognato_ (instead of _cunhadu_)? 

@merquiades: aren't these Portuguese words more similar than French ones (in sound and in writing)? 

N.B. 
I used a "non-technical" transcription, as asked by leotato.


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## Youngfun

Nope. In modern Italian _mensa_ doesn't mean "table". It means canteen.


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## Schimmelreiter

Youngfun said:


> Nope. In modern Italian _mensa_ doesn't mean "table". It means canteen.


But there's the figurative meaning, says http://it.thefreedictionary.com/mensa

*mensa *[ˈmɛnsa] _sf
*a.* (locale) → canteen; (Mil) → mess; (nelle università) → refectory
*b.* (fig) → table
i piaceri della mensa → the pleasures of the table



_


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## Apollodoros

francisgranada said:


> I think that there is also an other factor that makes the spoken Spanish understandable for an Italian.
> 
> For example, the Spanish _fuego _prounced by Spaniards often sounds near to [fwoɣo] or even _quasi _[foɣo].



Thanks for this confirmation, as for a long time I have been just wondering whether I hear well or I am making it up when I hear Spaniards here (Andalucía) say [asta lwoɣo], knowing about the alteration of ue for stressed o. It seems that the traces of the original o are still strong and the pronunciation did not develop completely to clear [we]


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## Testing1234567

I am learning French and Spanish, and also trying Portuguese.

And then I come up with a theory that Portuguese has a Spanish orthography but a French pronunciation...

Looks like every romance language is between two other romance languages! (LOL)


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## francisgranada

Testing1234567 said:


> ... Looks like every romance language is between two other romance languages! (LOL)


Yes, this is true to a certain degree. For example, also the French can be be viewed "between" Italian and Spanish as there are many "Spanish-like" features in the French not present in standard Italian. E.g. the formation of the plural: _amours _(Sp. amores, It. amori), the possessive pronoun doesn't take the article: _mon amour_ (Sp. mi amor, It. il mio amore), the future of _aller _is _ira _(Sp. irá, It. andrà), the vowel "e" (now shwa or not pronounced in French) in unstressed pers. pronouns and prepositions: _me/te/se/en/de _... (Sp. me/te/se/en/de, It. mi/ti/si/in/di), the conditional is formed using the imparfait of _avoir _like in Spanish while in Italian the passé simple (passato remoto) is used, and many others (including the vocabulary) ... 

The Catalan can be surely put between the Spanish and French, but also between the Spanish and Italian; the Sardinian between the Spanish and Italian; even the Portuguese between the Italian and Spanish (at least in some cases); etc ...    

Of course, when we say "between" this is not a presice term or definition, it's rather about common features and words between _  two _ Romance languages not present in a_ third_ Romance language.


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## Forero

Testing1234567 said:


> I am learning French and Spanish, and also trying Portuguese.
> 
> And then I come up with a theory that Portuguese has a Spanish orthography but a French pronunciation...
> 
> Looks like every romance language is between two other romance languages! (LOL)


Both Portuguese and French have eliminated various consonants, especially _m_ and _n_, and have nasalized vowels, but not in the same places.


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## Nino83

I think that French and Portuguese phonologies are very different. 
Portuguese has a very consistent spelling, Vulgar Latin final vowels, all final consonants are pronounced, there are few homophones, vowel shift from Vulgar Latin is minimal (as in Spanish and Italian). So, from a vocalic point of veiw, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese are very similar. 
From a consonantic point of view, Spanish is the most different: [x] instead of [ʒ, ʤ], [θ] instead of [s, ʦ], *-[v] merged in [β], intervocalic [β, ð, ɣ], loss of [f] at the begin of the word (unless it is followed by an /l/, /r/, [j] or [w]).*


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## merquiades

Nino83 said:


> I think that French and Portuguese phonologies are very different.
> Portuguese has a very consistent spelling, Vulgar Latin final vowels, all final consonants are pronounced, there are few homophones, vowel shift from Vulgar Latin is minimal (as in Spanish and Italian). So, from a vocalic point of veiw, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese are very similar.
> From a consonantic point of view, Spanish is the most different: [x] instead of [ʒ, ʤ], [θ] instead of [s, ʦ], *-[v] merged in [β], intervocalic [β, ð, ɣ], loss of [f] at the begin of the word (unless it is followed by an /l/, /r/, [j] or [w]).*


*

Hello Nino.  I'm not so sure about the underlined part.  Final -o and -e  tend to be swallowed up in my opinion.  Also non-accented -e- in general.  O menino sounds a bit like O m'nín', O telefone sounds more like tel'fôn'.  the apostrophe representing almost silent vowel sounds.  Unaccented -a has also weakened to /ɐ/ in /ɐpɔrtɐ/ (a porta). I can see why these trends could be compared to what happened historically in French where most final Latin vowels except -a were clipped off and eliminated, and -a was reduced and gradually eliminated in many dialects.  It's a step in that direction.

Though the nasal vowels are different both French and Portuguese nasalize vowels before -nC-, -mC-,  or -m/-n.  That's also a similar treatment of vowels*


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## Nino83

In European Portuguese the unstressed /e/ sounds like a more closed schwa and the [ɐ] like a more open schwa. The final /o/ sounds like a short [w]. 
I needed a little time to get used to this pronunciation. After a month I began understanding very well RTP news and programs. 
If we speak about Brazilian Portuguese, things are easier. Post-tonic /e/, /o/ and /a/ are pronounced _,  and [__ɐ] ([a] in nordestino speech), while pre-tonic vowels are pronounced as in Italian or Spanish. 

About nasal vowels, I'd say that: a) Portuguese vowels are less nasalized than French ones b) French nasal vowels are very tricky. There are too many mergers and shifts. 
sang = sans = cent = [sɒ̃] (in Portuguese are [sɐ̃gɨ] [sɐ̃j̃]/[sẽj̃] [sẽtu]), saint = sein = sain = ceins = ceint = [sæ̃] (in Portuguese are [sɐ̃tu]  [sɐ̃ju]/[sẽju] [sɐ̃w] [sĩʒɨʃ] [sĩʒɨ]), so in French there are a lot of homophones. In French /an/ and /en/ merged in [ɒ̃]. 



merquiades said:



			I can see why these trends could be compared to what happened historically in French where most final Latin vowels except -a were clipped off and eliminated, and -a was reduced and gradually eliminated in many dialects. It's a step in that direction.
		
Click to expand...


It is possible that in the future (200 years or more) European Portuguese will sound like French but there are a lot of steps. 
All final consonants are pronounced so we have /je, tu sens/ /il sent/ = [sɒ̃] while /eu sinto/ /tu sintes/ /ele sente/ = [sĩtu] [sẽtɨʃ] [sẽtɨ]/[sẽʧɪ]. It's not a case that Portuguese is still a pro-drop language while French isn't so. Portuguese still differenciate unstressed /e/ and /o/ also when they are almost-elided. The difference between [abr(u)] and [abr(ɨ)] is clear also in fastest speech, it is perceived. 
Also if we suppose that in 200 years unstressed /e/ and /o/ will be elided, final consonants would be (probably) pronounced. 
But if we speak about Brazilian Portuguese, the road could be very long._


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## killerbee256

I don't see portuguese following the same path of french. I think that the similarities between french and portuguese are perhaps because of a common Celtic sub substrate and some direct influence from french during the 17th through 19th century. For the future however Portuguese will go it's own way and given how much Brazilian media is shown in Portugal these days I suspect some of the "archaic" features of Brazilian phonics maybe be reintroduced in Europe.


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## Ben Jamin

Nino83 said:


> In European Portuguese the unstressed /e/ sounds like a more closed schwa and the [ɐ] like a more open schwa. The final /o/ sounds like a short [w].




Do you mean a consonant [w]?
what about a word like *Porto*? Is there a consonant after "t"?
Can a [w] be short or long?


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## merquiades

Ben Jamin said:


> Do you mean a consonant [w]?
> what about a word like *Porto*? Is there a consonant after "t"?
> Can a [w] be short or long?



It's very short like clipped off.  Listen here.


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## Youngfun

despertador [dʃprtə'doɾ]


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## Ben Jamin

merquiades said:


> It's very short like clipped off.  Listen here.


Yes, I hear a short VOWEL. It's virtually impossible to pronounce a consonant [w] ater a stop consonant like "t".


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## Pedro y La Torre

Testing1234567 said:


> I am learning French and Spanish, and also trying Portuguese.
> 
> And then I come up with a theory that Portuguese has a Spanish orthography but a French pronunciation...
> 
> Looks like every romance language is between two other romance languages! (LOL)



Portuguese sounds unlike every other Romance language (then again, so does French). It certainly sounds nothing like European or Canadian French. Russian would be a better, if unsuitable, match.


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## Nino83

Ben Jamin said:


> Do you mean a consonant [w]?
> what about a word like *Porto*? Is there a consonant after "t"?
> Can a [w] be short or long?



Maybe I choose the wrong symbol. I meant that the final is shortened (like in the final diphthong [ɐ̃w]).

I found this type of transcription on wikipedia:



> _o meu irmão comprou um carro novo ("my brother bought a new car") would be pronounced as [u ˈmew iɾˈmɐ̃w̃ kõˈpɾow u~ ˈkaʁu ˈnovu] or [u ˈmew iɾˈmɐ̃w̃ kõˈpɾow ũ ˈkaʁʷ ˈnovu] in these dialects. In the dialect spoken in Lisbon, the two last words would instead be pronounced [ˈkaʁʷ ˈnovu], [ˈkaʁʷ ˈnovʷ], [ˈkaʁ ˈnovu] or [ˈkaʁ ˈnovʷ]. In southern Portugal, word final [w] and [w̃] are also affected, so in Alentejo the same sentence would sound [u ˈme iɾˈmɐ̃ kõˈpɾo ũ ˈkaʁ ˈnovu] (in this dialect, utterance final vowels are also noticeably very prolonged, so a more accurate transcription might be [ˈnovuː] for this example). And in the southernmost region of the country, the Algarve, the vowel is completely lost: [u ˈme iɾˈmɐ̃ kõˈpɾo ũ ˈkaʁ ˈnov]._



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_dialects#Notable_features_of_some_dialects

So, I meant [ʷ].

Furthermore, I'd say that the studies on vowel deletion are referred to the accent of Faial and São Miguel, Azores (Silva 1997, 1998, for example in http://dspace.uta.edu/bitstream/handle/10106/1188/79-94-Silva.pdf), which are the most similar to the Lisboeta accent.
RTP journalists and presenters don't drop final unless they're speaking very fast (by the way, on films, it often happens) and there are about 40% of Portuguese (from Viana do Castelo-Braga-Porto to Guarda) who don't drop these vowels.

Listen, for example, to these records: http://www.learningportuguese.co.uk/guide/compare-accents


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## Ben Jamin

Nino83 said:


> So, I meant [ʷ].


What is the difference between [ʷ] and  (apart from length), especially pronounced finally, after unvoiced stops?


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## Nino83

Ben Jamin said:


> What is the difference between [ʷ] and  (apart from length), especially pronounced finally, after unvoiced stops?


 

The length  

We're speaking about the loss of final  in Portuguese speech. I'm saying that about 40% of Portuguese people pronounce it and that in television programs and news it is (normally) pronounced (but in Azorean, Central and Southern accents, the  is normally deleted in fast speech). 
This phenomenon (the loss of final  in speech) is true only for 6 million out of 210 million Portuguese native speakers (in Portugal and Brazil) (like the merger of [ou] with [o] and [ɐ̃j̃] with [ẽj̃]). 
So it's not really wrong to say that Portuguese retains final Vulgar Latin vowels (unlike French), and that there is a difference between _bebo_ and _bebe_ (European Portuguese is a pro-drop language).


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## izzyisozaki

Arrius said:


> By the way, curiously enough, it is generally agreed that Portuguese and then Spanish are closer to their ancestor, Latin, than Italian is.



Spanish can be more conservative in some of its vocabulary, but there is no way it is closer to Latin than Italian.


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## Penyafort

In my opinion, Italian, due to its phonology, lexicon and prosody, is the most understandable of all the Romance languages to a speaker of a different Romance language. That does not necessarily mean it's really closer, only more understandable.

For instance, a Spaniard would definitely understand a text written in Portuguese much better than one in Italian. (In terms of core vocabulary, Portuguese and Spanish are very close and sometimes quite different from the Italian/French/Catalan counterparts. Think of words like 'bird', 'blue', 'cheese', 'eat', 'table', etc.) But when it comes to the same text spoken, it might turn the other way round. 

There is also the fact that Spanish and Italian clearly preserve final vowels (gato/gatto, puente/ponte), while French and Catalan lost them (chat/gat, pont) and Portuguese reduces them a lot, looking like dropped too for a Spanish/Italian ear.


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## Nino83

izzyisozaki said:


> Spanish can be more conservative in some of its vocabulary, but there is no way it is closer to Latin than Italian.



From a phonetic point of view, it's clear which language is more conservative (from Vulgar Latin):

- vowels, S (stressed), UC (unstressed countertonic), UF (unstressed final), number of changes:
Italian: S = 2 (jè, wò in open syllables), UC = 0, UF = 0, total = 2
Spanish: S = 4 (je, we in both open and closed syllables), UC = 0, UF = 0, total = 4
Portuguese: S = 2 (ɐnV, ɔ > o metaphonetic changes), UC = 5 (a > ɐ, e > ɨ, o > u, unstressed ɛ and ɔ where intervocalic consonants were lost), UF = 3 (a > ɐ, e > ɨ, o > u), total = 10
French: S = 38, UC = 5, UF = 3, total = 46

In other words, French vowels changed too much and spoken French is the least mutually intelligible.

- consonants:
Spanish and Portuguese: pl, kl, fl > ʎ and ʃ (while other languages retained the consonant, pj, kj, fj, Italian, pl, kl, fl the other languages)
Spanish:
- lj > x (while other languages have ʎ, ʎʎ or j)
- ge, gi and initial j + vowel > x (other languages have ʤ, ʒ)
- initial f (not before diphthongs) > - (while other languages have it)
- ct > ʧ (while Italian has tt, Portuguese t/it, French dropped the t and changed the preceding vowel)

About consonants, Spanish is the most different among these four languages. 



For this, I think that Brazilian Portuguese (which has UC = 1, with total vowel changes = 6), where vowels are not dropped like in European Portuguese, is a lot similar, from a phonetic point of view, to Italian, while in Spanish you have to remember those different consonants.


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## Nino83

I add some other Romance language (from the most to the least conservative vocalic system, indicating the number of changes):
Roman (0), Tuscan (2), (TVG) Standard Galician (2), Spanish (3), Western Catalan (4), Sicilian (6), Brazilian Potuguese (6), Neapolitan (8), Eastern and Central Catalan (11), Gallo-Italian (Piedmontese, Ligurian, Lombard, Western Emiliano) (12), European Portuguese (12), Bolognese (13), French (42).

I'd say that from Roman to Sicilian, there is no vowel reduction, Brazilian Portuguese is in the middle, then from Neapolitan to European Portuguese and Bolognese there is vowel reduction. Then there is spoken French, which is little understandable, without studying it.

It's obvious that Bolognese is a little more understandable than European Portuguese, due to vocabulary, but Western Catalan and Standard Galician are more understandable than Bolognese, due to the fact that there is no vowel reduction and differences in vocabulary are not so great.


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## mataripis

In my opinion, it is easy for spanish speakers to interprete italiano By listening the words since the root words are almost identical not by grammar but by recontructing grammar out of las palabras el italiano esta usando.


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## Youngfun

I can never understand what matapiris says....


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## Ben Jamin

Youngfun said:


> I can never understand what matapiris says....


Neither do I.


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## Erkattäññe

I'm a native Spanish speaker, I can understand quite well italian but Portuguese is very difficult to me due its pronunciation, At least Brazilian Portuguese (I'm not familiar with the portuguese of portugal). I know Portuguese and Spanish have a closer genetic relationship and that can be seen in its morphology and syntax, but when we come to phonetics I find portuguese very divergent so to my Spanish ears Italian phonemes sound very clearly segmentable.


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## Hulalessar

Erkattäññe said:


> I'm a native Spanish speaker, I can understand quite well italian but Portuguese is very difficult to me due its pronunciation, At least Brazilian Portuguese (I'm not familiar with the portuguese of portugal). I know Portuguese and Spanish have a closer genetic relationship and that can be seen in its morphology and syntax, but when we come to phonetics I find portuguese very divergent so to my Spanish ears Italian phonemes sound very clearly segmentable.



That is how I, a non-native Spanish speaker, also see it, or rather hear it.  It is as if Spanish and Portuguese are brothers and Italian a cousin, but Spanish looks more like Italian than Portuguese. On paper Portuguese and Spanish look more like each other than either does to Italian.


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## Nino83

Hulalessar said:


> On paper Portuguese and Spanish look more like each other than either does to Italian.



I'd make a distinction between morphology and syntax.
For the first, I think written Portuguese words are more similar to the Italian (and Latin) ones:
- first example deleted (see merquiades' comment) 
- foglia, folha [f] and [ʎ] vs. hoja [-] and [x] 
- passo /ss/ vs. paso /s/
- interesse /ss/ and /e/ vs. interés /s/ and /-/
- quando /qua/ vs. cuándo /cuá/
- forte /o/ vs. fuerte /ue/
- festa /e/ vs. fiesta /ie/

For the second, Spanish and Portuguese are more similar (but there is more similarity between Italian, Spanish and Portuguese than between these languages and French, for example pro-drop, freer word order).


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## merquiades

Nino83 said:


> I'd make a distinction between morphology and syntax.
> For the first, I think written Portuguese words are more similar to the Italian (and Latin) ones:
> - vino [v] (Italian, Portuguese) vs. bino [β] (Spanish)  VINHO in pt.
> 
> For the second, Spanish and Portuguese are more similar (but there is more similarity between Italian, Spanish and Portuguese than between these languages and French, for example pro-drop, freer word order).


 Portuguese is pro-drop too.  It just isn't reflected yet in the spelling.

Eu tenho um forte interesse em alemão sounds more like Eu tanhungfortintressengalmão


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## Nino83

Hi, merquiades, thank you for correcting the first example. 



merquiades said:


> Portuguese is pro-drop too.



Yes, it is (I said Italian, Spanish and Portuguese are pro-drop and have a freer word order, French is not pro-drop and have a more rigid word order).


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## merquiades

merquiades said:


> Portuguese is pro-drop too.  It just isn't reflected yet in the spelling.
> 
> Eu tenho um forte interesse em alemão sounds more like Eu tanhungfortintressengalmão





Nino83 said:


> Hi, merquiades, thank you for correcting the first example.
> 
> 
> 
> Yes, it is (I said Italian, Spanish and Portuguese are pro-drop and have a freer word order, French is not pro-drop and have a more rigid word order).


Don't you mean rather the opposite? French dropped or chopped off vowels, whereas Italian also retained them and Spanish mostly.

If you want another V example for your theory above:  Vermiglio/ Vermelho  versus Bermejo


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## Youngfun

It's pointless to discuss about which is more similar to which. Just learn 'em all! C'mon it's so easy to learn all the big Romance languages.


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## Nino83

merquiades said:


> Don't you mean rather the opposite? French dropped or chopped off vowels, whereas Italian also retained them and Spanish mostly.



I meant pro-drop = subject personal pronouns can be dropped


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## markandersh

Ésta es una fila de conversación vieja pero tal vez alguien todavía tiene interés en el asunto. Soy anglohablante que estudió el castellano 10 años, incluyendo la escuela secundaria y la universidad. Gané una licencia para traducciones escritas. Por lo general hablo más el español de España, aunque aprendí el idioma en San Diego, CA.

Tuve un maestro en la escuela secundaria que era misionero en Brasil. El pasó dos semanas al fin del año escolar enseñándonos las diferencias fundamentales entre el castellano y el portugués, y cuando estudié la lingüística española avanzada, con referencia al latín (ortografía, gramática, fonética), descubrí que ortográficamente y fonéticamente el portugués representa un paso reverso hacia el latín. Por ejemplo, muchas palabras españolas que comienzan con la "H" (muda) comienzan con la "F" en portugués, como hacer/fazer o hablar/falar. También palabras (especialmente verbos) en que la "O" cambia a "UE" o la "E" cambia a "IE" [en ciertas formas] en español, faltan este cambio en sus homólogos portugueses. Aquí se puede presentar "puerto/porto" ; "luego/logo" ; "bien/bem" ; "entiende/entende" como ejemplos. Palabras que terminan en "...ción" en el castellano terminan por lo general en "...cão" en portugués. Yo mismo pude leer el texto arriba (por Ayazid, 26 agosto, 2007) casi perfectamente. PERO, cuando estuve en Portugal, no entendía casi nada, y un Portugués de Lisboa me explicó que ellos comprenden el castellano mejor que los españoles comprenden el portugués. A la vez, cuando era adolescente, pasé una tarde en la playa en San Diego charlando con dos chicas brasileñas (¡muy guapas!). Ellas hablaron portugués y yo hablé español, usando de vez en cuando variaciones portuguesas. Pués, nos entendimos.

No he tenido casi ningunas oportunidades de escuchar el italiano. La ortografía es bien diferente, aunque los sonidos son semejantes o idénticos ("que/che") - por lo menos en ciertos casos.  Cuando era joven estudié el misal de mi abuela con las oraciones en latín e inglés. No era difícil y así aprendí el concepto de casos gramáticos de sustantivos (nominativo, acusativo, dativo, ablativo, vocativo). Cuando estudié el alemán y más tarde el griego del Nuevo Testamento, no tenía ningunas dificultades conceptuales. Lo único necesario era memorizar las formas particulares. En verdad, la combinación del castellano y alemán era fantástica para un estudiante del griego.


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## markandersh

Palatalization is the pronunciation of a consonant with a light "y" sound. This is done in Russian with most "E"s, and "И"s when they follow most consonants. Church Slavonic (with which I am also basically familiar on an elementary level) has the same feature. In Castilian Spanish, the "LL" is pronounced "ly" and in all forms of Spanish "ñ" is pronounced "ny"; that is, "LL" represents a palatalized "L" and "ñ" represents a palatalized "N." "T" is also palatalized in Russian and in some pronunciations of Latin (in some phonetic environments). I could see, then, Italian having that feature as well, though I don't know from even cursory experience.


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## markandersh

En la Argentina, un país bien grande, hay varias influencias, incluyendo el castellano ibérico y el portugués brasileño. Trabajé un año con un argentino bien educado (que hablaba perfectamente el inglés también) y me acostumbré con las características de su lenguaje, a decir, el uso de "vos" como forma familiar semejante el "voce" en portugués, la falta del sonido "s" en muchos casos, y la pronunciación de la "ll" como la "j" portugués. Este hombre me explicó que la radio y la tele de México influencia el lenguaje en algunas regiones, mientras que el castellano de España influencia el lenguaje porteño (por ejemplo y sin sentido exclusivo).


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## markandersh

Finally, for today, I have had reason to look at Orthodox Christian liturgical texts in Romanian for the purpose of library cataloguing and liturgical/linguistic curiosity (I am a graduate of an Orthodox seminary with 2 master's degrees and a librarian with a third master's). Romanian certainly has heavy influence from Church Slavonic in terms of vocabulary, but the basic underlying grammar and structure remains distinctly Latin. Nonetheless, the inflection of nouns has largely broken down and I noticed a similarity to - kind of like a step toward Italian, with which Romanian seems more similar phonetically than either Romanian or Italian is to other Romance languages. The convergence of the two language families Latin & Slavonic) in simple constructions like "Doamne miluešte" ("Lord, have mercy": first word Latin, second word Slavonic) can be intriguing. (If there are any Romanians, especially Orthodox reading this, please forgive my spelling.)


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## Nino83

markandersh said:


> descubrí que ortográficamente y fonéticamente el portugués representa un paso reverso hacia el latín.
> PERO, cuando estuve en Portugal, no entendía casi nada
> A la vez, cuando era adolescente, pasé una tarde en la playa en San Diego charlando con dos chicas brasileñas (¡muy guapas!). Ellas hablaron portugués y yo hablé español, usando de vez en cuando variaciones portuguesas. Pués, nos entendimos.



Si, sull'ortografia, le consonanti e le vocali toniche, hai ragione, ma se consideriamo le vocali atone, la situazione cambia ed il portoghese europeo (come il catalano) sono quelli più simili al francese (e meno al latino).



markandersh said:


> Palatalization is the pronunciation of a consonant with a light "y" sound. This is done in Russian with most "E"s, and "И"s when they follow most consonants. Church Slavonic (with which I am also basically familiar on an elementary level) has the same feature. In Castilian Spanish, the "LL" is pronounced "ly" and in all forms of Spanish "ñ" is pronounced "ny"



This is how English people pronounce [ɲ] and [ʎ] (i.e [nj] and [lj], like in [bəloʊnjə] and [foʊlja] instead of [boloɲɲa] and [fɔʎʎa]). 
[ɲ] and [ʎ] are palatal sounds, while the English ones are nasal/lateral + yod.



markandersh said:


> Italian, with which Romanian seems more similar phonetically than either Romanian or Italian is to other Romance languages.



Maybe in some consonant, like ke/ki > ʧ, but the other consonants are more similar between Italian and other Western Romance languages than between Italian and Romanian:
quattuor > quattro, quatro vs. patru
lingua > lingua, língua vs. limbǎ
quando > quando, cuando vs. când
signum > segno, senho [ɲ] vs. semn
coxa > coscia, coxa [ʃ] vs. coapsǎ
gelu > gelo [l] vs. ger
testa > testa [t] vs țeastă [ʦ]
dico > dico, digo [d] vs. zic [z]
servum > servo vs. șerb /ʃ/
leporem > lepre, lebre [l] vs. iepure [j]
linum > lino [l] vs. in
gallina > gallina, galinha [l] vs. găină
vinea > vigna, vinha [ɲ] vs. vie [ij]
mulierem > moglie, mulher [ʎ] vs. muiere [j]
quid > che, que [k] vs. ce [ʧ]

As you can see, it's by far easier to understand Spanish, Galician or Brazilian Portuguese than Romanian. About European Portuguese and Catalan vs. Romanian, I'd say that these languages have vowel reduction (for example, loss of final vowels but "a", reduced form for some unstressed vowels) but Romanian has different consonants too, so it is more difficult to understand.

To a foreign speaker Italian and Romanian can seem similar because of vocalic plulars or due to the fact thet there are some affricates, like [ʧ] and [ʦ], but often these sounds indicate different Latin consonants, different words.

A little note: in this "new" forum it is not possible to write an /s/ intro brackets [] so it's impossible to transcribe it in IPA, because automatically all the tex becomes underlined.


----------



## Hulalessar

Penyafort said:


> In my opinion, Italian, due to its phonology, lexicon and prosody, is the most understandable of all the Romance languages to a speaker of a different Romance language. That does not necessarily mean it's really closer, only more understandable.
> 
> For instance, a Spaniard would definitely understand a text written in Portuguese much better than one in Italian. (In terms of core vocabulary, Portuguese and Spanish are very close and sometimes quite different from the Italian/French/Catalan counterparts. Think of words like 'bird', 'blue', 'cheese', 'eat', 'table', etc.) But when it comes to the same text spoken, it might turn the other way round.



I agree with all that and it shows that "closeness" is a bit of a slippery concept. If Portuguese and Spanish are brothers and Italian a cousin, in the written language that is what they come over as, but in the spoken language the Spanish boy is more like his Italian cousin than his Portuguese brother.


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## Youngfun

Oh yeah, in my experience I was surprised that even the French would understand spoken Italian.  And I'm not talking about people who studied Italian.


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## Nino83

Youngfun said:


> Oh yeah, in my experience I was surprised that even the French would understand spoken Italian.  And I'm not talking about people who studied Italian.



Are you sure of it? 
A French senior member of this forum (whom I wrote to in French) who is fluent in Spanish and Portuguese once told me "Pardon, mais mon italien tient en une douzaine de phrases. Tout juste de quoi ne pas mourir de faim."


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## Pedro y La Torre

Youngfun said:


> Oh yeah, in my experience I was surprised that even the French would understand spoken Italian.  And I'm not talking about people who studied Italian.



No, I don't believe that French people can understand spoken Italian without prior training (I certainly can't beyond the very basics). I find written Spanish easier to understand than Italian, too. Spoken European Portuguese is, of course, totally unintelligible.


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## Youngfun

I mean very simple sentence, and not everything. And I meant in daily conversation, not a scientific lecture.
For example "vaffanculo" is easily understood by the French as a swearword because it sounds similar to "vas te faire enculer" (ok in this case the French version is also understood by Italians).
Or when I told an Italian friend "Attenta, ci stanno i francesi fuori con i palloncini pieni d'acqua", they understood and went away.


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## Hulalessar

The degree of mutual intelligibilty may depend on the register and the subject matter. A Spaniard in Rome may understand the street signs but is going to have difficulty with ordering vegetables in a restaurant.


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## Nino83

Hulalessar said:


> A Spaniard in Rome may understand the street signs but is going to have difficulty with ordering vegetables in a restaurant.



"Una manzana, por favor?"
"Ecco qui la sua  melanzana!"

"Una bot*e*lla de  aceite, por favor"
"Ecco a lei una bottiglia di  aceto"


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## merquiades

It depends on the person, where they are from, the words they choose and exactly how they speak if Italian is understood by French. The French can understand it completely or else not grasp a single word.
A lot of French believe at least they can get by in Italy easily.
I have heard the same from Italians going to Spain or Mexico.  Of course they understand us!   
And people do get by


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## Nino83

merquiades said:


> A lot of French *believe* at least they can get by in Italy easily.





In my city there are a lot of tourists and when there are French tourists at the restaurant, they use French (or, some young French uses English)!
With Spanish, it is different.



merquiades said:


> Nino, it's una botella in Spanish, una botilla is a little boot.



Corrected.


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## merquiades

I have heard Frenchmen say they can speak French in Italy.
I remember a discussion of whether there should be German or Italian classes at a business school.  The director said with gestures. "No need for Italian.  When has an Italian not understood a Frenchmen when he speaks slowly!? It's practically the same language."


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## Pedro y La Torre

merquiades said:


> I have heard Frenchmen say they can speak French in Italy.
> I remember a discussion of whether there should be German or Italian classes at a business school.  The director said with gestures. "No need for Italian.  When has an Italian not understood a Frenchmen when he speaks slowly!? It's practically the same language."



Well, this is not true in my experience. I went to Italy with my then (French) girlfriend and we couldn't understand anything they said. English was our only recourse. We could read the signs with a fair degree of accuracy though.


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## Nino83

merquiades said:


> The director said with gestures. "No need for Italian.  When has an Italian not understood a Frenchmen when he speaks slowly!? It's practically the same language."



This is also due to the fact that French is the second foreign language taught at school in Italy.
By the way, very few French speak Italian at the restaurant or in the street when asking for some info.


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## izzyisozaki

Nino83 said:


> From a phonetic point of view, it's clear which language is more conservative (from Vulgar Latin):



Well I think I should first point out that the most conservative, as far as I can tell, is the Sardinian dialect. At the same time, however, it is argued that Old Italian (Tuscan) departs the least from Latin in relation to morphology and phonology. There is also an argument for Contemporary Italian [x], which I continue to believe is the most conservative overall.


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## Nino83

killerbee256 said:


> Does greek have much influence on Sicilian or Neapolitan phonology? I know there are many unique loan words from Greek in southern Italian dialects.


There is one syntactic feature that is related to the Greek influence, i.e avoiding the infinitive in subordinate clauses. This is a feature of Sicilian language (Sicily, Calabria, Salento). 
_Gli dissi *di andare* a casa_. _Ci dissi *mi va* a casa_. 
_Pensa *a studiare*! Pensa *mi studìi*! 
Risparmio i soldi *per andare* in vacanza. Rispammiu i soddi *mi vaiu* in vacanza. 
Penso *di andare* al cinema domani. Pensu *chi vaiu* o cinema dumani._


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## aefrizzo

Nino83 said:


> There is one syntactic feature that is related to the Greek influence, i.e avoiding the infinitive in subordinate clauses. This is a feature of Sicilian language (Sicily, Calabria, Salento).
> _Gli dissi *di andare* a casa_. _Ci dissi *mi va* a casa_.
> _Pensa *a studiare*! Pensa *mi studìi*!
> Risparmio i soldi *per andare* in vacanza. Rispammiu i soddi *mi vaiu* in vacanza.
> Penso *di andare* al cinema domani. Pensu *chi vaiu* o cinema dumani._


Hello Nino. 
Once again, as in previously debated topics as dyphtongization, rhotacism etc..., I find different features, instead of those you mentioned above, in the spoken Sicilian of Palermo. Yes, if I am not wrong, you admitted sometimes ago, to the existance of at least three zones in Sicily with different linguistic heritage.
_Gli dissi *di andare* a casa_. _Ci dissi *di irisinni* a casa_.
_Pensa *a studiare*! Pensa *a studiari*!
Risparmio i soldi *per andare* in vacanza. Rispammiu i soddi *pi iriminni * in vacanza. 
Penso *di andare* al cinema domani. Pensu *di iriminni* o cinema dumani._
I am not able to state how large nowaday is each of these zones, but can one ignore these differences when talking about Sicilian language?


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## Nino83

Ciao, aefrizzo, è sempre un piacere. 


aefrizzo said:


> I am not able to state how large nowaday is each of these zones, but can one ignore these differences when talking about Sicilian language?


From Rohlfs, _Grammatica storica della lingua italiana e dei suoi dialetti_, §717, page 102 (Vol. 3):


> L'infinito è pochissimo popolare in tre zone della parte più meridionale d'Italia: *nel canto nordorientale della Sicilia (prov. Messina), nella metà meridionale della Calabria (a sud della linea Nicastro-Catanzaro-Crotone) e nella penisola salentina (a sud della linea Taranto-Ostuni). *In queste tre aree l'infinito viene normalmente sostituito da una frase retta da congiunzione: anziché 'vuole andare' si dice 'vuole che vada'. Detta congiunzione è *mu < modo (anche mi o ma) in Calabria, mi nella Sicilia nordorientale, cu < quod nel Salento* (vedi al proposito i §§ 788-89) '. Il modo usato dopo queste congiunzioni è (con alcune eccezioni per il salentino) l'indicativo (cfr. § 688). Nella proposizione dipendente si ha sempre il presente, indipendentemente dalla 'Consecutio temporum' (cfr. § 669). [...]
> La stessa circonlocuzione viene usata in luogo dell'infinito dipendente da un sostantivo o aggettivo. [...]
> L'origine di queste espressioni sta nel sostrato greco di queste tre zone, che fino al medioevo furon di lingua greca4. In corrispondenza dello sviluppo generale del greco volgare, l'infinito divenne (probabilmente già in periodo prebizantino) impopolare anche nel greco parlato nell'Italia meridionale; e venne sostituito da una frase retta dalla congiunzione iva (greco moderno va). Cosi nei dialetti greci che ancora si parlano in un'areola della Calabria meridionale e in una parte della penisola salentina [...]
> La coincidenza tra parlata neolatina e greco, nell'Italia meridionale, è assoluta, e comprende anche molte particolarità5. Qua e là la perdita dell'infinito non è totale. Diversamente dal neogreco parlato in Grecia, in certi casi l'infinito s'è conservato nella grecità sudditaliana: si usa per esempio dopo i verbi 'potere', 'sapere', 'udire', 'fare', 'lasciare' [...]



In other words, in most dialects of Sicilian (_salentino, calabrese, siciliano nordorientale_), where the Greek influence was stronger, in these sentences we use _mu/mi + present indicative_ instead of _preposition + infinitive_.
You can find a lot of examples in internet, like:
_Cerca *di calmarti*. Cecca *mi ti cammi*. 
Digli *di venire*. Dicci *mi veni*.  _

So, the isogloss is west and south of the province of Messina (which is the dialect I speak).


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## Penyafort

Testing1234567 said:


> Looks like every romance language is between two other romance languages! (LOL)



This tends to happen in every _continuum_, although in the Romance languages it is probably a mixture of continuum, waves and later changes.



francisgranada said:


> The Catalan can be surely put between the Spanish and French, but also between the Spanish and Italian; the Sardinian between the Spanish and Italian; even the Portuguese between the Italian and Spanish (at least in some cases); etc ...



To be accurate, Catalan is between Aragonese and Occitan (in the continuum). At least, in an early stage, before Catalan started to be in direct contact with Spanish and French in the early Renaissance.

Placing Sardinian in the continuum is, in my opinion, more complicated , given its isolation/archaicity, but you have a point, as the history of influences from both peninsulas in it are clear. What I fail to see are the reasons why you would place Portuguese between Italian and Spanish...



Hulalessar said:


> I agree with all that and it shows that "closeness" is a bit of a slippery concept. If Portuguese and Spanish are brothers and Italian a cousin, in the written language that is what they come over as, but in the spoken language the Spanish boy is more like his Italian cousin than his Portuguese brother.



It should be noticed, though, that Spanish wasn't that far from their Romance sisters in the late Middle Ages, at least in terms of phonology and spelling. "Alien" sounds like /θ/ and /x/ did not exist yet.

If we compare Old Spanish to Old Portuguese, Old Catalan and Old French:

- in the four of them, /ts/ was written ç before a/o/u and c before e/i

_OSp. cielo /'tsjelo/, OCt. cel /tsɛl/, OFr. ciel /tsjɛl/
OSp. coraçon /koɾa'tson/, OCt. canço /kan'tso/, OFr. chançon /tʃãn'tsõn/_​
- in the four of them, /dz/ was usually written z

- in the four of them, /s/ was written -ss- between vowels

- in the four of them, /z/ was written -s- between vowels

- /ʒ/ was written j before a/o/u and g before e/i

- /ʃ/ was written x, as in the rest of languages in Iberia.

- in all of them, b and v were still distinct

- qu- before a (_quando_) was still in use, and so variants different from ñ

- initial f- was still preserved (_fijo /'fiʒo/, fazer /fa'dzeɾ/_)

etc.


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## Nawaq

Penyafort said:


> _OSp. cielo /'tsjelo/, OCt. cel /tsɛl/, OFr. ciel /tsjɛl/
> OSp. coraçon /koɾa'tson/, OCt. canço /kan'tso/, *OFr. chançon /tʃãn'tsõn/*_​




Hi,

I am just curious, I don't know much about Old French but, how could _chançon_ become _cœur ? _I thought _cuer_ was the old version, _chançon_ look like modern _chanson_... I don't know if I even got this right, sorry.


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## Nino83

> e venne sostituito da una frase retta dalla congiunzione *ina* (greco moderno *na*).


Errata corrige, comment #256


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## Ben Jamin

Nawaq said:


> Hi,
> 
> I am just curious, I don't know much about Old French but, how could _chançon_ become _cœur ? _I thought _cuer_ was the old version, _chançon_ look like modern _chanson_... I don't know if I even got this right, sorry.


What makes you think that "_chançon _ became _cœur"? _


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## merquiades

Cor < Cuer < Coeur  is a straightforward evolution from Latin


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## Penyafort

Ben Jamin said:


> What makes you think that "_chançon _ became _cœur"? _



Oh, I wasn't implying the three meant the same, sorry for the misunderstanding. I just couldn't quickly come out with any common example for the three languages, so I used 'song' for Catalan and French but 'heart' for Spanish, as in the latter 'song' is can*ci*ón. Anyway, it must be said that Old Spanish often wrote ç before e and i too, so _cançion _can be seen in quite a few medieval texts.


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## Nawaq

Ben Jamin said:


> What makes you think that "_chançon _ became _cœur"? _



Sorry, It's just because the first three were all meaning sky,so I thought that the three just below would all mean the same too. Really sorry, and sorry to Penyafort, for not understanding.


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## francisgranada

Penyafort said:


> ... What I fail to see are the reasons why you would place Portuguese between Italian and Spanish...


 My idea was as follows: whichever 3 related languages (represented by a point) we put on a graph (let's suppose a bidimensional diagram for our purposes) where the distance between the points represent the degree of "closeness" (e.g. number of common features), they'll generally form a triangle (even in case of the evident continuum it will be rather a "flat" triangle than a straight line). I.e. each point (language) can be seen as if it were between the two others (e.g. projecting it on the opposite side of the triangle). So if we take in consideration only the Spanish, Portuguese and Italian, then even the Portuguese can be seen (partially) "between" Spanish and Italian because of many common features in It. and Port. absent in Spanish (distinction between voiced and unvoiced s, pronounciation of ge/gi - though not equal but closer to each other than in Sp., lack of diphthongs in many cases, initial f- instead of h-, distinction between b/v, etc ...).

I don't say that Italian-Portugese-Spanish form a continuum, of course. My post was a reaction to something written before - perhaps it's not important any more ...

(the proper idea is probably much simpler than my explanation above  ...)


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## Hulalessar

The question is how you measure "closeness".

Genetically Spanish and Portuguese are closer to each other than either is to Italian because both have a common ancestor they do not share with Italian. That though is not the whole story because Portuguese has wandered off and the distance it has moved away from Spanish is greater in many respects than the distance Spanish and Italian have moved away from each other. It is like I said above - you may look more like your cousin than your brother.

A problem is that no genetic classification of Romance languages is entirely satisfactory, in good part because it is too influenced by geography both political and physical. Genetic classification in any event only tells you part of the story and needs to be supplemented by the wave model. That shows how languages interact with each other and the interaction is rarely entirely one way. A further complication is that standard varieties may have had injected into them what the Spanish call "cultismos" and/or have been subjected to deliberate archaising.

The best way to look at Romance languages is to ignore the geography and think of them as developing from Latin and considering how far each one has moved away from Latin. How far you consider each has moved depends on how much weight is given to each of lexicon, morphology, syntax, phonology and semantics. I doubt anyone is going to agree on how many moving away points each language should get, though I think everyone will agree that French will win.


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