# Romance Languages: Mutual Intelligibility



## ronanpoirier

Inspired by this thread on the Slavic Languages forum, I decided to open one about the Romance Languages in general, not only the main ones. There's another similar thread here.

What also influenced me to wirte this post to know other people's views, were all those etymology questions where we can see, sometimes totally difference between similar languages or some similarity between very far languages.

Well, place your bets!


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## vince

What is your question?

Regarding mutual intelligibility, French and Romanian aren't intelligible with any other Romance language to my knowledge.
Standard Italian (Tuscan-based) is partially intelligible with Castilian Spanish. I am guessing that Castilian Spanish is partially intelligible with Catalan, though probably less than 60% orally. Castilian Spanish is intelligible with Brazilian Portuguese but less so with European Portuguese. Catalan may be intelligible with Occitan, I am not sure though.

Historically, there was a dialect continuum. Prior to the mid 1800's, one could go from the Algarve in Portugal to Puglia in what is now southern Italy, where every two neighboring villages on the way could understand each other.


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## john_riemann_soong

How does one pinpoint classifications on a dialect continuum anyway? (I'm just amazed.)


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## vince

When nationalist movements arose in the mid to late 1850's and the masses started to become educated, the central governments of each country had to establish a standard "dialect" to teach nationwide. So the dialect continuum between Portugal and Italy gradually collapsed (and is still collapsing) into only five languages: Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, French, and Italian.


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## Mutichou

As a French speaker, I cannot understand other Romance languages when they are spoken (except Spanish, but I have studied it). But I can more or less understand written Catalan or Italian.


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## Tino_no

Hi, I speak spanish and know little italian. I can understand spoken italian and some portuguese, but I've never heard a catalan speaker. I can read very little french but I just cannot understand spoken french because of its large vowel inventory.
There are other romance languages like Romanian, Occitan, but I barely know something about them.
Saludos!


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## TarisWerewolf

Spanish and Italian are somewhat close. I was fluent in Spanish when I left high school, then when I took first-year Italian in university, my Spanish was overwritten. I can still understand Spanish (I can understand it in speech or in writing) but I can't make my own sentences easily... except when necessary. My Italian has waned a little lately, but that's 'cause lack of exposure and practice.


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## BlueWolf

vince said:


> Regarding mutual intelligibility, French and Romanian aren't intelligible with any other Romance language to my knowledge.



Written French is very clear for me (Italian), I'm able to read French even if I can't speak it. Spoken French isn't.
About Romanian, I've heard Romanians find Italian quite easy to understand, but the opposite isn't so true.
Spanish is probably the easiest to understand for an Italian.


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## parakseno

vince said:


> What is your question?
> 
> Regarding mutual intelligibility, French and Romanian aren't intelligible with any other Romance language to my knowledge.



  Well, I'm Romanian I could understand Italian pretty well even before studying it a little. I think Italian and Romanian ARE mutually intelligible... well, at least from the Romanian point of view 

 Don't know what to say about the rest... I think a Romanian that hasn't studied French wouldn't understand a lot, although there are a lot of words of French origin in our language (but he might be able to get around)... 

  Spanish is intelligible to a Romanian to a certain extend, but then again that might be because of the many movies in Spanish that are on Romanian TV. Portuguese sounds a bit more exotic (at least to my ears) and I'm not hazarding to make any asumptions here (I shall ask my friends and see their views and I'll come back to you ).

  I've seen a Romansh text and I could understand quite a lot of it (it was a newspaper article), don't know what to say about the spoken language...

 I've also seen some Aromanian at it looks like some very old Romanian texts (like something from the Middle Ages). I've even heard a bit on TV (I think I'm not allowed to say where... no comercials here ) but I didn't understand very much. There were words that I could understand, but I think not enough for a proper comprehension of what was being said... But the written text I found much more intelligible, maybe because the person was speaking quite fast.

Guess that would be enough for now...


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## Outsider

john_riemann_soong said:


> How does one pinpoint classifications on a dialect continuum anyway? (I'm just amazed.)


Excelent question: you can't.

In my opinion, some of the replies to this thread have greatly oversimplified the matter. Within each of the Romance languages, there are dialects, which may be more or less intelligible with neighbouring languages. Plus, most posters forgot about "transitional" languages such as Catalan and Occitan. The only Romance language I would agree is quite isolated from the other ones is Romanian. (There used to be languages intermediate between it and the Western Romance languages, but they have become extinct.)

Having said this, do realize that the situation in Western Europe is different from the one you probably have in China. Around here, individual nations have appeared, they've been around for several centuries in most cases, some for many centuries, and there has been a significant amount of centralization within each of them. To give you a concrete example of what I mean, if you cross the border from Spain to Portugal, the linguistic transition _will_ be sharp. No dialect continuum, in the overwhelming majority of places; Spanish here, Portuguese there. (How different the two are from each other is a different matter.)

Now, for my experience. I heard Spanish, French, and Italian on and off on TV ever since I was a child. Did I understand them? Or, better said, how much did I understand them?... It's difficult enough to remember, let alone to be objective. Yes, there were lots of words I could recognize, I would even say that I was "learning" a little bit of each of them in the process -- but I had subtitles to help me.

Nowadays, I can understand spoken standard French, albeit with some difficulty, sometimes, because I haven't had the chance to practice or listen to it much (English is much easier to understand, for me). As for divergent dialects like Quebec French, forget it! Yeah, I can pick up a bit of it, but the effort I have to make to adjust to the different accent is tremendous!

In spite of all the difficulties I have with French, Italian is considerably harder to understand for me. Yeah, I can recognize a fair percentage of the words, but I can't follow a conversation on TV to any satisfactory degree. The explanation is simple: I studied French at school, I never studied Italian. So, these comparisons get quickly tangled up with one's personal experience.

As for Spanish, I'm getting better and better at understanding it. Practicing in these forums helps a lot, though it's not the first time I've taken a shot at Spanish. Not many years ago, while I was studying, I would sometimes consult textbooks in Spanish. When the subject is technical, it's generally not difficult to read Spanish. But then, technical jargon is more or less the same, be it in Spanish, Portuguese, English, or Russian.


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## robbie_SWE

I must say that I am quite "shocked" that Romanian and French are apparently two languages that aren't understandable by people from other Romance countries. Yes, they are the languages that have changed the most, but French was for me actually quite easy to learn (let's not talk about Italian, which was even easier for me), because I had Romanian in the back of my mind. 

_*Limba Română are mult în comun cu limba Franceză. *_

_*La langue Roumaine a beaucoup en commune avec la langue Française. *_

As Bluewolf stated in his post, most Romanians understand "some" (in my case, before I started studying 30-35%) written Italian. I also believe that Italians would be able to understand some written Romanian, but not as much as Romanians understanding Italian texts. 

Portuguese, I think, would be the language that common Romanians would have a hard time understanding. 

Toate cele bune! (a Romanian parting phrase, guess what it means!?  )

 robbie

PS: if you guys want a list where you can compare verbs in the Latin languages and see how many you would understand, please check this thread: http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?p=1576228#post1576228


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## Outsider

robbie_SWE said:


> Portuguese, I think, would be the language that common Romanians would have a hard time understanding.


And yet people often say that Romanian and Portuguese sound similar.


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## gwrthgymdeithasol

vince said:


> So the dialect continuum between Portugal and Italy gradually collapsed (and is still collapsing) into only five languages: Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, French, and Italian.



As a long-time student of Romance languages, I have to say you couldn't be further from the truth. 

Try these, starting geographically from Portugal: Portuguese, Mirandese, Fala, Galician, Asturian, Aragonese, Spanish, Catalan, Gascon, Occitan, Auvergnat, Provençal, Franco-Provençal, French, Gallo, Picard, Jerseyan, Guernseyan, Walloon, Romansch, Friulian, Ladin, Lombard, Ligurian, Piedmontese, Emiliano-Romagnolo, Venetian, Italian, Neapolitan, Corsican, Sicilian, Sardinian Gallurese, Sardinian Logudorese, Sardinian Sassarese, Sardinian Campidanese, Latin, Moldovan, Romanian, Megleno-Romanian, Istro-Romanian, Macedo-Romanian.

I visit websites, read books etc in virtually all these languages, and they're all living (with the semi-exception of Latin), although many are in bad shape. 

Just naming languages throws up questions and issues, and no doubt an Italian will be along soon to state categorically that Sicilian isn't a language, the nationalistic French speaker will say that all those from Gallo to Walloon are 'only dialects' etc etc. I have my answers prepared ;-)


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## robbie_SWE

Outsider said:


> And yet people often say that Romanian and Portuguese sound similar.


 
I know! I thought so too in the beginning, but then I started learning Portuguese. That thought died out quite quickly! Still love Portuguese!

robbie


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## betulina

As most of you have stated, there's a big difference between written intelligibility and oral intelligibility. 

As a Catalan, I can read French to understand many words and get the general meaning of a text, but I could not understand much of the same text read aloud. The same would happen for Portuguese. I have never heard Romanian yet, but I think it would be the same case, although it requires more effort in written texts. 

Standard Italian sounds more clear to our ears, as the difference between written and oral language is not so big. However, it only means that we can recognise some more words when speaking. 

As for Occitan, both languages (Occitan and Catalan) are mutually intelligible to a great extent. I can follow a conversation with an Occitan without any of us speaking the other language quite easily.


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## Outsider

robbie_SWE said:


> I know! I thought so too in the beginning, but then I started learning Portuguese. That thought died out quite quickly! Still love Portuguese!
> 
> robbie


Coppola's film _Bram Stoker's Dracula_ (actually a misnomer, if you ask me  ) was the best chance I had so far to listen to a substantial amount of Romanian. I could not make out a word if it, either, I'm afraid!


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## gwrthgymdeithasol

Outsider said:


> Coppola's film _Bram Stoker's Dracula_ (actually a misnomer, if you ask me  ) was the best chance I had so far to listen to a substantial amount of Romanian. I could not make out a word if it, either, I'm afraid!



That's OK, it was a few centuries out with the Romanian anyway!


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## Outsider

Because they used contemporary Romanian, rather than Renaissance/19th century Romanian?...
Now, you've made me curious to know how well the actors spoke the language.


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## robbie_SWE

Because most of it was probably fake Romanian, or even worse Transylvanian Romanian!!! (I don't even understand what they say).  Romania has different dialects too and not all are so easy. Have you tried listening to this (press on one of the sound files): 

http://www.romanianvoice.com/poezii/poezii/emotie.php

Good Luck! 

robbie


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## Etcetera

I used to study Latin in my first year at the University, and since then I can understand texts in Italian, if they're not too difficult.


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## Outsider

Damn, even with the lyrics in front of me, I got lost after three verses! 
Still, I'm not very good at understanding song lyrics in any language.


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## BlueWolf

Outsider said:


> Damn, even with the lyrics in front of me, I got lost after three verses!
> Still, I'm not very good at understanding song lyrics in any language.



Yeah, I agree, I always find songs harder to understand.


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## robbie_SWE

Sorry, was the only thing I could find. Try an online radio or something like that. 

 robbie


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## Etcetera

gwrthgymdeithasol said:


> Just naming languages throws up questions and issues, and no doubt an Italian will be along soon to state categorically that Sicilian isn't a language, the nationalistic French speaker will say that all those from Gallo to Walloon are 'only dialects' etc etc. I have my answers prepared ;-)


"Only dialects"!  Well, I'm currently studying Italian and Piedmontese (and my knowledge of the latter is so far better), and they're so unlike each other that you can't call Piedmontese 'a dialect' of Italian. It's closer to French or rather Provençal.


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## Outsider

robbie_SWE said:


> Sorry, was the only thing I could find. Try an online radio or something like that.
> 
> robbie


 Oh, I get it now! The singer repeats the first two verses. It's the chorus.

He sings fast!


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## robbie_SWE

That's Romanian for you! We speak quite fast, like the people from Neapoli!  

robbie


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## robbie_SWE

Oh, I found another poem which does not include any music in the audio. So, this is spoken Romanian: 

http://www.romanianvoice.com/poezii/poezii/artrebui.php

Take a look if you've never heard Romanian. 

 robbie


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## gwrthgymdeithasol

Outsider said:


> Because they used contemporary Romanian, rather than Renaissance/19th century Romanian?...
> Now, you've made me curious to know how well the actors spoke the language.



Yes....I think it's funny that they go to all that trouble (and presumably expense) to get 'authentic' language, only to stop well short!


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## riccio

TarisWerewolf said:


> Spanish and Italian are somewhat close.


Not so much.  If I'm not wrong they share 82% of lexicon, which seems high but is little compared with 89% of Italian/French and Spanish/Portuguese.
 For example, Spanish has many very common words not resembling the Italian/French corresponding words at all (asino/âne > burro [butter in Italian!]; cane/chien > perro; faccia/face > cara [dear in Italian!]; fratello/frère > hermano; gamba/jambe > pierna; letto/lit > cama...).
Nevertheless _spoken_ Spanish is more intelligible for us Italians than spoken French and Portuguese (what a puzzle!).


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## betulina

robbie_SWE said:


> Take a look if you've never heard Romanian.



Fantastic links, Robbie! Thanks! 

And the truth is that I understand why people say that Romanian and Portuguese sound similar now!  I think they are "softer" than the other Romance languages (at least to my ears) and some of the Romanian sounds I heard in this poem made me think of some Portuguese ones (although I've never learned it, I'm just talking from the outside). Both have a very nice musicality. 

Edit - Oh, and I didn't get a word.


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## ronanpoirier

riccio said:
			
		

> Not so much.  If I'm not wrong they share 82% of lexicon, which seems high but is little compared with 89% of Italian/French and Spanish/Portuguese.
> For example, Spanish has many very common words not resembling the Italian/French corresponding words at all (asino/âne > burro [butter in Italian!]; cane/chien > perro; faccia/face > cara [dear in Italian!]; fratello/frère > hermano; gamba/jambe > pierna; letto/lit > cama...).
> Nevertheless _spoken_ Spanish is more intelligible for us Italians than spoken French and Portuguese (what a puzzle!).


That's fun. I mean. talking about Portuguese, we'd have "asno" and "burro", so we have a word equivalent to the Spanish version and to the French/Italian. About cane/chien we have only "cão". About faccia/face we have "face" and "cara", again, equivalents to the Spanish version and to the French/Italian. And "cara" may also be the adjective "dear" in Portuguese too. About letto/lit, we have "cama" (where we sleep) and "leito", like those in hospitals. At a first sight they don't have difference, but we use them as having different meanings.

*About oral intelligibility*:
I always found spoken Italian easier than Spanish... I don't know why.
I had one month of French classes and I could understand all the words I knew (of course I studied by myself apart at home) at the French channel.
I never heard Romanian... but I'm downloading one of those files showed on a previous post.
I never heard Catalan but I'm sure I'd understand a bunch of it.
And I'm sure I'd understand like 98% of Galician  But who knows? I never heard it before...

*About written intelligibility:*
I believe that the Iberian Languages have a bigger degree of written intelligibility than the others. But that's that story: if you know one you can easily understand the other. Example: I just had a little overview on Wikipedia about Catalan, but I understood like 99% of what I saw written in Catalan because of my previous knowledge on French and Spanish. I think the same would happen to someone who's trying to understand Galician and already have some knowledge of Spanish and Portuguese.
And what about Italian and Romanian? I believe that if you just learn the basic rules of Italian you get it really well. In example: "Frase" and "Frasi". If you don't know that words that end by "e" in Italian make its plural changing it to "i", you'd think those are different words.  Now, Romanian... that's a different story, but I believe I can understand some.
About French, knowing English is a big step, in my opinion.
But the best of all: Latin. Knowing it we can understand really better all the Romance Languages  Not to meantion cientifical/technical names.


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## robbie_SWE

betulina said:


> Fantastic links, Robbie! Thanks!
> 
> And the truth is that I understand why people say that Romanian and Portuguese sound similar now!  I think they are "softer" than the other Romance languages (at least to my ears) and some of the Romanian sounds I heard in this poem made me think of some Portuguese ones (although I've never learned it, I'm just talking from the outside). Both have a very nice musicality.
> 
> Edit - Oh, and I didn't get a word.


 
Ooohh, it warms the heart Betulina!  First nice thing I've heard somebody say about Romanian. Thanks, even if you didn't understand it! 
(it's a poem about time going by, how we get older to finally vanish). 

 robbie


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## pickypuck

riccio said:


> Not so much.  If I'm not wrong they share 82% of lexicon, which seems high but is little compared with 89% of Italian/French and Spanish/Portuguese.
> For example, Spanish has many very common words not resembling the Italian/French corresponding words at all (asino/âne > burro [butter in Italian!]; cane/chien > perro; faccia/face > cara [dear in Italian!]; fratello/frère > hermano; gamba/jambe > pierna; letto/lit > cama...).
> Nevertheless _spoken_ Spanish is more intelligible for us Italians than spoken French and Portuguese (what a puzzle!).


 
asino/âne > asno
cane/chien > can
faccia/face > faz
letto/lit > lecho

Maybe you find more similarity now  

Gamba also means pierna in the expression "meter la gamba" (= meter la pata). And the adjective of the noun "hermano" is "fraterno", which looks like the French and Italian nouns.

¡Olé!


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## Outsider

robbie_SWE said:


> Oh, I found another poem which does not include any music in the audio. So, this is spoken Romanian:
> 
> http://www.romanianvoice.com/poezii/poezii/artrebui.php
> 
> Take a look if you've never heard Romanian.
> 
> robbie


Pleasantly read! Thank you very much for that link, Robbie.


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## vince

gwrthgymdeithasol said:


> As a long-time student of Romance languages, I have to say you couldn't be further from the truth.
> 
> Try these, starting geographically from Portugal: Portuguese, Mirandese, Fala, Galician, Asturian, Aragonese, Spanish, Catalan, Gascon, Occitan, Auvergnat, Provençal, Franco-Provençal, French, Gallo, Picard, Jerseyan, Guernseyan, Walloon, Romansch, Friulian, Ladin, Lombard, Ligurian, Piedmontese, Emiliano-Romagnolo, Venetian, Italian, Neapolitan, Corsican, Sicilian, Sardinian Gallurese, Sardinian Logudorese, Sardinian Sassarese, Sardinian Campidanese, Latin, Moldovan, Romanian, Megleno-Romanian, Istro-Romanian, Macedo-Romanian.
> 
> I visit websites, read books etc in virtually all these languages, and they're all living (with the semi-exception of Latin), although many are in bad shape.



How many people (especially those in the cities) understand the lesser known Romance languages? e.g. go to Milano and speak Lombard.

That is what is meant by "the dialect continuum has collapsed into 5 languages".


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## avalon2004

Native Portuguese speakers probably won't appreciate me saying this (sorry!) but I could clearly understand Portuguese after having studying Spanish to an intermediate level (at least the written forms, the speaking was somewhat harder). The same applies with Italian and Catalan, though maybe less so. French, however, does not sound like any of those languages and therefore it is harder to understand if you simply speak another Romance language. I can pick out a substantial amount of words in Romanian but not enough to qualify for understanding as such.

Basically, whilst several of the languages are very similar you are unlikely to understand them completely without some degree of study in them, no matter what language you speak.


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## gwrthgymdeithasol

Etcetera said:


> "Only dialects"!  Well, I'm currently studying Italian and Piedmontese (and my knowledge of the latter is so far better), and they're so unlike each other that you can't call Piedmontese 'a dialect' of Italian. It's closer to French or rather Provençal.



Absolutely. I've noticed you refer to it in other posts, and have been surprised that no one appears to have shown an interest...


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## gwrthgymdeithasol

vince said:


> How many people (especially those in the cities) understand the lesser known Romance languages? e.g. go to Milano and speak Lombard.
> 
> That is what is meant by "the dialect continuum has collapsed into 5 languages".




First paragraph: yes, agreed; second: well, you've missed out Romanian, but otherwise, you've listed the 'money' languages, and I can understand why you'd do that, especially if you look at the mass media of the countries those languages are spoken in. But southern Europe has more than its cities, and out in the country, the dialect continuum is still there, albeit frailer than it once was.


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## übermönch

After studying only French and a little Latin, Catalan was easier to understand than, say, Italian or even Spanish. It does look like French - with all that unnescessary letters dropped or fused  - though I've never heared it spoken. Galician is supposed to be very close to Portugese, as Ronanpoirier already pointed out - disputably it's as "the same language" as Moldavian and Romanian. Another interessting thing is, that the Venetian dialect of Italy is actually from the Spanish branch - just how did it get there?

well, what else? I also understand almost quite some swearings or other random words in Romansh and Romanian ; through German and Russian, however.


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## riccio

pickypuck said:


> asino/âne > asno
> cane/chien > can
> faccia/face > faz
> letto/lit > lecho
> 
> Maybe you find more similarity now
> 
> Gamba also means pierna in the expression "meter la gamba" (= meter la pata). And the adjective of the noun "hermano" is "fraterno", which looks like the French and Italian nouns.
> 
> ¡Olé!


Of course, but I was talking about the most common version of the word, the one I heard more often (the frequency may depend on the meaning or not, that's not important). 
We too have 'germano' for 'hermano',  with a stricter meaning (son of the same two parents); or the ancient 'magione' for 'maison' ('casa'); or 'parrocchetto' from the French 'perroquet' to refer to a certain species of parrot ('loro').
Since we are talking about languages of the same family, that's definitely normal. Even the English 'queen' ('reina') is the same of the Swedish 'kvinna' ('mujer').
But in general I think Spanish is a little more distant from Italian than French.


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## pickypuck

riccio said:


> Of course, but I was talking about the most common version of the word, the one I heard more often


 
Yes, I know  



			
				riccio said:
			
		

> But in general I think Spanish is a little more distant from Italian than French.


 
I disagree with this. It is said that French is the most evolved (different) language from Latin and Italian the one which has changed less. The Iberian languages would be between those. Then, Spanish and Italian would be less distant than Italian and French. Anyway I'm not certain if this is true but I can say that you can understand Italian (more or less, of course) without having studied it before. This doesn't happen with French. Well, this is my experience, I know yours is completely different  

¡Olé!


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## riccio

pickypuck said:


> I disagree with this. It is said that French is the most evolved (different) language from Latin and Italian the one which has changed less. The Iberian languages would be between those. Then, Spanish and Italian would be less distant than Italian and French. Anyway I'm not certain if this is true but I can say that you can understand Italian (more or less, of course) without having studied it before. This doesn't happen with French. Well, this is my experience, I know yours is completely different
> 
> ¡Olé!


Just one specification. I'm considering similarities under the _lexical_ point of view. Certainly French is the most (and Italian the less) innovative Romance language, but in what sense? Lexical changes from Latin may be shared, especially if you consider that the two countries are near and share a lot of history. 

Un'ultima cosa: ma se simm' tutt'e dduje 'e Napule, pecché parlamm' inglese? 
Voglio dire: in questa sezione del forum non possiamo parlare come ci pare (visto che tanto, come latini, ci capiamo)?


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## robbie_SWE

riccio said:


> Just one specification. I'm considering similarities under the _lexical_ point of view. Certainly French is the most (and Italian the less) innovative Romance language, but in what sense? Lexical changes from Latin may be shared, especially if you consider that the two countries are near and share a lot of history.
> 
> Un'ultima cosa: ma se simm' tutt'e dduje 'e Napule, pecché parlamm' inglese?
> Voglio dire: in questa sezione del forum non possiamo parlare come ci pare (visto che tanto, come latini, ci capiamo)?


 
Si, capisco quasi completamente...ma non capisco la parola "dduje", dal'un Latino al'altro, puoi spiegare??  

 robbie


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## riccio

robbie_SWE said:


> Si, capisco quasi completamente...ma non capisco la parola "dduje", dal'un Latino al'altro, puoi spiegare??


Doi (2).


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## robbie_SWE

riccio said:


> Doi (2).


 
Haha...Grazie o Mulţumesc!


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## BlueWolf

riccio said:


> But in general I think Spanish is a little more distant from Italian than French.


Talking about spoken languages it isn't true (you can easily test it).
You have to remember that since French has a written system that try to keep the similarity between French and Latin, most of the words are pronunced differently than how they are written, so they are inunderstandable for Italians (for example loup is understandable, but it is pronunced [lu], that isn't enough similar to our [lupo]). Moreover French is used to unite two words if the second begins with a vowel.
Second point, the French verbal system is very different from Italian ones, while Spanish one is very similar. So if you hear a Spanish sentence maybe you won't understand all the words but the verbs are clear and you can have an idea, in French you can only understand (if you're lucky) some words, but since you won't understand the verbs, you'll have understood nothing.


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## vince

I agree, French does not have a present progressive tense (e.g. "I walk" vs. "I am walking")

Plus it has truncated the final syllable off many Latin words, whereas Italian/Spanish/Portuguese just changed feminine endings to a and masculine to o. This probably explains why French words are so difficult to understand. Catalan only truncates the final syllable off masculine-type endings, I believe.

Then there's the conversion of c --> ch
e.g. cosa (thing) --> cos --> chose

And stressed e --> oi (pronounced "wa")
fe (faith) --> foi
crere (to believe) --> croire
caer (to fall) --> chaer --> choir [chwar] --> (replacement by tombar)

Also, disappearance of most verb endings.

Also, different demonstratives compared to Italian/Spanish (aquest vs. ce)
also, the use of only one verb "to be": être

also small words like con vs. avec (though Catalan uses amb)
poder --> poer --> pover --> pouvoir


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## riccio

BlueWolf said:


> Talking about spoken languages it isn't true (you can easily test it).
> You have to remember that since French has a written system that try to keep the similarity between French and Latin, most of the words are pronunced differently than how they are written, so they are inunderstandable for Italians (for example loup is understandable, but it is pronunced [lu], that isn't enough similar to our [lupo]). Moreover French is used to unite two words if the second begins with a vowel.
> Second point, the French verbal system is very different from Italian ones, while Spanish one is very similar. So if you hear a Spanish sentence maybe you won't understand all the words but the verbs are clear and you can have an idea, in French you can only understand (if you're lucky) some words, but since you won't understand the verbs, you'll have understood nothing.


Scusa un momento, mi esprimo in italiano se no sembra che non riesco a essere chiaro: ho già spiegato che il discorso era limitato al _lessico_; e ho detto io stesso che è più facile capire lo spagnolo che il francese parlato.
L'esempio di lupo/loup non mi pare dei migliori, visto che in spagnolo si dice _lobo_, che in italiano è tutt'altra cosa (addirittura un falso amico hai preso)!
Quanto al sistema verbale, idem: se permetti mi è più naturale, per parlare di stamattina all'alba, usare il passato prossimo che quello remoto, tanto per fare un esempio.

_Corea del Norte desoyó las peticiones de la Comunidad Internacional y efectuó su primera prueba nuclear esta madrugada.
_


vince said:


> also, the use of only one verb "to be": être


I ensure you that it's easier to turn 'essere/stare' into the unique form 'être' than into 'ser/estar', because of the very different cases in which the two verbs are used in Italian and Spanish.


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## BlueWolf

riccio said:


> Scusa un momento, mi esprimo in italiano se no sembra che non riesco a essere chiaro: ho già spiegato che il discorso era limitato al _lessico_; e ho detto io stesso che è più facile capire lo spagnolo che il francese parlato.
> L'esempio di lupo/loup non mi pare dei migliori, visto che in spagnolo si dice _lobo_, che in italiano è tutt'altra cosa!
> Quanto al sistema verbale, idem: se permetti mi è più naturale, per parlare di stamattina all'alba, usare il passato prossimo che quello remoto, tanto per fare un esempio.
> 
> _Corea del Norte desoyó las peticiones de la Comunidad Internacional y efectuó su primera prueba nuclear esta madrugada._



Loup era solo un esempio, la perdita delle finali consonantiche nel parlato è tipica del francese nel suo complesso, pertanto magari molte parole sono simili nello scritto, ma poi a conti fatti nel parlato risultano più comprensibili le versioni (senz'altro meno numerose, ma ancora alte) dello spagnolo.
Per il sistema verbale, prova a fare questi paragoni:

je perds - yo perdo - *io perdo*
      tu perds - tu perdes - *tu perdi*
      il perd - él perde - *egli perde*
      nous perdons - nos perdemos - *noi perdiamo*
      vous perdez - vos perdéis - *voi perdete*
      ils perdent - ellos perdon - *essi perdono

*       je aimais - yo amaba - *io amavo*
      tu aimais - tu amabas - *tu amavi*
      il aimait - él amaba - *egli amava*
      nous aimaions - nos amábamos - *noi amavamo*
      vous aimiez - vos amabais - *voi amavate*
      ils aimaient - ellos amaban - *essi amavano*

Sul discorso del passato remoto e del passato prossimo, qui si sta parlando di intellegibilità, non è importante cosa ti sarebbe più naturale se fossi tu a parlare l'altra lingua. Il passato remoto spagnolo è simile al nostro (che ci è perfettamente comprensibile, visto che, anche se non lo usiamo più nel parlato, lo usiamo ancora nello scritto), mentre il passato prossimo francese mi ha dato dei problemi. Per esempio "elle a + participio passato" (il passato prossimo) è pronunciato "ela + pp", che a noi suona ella (=lei), facendoci perciò perdere la percezione del passato prossimo.


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## riccio

BlueWolf said:


> Loup era solo un esempio, la perdita delle finali consonantiche nel parlato è tipica del francese nel suo complesso, pertanto magari molte parole sono simili nello scritto, ma poi a conti fatti nel parlato risultano più comprensibili le versioni (senz'altro meno numerose, ma ancora alte) dello spagnolo.


Ripeto: sul parlato stiamo dicendo la stessa cosa da un paio d'anni.


BlueWolf said:


> Per il sistema verbale, prova a fare questi paragoni:
> 
> je perds - yo perdo - *io perdo*
> tu perds - tu perdes - *tu perdi*
> il perd - él perde - *egli perde*
> nous perdons - nos perdemos - *noi perdiamo*
> vous perdez - vos perdéis - *voi perdete*
> ils perdent - ellos perdon - *essi perdono
> 
> *       j'aimais - yo amaba - *io amavo*
> tu aimais - tu amabas - *tu amavi*
> il aimait - él amaba - *egli amava*
> nous aimions - nos amábamos - *noi amavamo*
> vous aimiez - vos amabais - *voi amavate*
> ils aimaient - ellos amaban - *essi amavano*


Sono esattamente la stessa cosa nelle tre lingue. Non ho capito perché una desinenza -ez dovrebbe essere più astrusa di una desinenza -éis, a me - _lessicalmente_, ripeto - interessa la radice. E quella è uguale.


BlueWolf said:


> Sul discorso del passato remoto e del passato prossimo, qui si sta parlando di intellegibilità, non è importante cosa ti sarebbe più naturale se fossi tu a parlare l'altra lingua.


Sei tu che hai tirato fuori il sistema verbale; comunque, ciò che viene naturale scrivere/dire viene naturale anche leggere/intendere. Imparare una lingua non è accostare struttura a struttura ma _pensare_ in lingua; se il mio modo di pensare corrisponde al tuo la mia comprensione è semplificata.
E io ho difficoltà a pensare che tu stamattina facesti colazione (rimaniamo nel campo dei puri esempi, ovviamente; mi è anche difficile pensare in francese che _vieni di__ fare _colazione, ma non mi va di pesare tutti i possibili casi col bilancino). Ciao ciao. 

Edit: aggiungo una cosa. Secondo me la somiglianza (apparente) tra l'italiano e lo spagnolo _penalizza_ entrambe le lingue. Noialtri andiamo in Spagna senza sapere una parola e chiediamo il _burro_ al ristorante (tipico). Loro: davanti a casa ho un signore argentino che sta qui da cinquant'anni e ancora non ha imparato a tradurre i pronomi complemento (tipico). Forse bisognerebbe prendere maggiore coscienza delle differenze.


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## john_riemann_soong

Ha, I can understand about 15% of that as a non-native French speaker. (Or writer, I should say. I can barely do French listening comprehension myself.)


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## Outsider

gwrthgymdeithasol said:


> Etcetera said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> "Only dialects"!  Well, I'm currently studying Italian and Piedmontese (and my knowledge of the latter is so far better), and they're so unlike each other that you can't call Piedmontese 'a dialect' of Italian. It's closer to French or rather Provençal.
> 
> 
> 
> Absolutely. I've noticed you refer to it in other posts, and have been surprised that no one appears to have shown an interest...
Click to expand...

Well, I'm interested. How _did_ you end up with an interest for Piedmontese, living so far away in Russia, *Etcetera*?


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## BlueWolf

riccio said:


> Ripeto: sul parlato stiamo dicendo la stessa cosa da un paio d'anni.



Bene, sono contento che siamo d'accordo allora.



> Sono esattamente la stessa cosa nelle tre lingue. Non ho capito perché una desinenza -ez dovrebbe essere più astrusa di una desinenza -éis, a me - _lessicalmente_, ripeto - interessa la radice. E quella è uguale.



Conta eccome. Dimmi un po' che cosa farebbe capire ad un italiano che j'aimais vuol dire amavo? Vedi alcuna somiglianza? Forse riesce ad intuire che si tratta del verbo amare, ma qui si ferma la comprensione.



> Sei tu che hai tirato fuori il sistema verbale; comunque, ciò che viene naturale scrivere/dire viene naturale anche leggere/intendere. Imparare una lingua non è accostare struttura a struttura ma _pensare_ in lingua; se il mio modo di pensare corrisponde al tuo la mia comprensione è semplificata.
> E io ho difficoltà a pensare che tu stamattina facesti colazione (rimaniamo nel campo dei puri esempi, ovviamente; mi è anche difficile pensare in francese che _vieni di__ fare _colazione, ma non mi va di pesare tutti i possibili casi col bilancino). Ciao ciao.



Ma ripeto, io ho messo queste contastazioni mosso dal fatto ch questo è un thread sulla _intellegibilità_. Non su quanto è facile imparare una lingua piuttosto che un'altra. Hai difficoltà nel comprendere la frase: "Lei mi salutò"? E "Ella me saludó"?
Davvero, non riesco a capire dove sta il problema con il passato remoto...


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## Etcetera

Outsider said:


> Well, I'm interested. How _did_ you end up with an interest for Piedmontese, living so far away in Russia, *Etcetera*?


I'm afraid that would be an off-topic here, so I'll PM you.


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## Millyz

K, well I'm Romanian and to be honest I understand Italian pretty well, although I've never studied it. I can watch Italian TV and get a general idea about what they're saying, maybe even some details. As for other Romance languages...Spanish I've studied, so I can't really give my opinion on that, but my mom who is also Romanian has never studied it and she can understand the context of a conversation/text. French is a bit more difficult; I only got to study French for one year, but I can say that I can still understand the main ideas. I get French news in my e-mail every day and I can understand what they're saying. As for Portuguese, I think that knowing some Spanish makes it easier, otherwise it's tough to understand it. That's as much as I can give an opinion on...but overall, Romance languanges are amazing!


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## OldAvatar

Indeed, for a Romanian, Italian is pretty easy to learn. It just needs a bit of "ear training" and the language gets intelligible without any kind of efforts. The Italian accent also gets stock to Romanian language and after a couple of days of hearing Italian, a Romanian could already have an Italian accent. 
But it doesn't work the other way arround. The presence of extra sounds in Romanian and some of Slavic influences in Grammar, makes it a bit harder for an Italian to understand. Also, most of Italians are not aware of the similarity between Italian and Romanian and they're considering the Spanish as being the most similar...

Also, someone said that there are a lot of dialects spoken in Romania. Actually, there are not. There are variations of the language, which didn't go that far as to be officialy declared dialects.

Best regards


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## MarX

In my experience:
French was my first foreign language. I was quite fluent but alas I "unlearned" much of it for lack of practice.
I remember thinking that (written) Italian was much easier to understand than Spanish. Written Portuguese was easier to understand than Spanish, but still harder than Italian.
I also learned Romanian yet I don't really know how it's related to the other Romance languages. I just know that they're pretty similar.

I'll share what people have personally told me:
-Romanians told me that they could understand Italian pretty well. To understand Spanish they didn't need to put much effort. But then again, TV programmes in Spanish didn't seem to be that uncommon in Romania.
-A Brazilian told me that he was able to understand Romanian texts, much to his own surprise.
-Spaniards told me that they could understand written Portuguese and French and spoken Italian. I can't remember them saying anything about Romanian though. As for Catalan, most Spanish speakers I talked to said that they had a hard time understanding it spoken.


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## Amante_de_limbi

I speak Spanish (& pretty much Romanian) fluently & know a little French, Italian & Portuguese. I believe that for the most part, they all look the same written & agree that the similarities are hard to hear.

Also, Romanian has borrowed many words from French:
cadeau -> cadou
cauchemar -> coşmar
merci -> mersi

Just to name a few.

& just a side note, I find it so funny that the words for "pillow" are not similar in any of the five Romance languages, at least not in modern day spelling, but perhaps in origin.

almohada - Spanish
pernă - Romanian
oreiller - French
travesseiro - Portuguese
cuscino - Italian


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## Amante_de_limbi

Etcetera said:


> "Only dialects"!  Well, I'm currently studying Italian and Piedmontese (and my knowledge of the latter is so far better), and they're so unlike each other that you can't call Piedmontese 'a dialect' of Italian. It's closer to French or rather Provençal.



Can you PLEASE tell me how you're learning Piedmontese? My family is actually from Piedmont (Torino) & my great-grandparents spoke the language. My mom knows a little, but I've been trying to find a way to learn more!!!


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## Ajura

BlueWolf said:


> Written French is very clear for me (Italian), I'm able to read French even if I can't speak it. Spoken French isn't.
> About Romanian, I've heard Romanians find Italian quite easy to understand, but the opposite isn't so true.
> Spanish is probably the easiest to understand for an Italian.



Southern Italy was under the same monarchs as spain in the renaissance that is the reason why Italian is more similar to spanish another reason for that is that sicily and iberia were both under the muslims, the arabic influence.

Northern Italy was under Carolingian Empire I think that the reason why Gallo-Romance is present in Venice and Emilia-Romagna region the same is for Catalonia.


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## Angelo di fuoco

Spanish shares quite a few grammatical features with Southern Italian dialects/languages.


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## Ajura

Angelo di fuoco said:


> Spanish shares quite a few grammatical features with Southern Italian dialects/languages.



ItaloRomance or the Italian Macrolanguage is very similar to spanish and portuguese while the GalloRomance languages of italy are similar to french macrolanguage/langues d'oil and occitan.

Occitan accent is very similar to spanish.


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## federicoft

Ajura said:


> Southern Italy was under the same monarchs as spain in the renaissance that is the reason why Italian is more similar to spanish another reason for that is that sicily and iberia were both under the muslims, the arabic influence.
> 
> Northern Italy was under Carolingian Empire I think that the reason why Gallo-Romance is present in Venice and Emilia-Romagna region the same is for Catalonia.



This is not what scholars believe. 
The vast majority of 'transversal' similarities amongst Romance Languages can be easily traced back to the common Latin origin, rather than imaginative later influences. The isoglosses between Gallo-Italian and Italo-Romance languages are an autochthonous development and surely predate any foreign domination over those places.

Besides, in my opinion even Standard Italian, surely not a Gallo-Italian language, tend to share more peculiar grammatical features with French than with Spanish, and has surely a greater lexical similarity with French, while the only domain where Spanish is unquestionably closer is the phonetic system.


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## Pedro y La Torre

On a written level, knowing French enables one to understand quite a lot of Spanish and Italian, and even more of Catalan.
However, on hearing any of those languages spoken aloud, French helps about as much as English does, i.e. not at all.

Italian and Spanish, on both an oral and written level, are far closer to each other than either is to French.


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## effeundici

Pedro y La Torre said:


> On a written level, knowing French enables one to understand quite a lot of Spanish and Italian, and even more of Catalan.
> However, on hearing any of those languages spoken aloud, French helps about as much as English does, i.e. not at all.
> 
> Italian and Spanish, on both an oral and written level, are far closer to each other than either is to French.


 
Hi, I think this is a very common belief but actually I, as an Italian native, find very easy to read French whereas Spanish *seems* easy but when you try.....ouch, it can be very tricky!!


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## Angelo di fuoco

My experience in learning the three Romance languages was that I had no lexical interferences between French (first learned at school, begun at the age of 12) and Italian (begun at the age of 14; the basics of the language I learned almost entirely on my own only with a book) - or none that I can remember - and that I had quite a few interferences between Italian and Spanish (again learned at school, begun at the age of 16).
I also had very much difficulties to figure out the difference in the use of passé composé/passé simple and passato prossimo/passato remoto (in varsity), as well as to figure out what where the differences in the use of those tenses between French and Italian (because, contrarily to what is taught by certain teachers from Romagna or Lombardy, the passato remoto is very well alive in the everyday speach), whereas I grasped the differences in the use of pretérito perfecto / pretérito indefinido very quickly.


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## federicoft

Sorry to repeat myself but there is no reason to consider Spanish closer to Italian than French (nevermind 'far' closer). Both Spanish and French belong to the same language family as Italian and from a strictly linguistic point of view they have the same degree of genetic distinction with it.

If we are talking about oral mutual intelligibility, Spanish has a significantly higher degree of intelligibility than French, due to the divergent phonetical system of the latter. Anyway there is still some degree of oral intelligibility with French, saying there is none seems most peculiar to me.

When talking about written language it's a completely different story. In this respect I'm pretty sure most Italian speakers would say there is a higher degree of intellegibility with French than with Spanish. French and Italian have a greater lexicon similarity than Spanish and Italian (89% vs. 82% according to Ethnologue), and a definitely closer grammar in many respects in which Spanish is divergent. 

Also, note that this is a very subjective topic. Two Italian speakers can develop very different levels of intelligibility of other Romance languages, depending on their home dialect and the exposure they had to those languages (interests, travels, interaction with people speaking those languages and obviously whether they have studied them or not). The learning curve amongst Romance languages is initially very steep, this means one can obtain a certain level of proficiency in another language rather quickly.


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## Angelo di fuoco

When you talk about mutual intelligellibility in the Romance languages, you should consider not only how many words they share (and here the difference is really not that big), but also how easy it is to recognize the words as cognates.
That e. g. "chapeau" and "cappello" are related is not very easy to recognize and in the case of "acqua" and "eau" it is impossible, even in the written form of the language, and so it is with many words.

There have been studies about how far the principal Romance languages have developed away from Latin (have "mutated"), and French is definitely the one that has developed most (I don't remember the exact numbers, but it was more than 40 %), whereas Spanish, Romanian and Italian, as far as I remember, had developed away much less (about 20 %), and Sardinian was the one that had developed least (about 10 %).


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## federicoft

Angelo di fuoco said:


> When you talk about mutual intelligellibility in the Romance languages, you should consider not only how many words they share (and here the difference is really not that big), but also how easy it is to recognize the words as cognates.
> That e. g. "chapeau" and "cappello" are related is not very easy to recognize and in the case of "acqua" and "eau" it is impossible, even in the written form of the language, and so it is with many words.



This is just one example. With many others it's easier to recognize the French cognate than the Spanish one. 

E.g. 
(it-fr-sp) 
fare-faire-hacer
ferro-fer-hierro
cuore-coeur-corazon
figlia-fille-hija

Not to mention the many cognates between French and Italian which don't have a Spanish cognate at all.


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## Ajura

Sicilian,Neapolitan,Corsican and Romanesco did not split with Tuscan the language they came from expanded rather than 'split' that the varieties far from each other are not totally intelligible the same thing happened to Portuguese and Mainland Japanese.



> The vast majority of 'transversal' similarities amongst Romance Languages can be easily traced back to the common Latin origin, rather than imaginative later influences. The isoglosses between Gallo-Italian and Italo-Romance languages are an autochthonous development and surely predate any foreign domination over those places.



GalloRomance territory got expanded when the Frankish Empire expanded.


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## Angelo di fuoco

Sorry, the sentence "Sicilian,Neapolitan,Corsican and Romanesco did not split with Tuscan the language they came from expanded rather than 'split' that the varieties far from each other are not totally intelligible the same thing happened to Portuguese and Mainland Japanese." is not very easy to understand.


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## Favara

Here's my experience, as a native Catalan speaker from the south (we have a slightly more archaic dialect, somewhat closer to Latin), and also a native-like Spanish speaker (we're required by law to learn it).

Spanish: Can't say much about Spanish because I've been learning it since primary school, so I have a perfect knowledge of the language. However, I find it extremely hard to understand Andalusian and some American dialects (Mexico, Cuba, Ecuador).

Occitan: I was able to have a perfect Catalan-Occitan dual conversation without even having heard the language beforehand. They're extremely similar. Gascon is a little bit harder.

Portuguese: I have no problem understanding written Portuguese, but spoken portuguese is a completely different matter. I can undertand a bit of Brazilian Portuguese, but can't even pick up a single word from European Portuguese.

French: Easy to read, but really difficult to understand when spoken... I can pick up enough loose words as to understand simple phrases if they speak slow. Quebecois is a little easier to understand, but not by much.

Ligurian: Sounded a lot like Occitan, but I'd say it was a bit harder.

Sardinian: Haven't heard a lot, but it was surprisingly easy to understand.

Italian: Very similar to both Catalan and Spanish. I've been able to understand almost everything, but seems like they found it way harder to understand me.

Romanian: Could read it without effort, but I needed a dictionary to check those weird Slavic words appearing every now and then. I've been able to understand spoken Romanian except for those few words, but I needed some concentration to reconstruct the words through their Slavic accent - If I wasn't paying attention, I'd have said it was Russian or something like that. So it's mainly a matter of pronounciation and "musicality" of the language; it just sounds weird to me.


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## Ajura

Angelo di fuoco said:


> Sorry, the sentence "Sicilian,Neapolitan,Corsican and Romanesco did not split with Tuscan the language they came from expanded rather than 'split' that the varieties far from each other are not totally intelligible the same thing happened to Portuguese and Mainland Japanese." is not very easy to understand.



I am trying to say that they maintained a close continuum to each other.


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## Ajura

Angelo di fuoco said:


> Sorry, the sentence "Sicilian,Neapolitan,Corsican and Romanesco did not split with Tuscan the language they came from expanded rather than 'split' that the varieties far from each other are not totally intelligible the same thing happened to Portuguese and Mainland Japanese." is not very easy to understand.



Originally,south of tuscany in Siena and Umbria down to calabria the dialects there resemble Napulitano in phonology instead of Tuscan this is also the case for Romanesco but Romanesco has Tuscan influence, Italians managed to have an archaic sounding dialect which is Tuscan to be the standard dialect in the same thing happened in spanish but Castillian failed to do the same.


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## r_daneel

BlueWolf said:


> Loup era solo un esempio, la perdita delle finali consonantiche nel parlato è tipica del francese nel suo complesso, pertanto magari molte parole sono simili nello scritto, ma poi a conti fatti nel parlato risultano più comprensibili le versioni (senz'altro meno numerose, ma ancora alte) dello spagnolo.
> Per il sistema verbale, prova a fare questi paragoni:
> 
> je perds - yo pierdo - *io perdo*
> tu perds - tu pierdes - *tu perdi*
> il perd - él pierde - *egli perde*
> nous perdons - nos perdemos - *noi perdiamo*
> vous perdez - vos perdéis - *voi perdete*
> ils perdent - ellos pierden - *essi perdono
> 
> *       je aimais - yo amaba - *io amavo*
> tu aimais - tu amabas - *tu amavi*
> il aimait - él amaba - *egli amava*
> nous aimaions - nos amábamos - *noi amavamo*
> vous aimiez - vos amabais - *voi amavate*
> ils aimaient - ellos amaban - *essi amavano*
> 
> Sul discorso del passato remoto e del passato prossimo, qui si sta parlando di intellegibilità, non è importante cosa ti sarebbe più naturale se fossi tu a parlare l'altra lingua. Il passato remoto spagnolo è simile al nostro (che ci è perfettamente comprensibile, visto che, anche se non lo usiamo più nel parlato, lo usiamo ancora nello scritto), mentre il passato prossimo francese mi ha dato dei problemi. Per esempio "elle a + participio passato" (il passato prossimo) è pronunciato "ela + pp", che a noi suona ella (=lei), facendoci perciò perdere la percezione del passato prossimo.




Spanish e is weak in perder and breaks into ie in all present tense indicative forms except for nosotros and vosotros.


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## elirlandes

So here is the Romantic language experience of an English language native with near native Irish (which, although Celtic, has some Latin grammar structure), and notions of German and Arabic.

What it tells me is that our understanding of the similarities between romantic languages is related to one's point of departure, and the way one approaches learning them. For example, when looking at Catalan, I approach it, not as an English speaker, but as a French speaker. I relate it to my French and never to my English - for example, taking notes in French, not English.

*French *- 9/10 (learned in school, and then through living in France - the first foreign language I learned)
*Spanish *- 9/10 (learned in school, big help from French knowledge for vocabulary, although mainly through understanding the roots of words and applying standardised endings etc)
---These were my basis for Romantic Languages---

*Italian* reading & oral comprehension 9/10, spoken 5/10 (osmosis when spending time in Italy working on project / travelling, a little reading of grammar books etc. I found that if I think with French grammar, Spanish [latin-rooted, not arabic] vocabulary, and I try to say it with an italian accent, then after 2 attempts you are there.
*Catalan *reading - 9/10, understanding spoken 6/10, spoken 3/10. I find I can read Catalan very easily. I suspect that if I immersed myself in it, I would learn the language in a matter of months. The input of my French in this process is very high, but it is impossible not to understand Catalan if you have both Spanish and French. I will often read Catalan language newspaper articles or reviews without batting an eyelid, although I have to translate them into Castellano for my Andaluza wife who speaks no French. She cannot understand it from Spanish - or perhaps refuses to... but that is another question.
*Portuguese *reading - 7/10, understanding spoken Brazilian portuguese 6/10, understanding spoken European portuguese 4/10, spoken 3/10. Again, I find French very useful here for vocabulary, almost more so than Spanish. Pronounciation of Portuguese is particularly difficult and makes the language appear farther removed from Spanish/French/Catalan/Italian than it may really be.
*Romanian *- Not a sausage. In the song linked to above, I guessed about 15% of the text (and then cheated by using translate.google.com)


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## robbie_SWE

r_daneel said:


> Spanish e is weak in perder and breaks into ie in all present tense indicative forms except for nosotros and vosotros.


 
It fascinated me that the Romanian forms of the verb are more similar to the Spanish forms than the Italian (Romanian in blue). 



> je perds - yo pierdo - *io perdo - eu pierd*
> tu perds - tu pierdes - *tu perdi - tu pierzi*
> il perd - él pierde - *egli perde - el pierde *
> nous perdons - nos perdemos - *noi perdiamo - noi pierdem *
> vous perdez - vos perdéis - *voi perdete - voi pierdeţi*
> ils perdent - ellos pierden - *essi perdono - ei pierd *


 


elirlandes said:


> So here is the Romantic language experience of an English language native with near native Irish (which, although Celtic, has some Latin grammar structure), and notions of German and Arabic.
> 
> What it tells me is that our understanding of the similarities between romantic languages is related to one's point of departure, and the way one approaches learning them. For example, when looking at Catalan, I approach it, not as an English speaker, but as a French speaker. I relate it to my French and never to my English - for example, taking notes in French, not English.
> 
> *French *- 9/10 (learned in school, and then through living in France - the first foreign language I learned)
> *Spanish *- 9/10 (learned in school, big help from French knowledge for vocabulary, although mainly through understanding the roots of words and applying standardised endings etc)
> ---These were my basis for Romantic Languages---
> 
> *Italian* reading & oral comprehension 9/10, spoken 5/10 (osmosis when spending time in Italy working on project / travelling, a little reading of grammar books etc. I found that if I think with French grammar, Spanish [latin-rooted, not arabic] vocabulary, and I try to say it with an italian accent, then after 2 attempts you are there.
> *Catalan *reading - 9/10, understanding spoken 6/10, spoken 3/10. I find I can read Catalan very easily. I suspect that if I immersed myself in it, I would learn the language in a matter of months. The input of my French in this process is very high, but it is impossible not to understand Catalan if you have both Spanish and French. I will often read Catalan language newspaper articles or reviews without batting an eyelid, although I have to translate them into Castellano for my Andaluza wife who speaks no French. She cannot understand it from Spanish - or perhaps refuses to... but that is another question.
> *Portuguese *reading - 7/10, understanding spoken Brazilian portuguese 6/10, understanding spoken European portuguese 4/10, spoken 3/10. Again, I find French very useful here for vocabulary, almost more so than Spanish. Pronounciation of Portuguese is particularly difficult and makes the language appear farther removed from Spanish/French/Catalan/Italian than it may really be.
> *Romanian *- Not a sausage. In the song linked to above, I guessed about 15% of the text (and then cheated by using translate.google.com)


 
Concerning the Romanian part I would have to say that it depends what you are reading or listening to. A song is always difficult to understand because of multiple reasons (e.g. using specific words to maintain the melody). I would recommend that you compare a litterary Romanian text if you want to test your skills. 

 robbie


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## Ajura

Favara said:


> Here's my experience, as a native Catalan speaker from the south (we have a slightly more archaic dialect, somewhat closer to Latin), and also a native-like Spanish speaker (we're required by law to learn it).
> 
> Spanish: Can't say much about Spanish because I've been learning it since primary school, so I have a perfect knowledge of the language. However, I find it extremely hard to understand Andalusian and some American dialects (Mexico, Cuba, Ecuador).
> 
> Occitan: I was able to have a perfect Catalan-Occitan dual conversation without even having heard the language beforehand. They're extremely similar. Gascon is a little bit harder.
> 
> Portuguese: I have no problem understanding written Portuguese, but spoken portuguese is a completely different matter. I can undertand a bit of Brazilian Portuguese, but can't even pick up a single word from European Portuguese.
> 
> French: Easy to read, but really difficult to understand when spoken... I can pick up enough loose words as to understand simple phrases if they speak slow. Quebecois is a little easier to understand, but not by much.
> 
> Ligurian: Sounded a lot like Occitan, but I'd say it was a bit harder.
> 
> Sardinian: Haven't heard a lot, but it was surprisingly easy to understand.
> 
> Italian: Very similar to both Catalan and Spanish. I've been able to understand almost everything, but seems like they found it way harder to understand me.
> 
> Romanian: Could read it without effort, but I needed a dictionary to check those weird Slavic words appearing every now and then. I've been able to understand spoken Romanian except for those few words, but I needed some concentration to reconstruct the words through their Slavic accent - If I wasn't paying attention, I'd have said it was Russian or something like that. So it's mainly a matter of pronounciation and "musicality" of the language; it just sounds weird to me.


The Catalan Idiom is closer to Languedocien idiom(Occitan) than to Gascon idiom(Occitan)...



Ajura said:


> Originally,south of tuscany in Siena and Umbria down to calabria the dialects there resemble Napulitano in phonology instead of Tuscan this is also the case for Romanesco but Romanesco has Tuscan influence, Italians managed to have an archaic sounding dialect which is Tuscan to be the standard dialect in the same thing happened in spanish but Castillian failed to do the same.


I think Tuscan is very similar to the dialect/language that people in rome spoke at it's fall but there are changes like the Tuscan Gorgia...


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## effeundici

Ajura said:


> Originally,south of tuscany in Siena and Umbria down to calabria the dialects there resemble Napulitano in phonology instead of Tuscan this is also the case for Romanesco but Romanesco has Tuscan influence, Italians managed to have an archaic sounding dialect which is Tuscan to be the standard dialect in the same thing happened in spanish but Castillian failed to do the same.


 
I'm truely amazed! I've never thought my dialect could be archaic. It seems so modern to me!


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## Ajura

effeundici said:


> I'm truely amazed! I've never thought my dialect could be archaic. It seems so modern to me!


Conservative is a better word for that....



> Ligurian: Sounded a lot like Occitan, but I'd say it was a bit harder.


Ligurian and Occitano Romance are similar.


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## DigitalepurpureA

ronanpoirier said:


> Inspired by this thread on the Slavic Languages forum, I decided to open one about the Romance Languages in general, not only the main ones. There's another similar thread here.
> 
> What also influenced me to wirte this post to know other people's views, were all those etymology questions where we can see, sometimes totally difference between similar languages or some similarity between very far languages.
> 
> Well, place your bets!


Hi everyone ^^

I am Italian, and I studied French for 14 years and Spanish for 3.
All I can tell you is that -in my own opinion there's much more intellegibility between Italian and spoken or written Spanish than between Italian and spoken French.
Written French is somewhat easy to understand, with Spanish we have really few problems...
Spoken Portuguese seems to have the same intelligibility of spoken French...
Written Catalan is easy to understand if you know both French Spanish and some Italian...
As for the Romanian, I'm used to see Romanian leaflets or posters for in Italy there are many Romanians, and all I can tell you is that it is pretty similar to Italian for the vocabulary, even if when they speak I can't understand anything...


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## Linnets

ronanpoirier said:


> I always found spoken Italian easier than Spanish... I don't know why.


Maybe because in Italian the vowels are generally longer than in Spanish, especially when stressed, and there's no lenition of occlusive consonants.



übermönch said:


> Another interessting thing is, that the Venetian dialect of Italy is actually from the Spanish branch - just how did it get there?


Venetian dialect (or "language") resembles Spanish, but I wouldn't say it belongs to the same branch. It is surely a Western Romance language, but more similar to Tuscan (and Standard Italian) than, say, the dialects of Emilia-Romagna.



BlueWolf said:


> Il passato remoto spagnolo è simile al nostro (che ci è perfettamente comprensibile, visto che, anche se non lo usiamo più nel parlato, lo usiamo ancora nello scritto)


Un momento: forse al Nord non è più usato nel parlato ma qui in Toscana (e in tutto il centro-sud) lo si usa sempre.


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## Angelo di fuoco

Mi dispiace molto che il modello linguistico che si sta imponendo in Italia sia quello lombardo invece del toscano, e quando mi dicono del passato remoto "noi non lo usiamo piú" mi viene da chiedere: "Voi lombardi o voi italiani?".
Anzi, la mia insegnante d'italiano all'università passò molto tempo ad apprendermi l'uso corretto del passato remoto e del passato prossimo. Io, avendo ascoltato molte opere liriche (è una mia grande passione) tendevo ad abusarne (come tendevo ad usare forme arcaiche dell'imperfetto del genere "io facea"), altri (che erano stati chessò io a Bologna o a Torino) invece si stupirono quando lo usai in una relazione sulla mafia. Anzi, secondo la mia insegnante, contribuiscono alla morte del passato remoto alcuni insegnanti dicendo ai loro allievi che non s'usa piú allorché è vivo e vegeto.


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## DigitalepurpureA

Sono completamente d'accordo con te, anche se mi sembra di andare leggermente OT


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## gonzalox237

Hola!
Yo hablo español de nacimiento, y creo que para mí, las lenguas mas entendibles son el portugués y el italiano, y como últimos pondría al catalán y al francés, siempre y cuando este último no sea hablado muy rapido, puesto que muchas palabras cuando son pronunciadas suenan mucho más familiares que cuando son escritas. Claro siempre teniendo en cuenta que no todas la palabras en diferentes idiomas significan lo mismo.

Pero básicamente, sí creo que una personas que hablan lenguas romances puedan entenderse entre si,  en algunos casos más que en otros, puesto que el rumano por ejemplo me parece muy estructurado para ser comprendido por alguien que no tiene conocimientos sobre la lengua.


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## Linnets

In my opinion, the "easiest tio understand" Romance languages are those that still resemble Latin structure and phonology: Spanish and Italian, then Catalan and (spoken) Portuguese. Written French is quite easy but the same is not true of spoken language; Romanian is hard to understand even if written, but, of course, it is the easiest language to understand of all Eastern Europe.
As far as Italy is concerned, apart from dialects closely related to standard Italian (the various Tuscan and Umbrian dialects, Romanesco), the easiest are Venetian and Sicilian. Then comes Neapolitan and Central Southern dialects; Gallo-Italic dialects are very hard to understand, especially those from Emilia.


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## Ajura

Linnets said:


> In my opinion, the "easiest tio understand" Romance languages are those that still resemble Latin structure and phonology: Spanish and Italian, then Catalan and (spoken) Portuguese. Written French is quite easy but the same is not true of spoken language; Romanian is hard to understand even if written, but, of course, it is the easiest language to understand of all Eastern Europe.
> As far as Italy is concerned, apart from dialects closely related to standard Italian (the various Tuscan and Umbrian dialects, Romanesco), the easiest are Venetian and Sicilian. Then comes Neapolitan and Central Southern dialects; Gallo-Italic dialects are very hard to understand, especially those from Emilia.


Originally, it was Romanesco and Neapolitan that are more closer but Romanesco got more Tuscan Influence after the second sack of rome...I think the gallo-italic dialects might be easier if you learn some french....


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## DigitalepurpureA

Althought Spanish and Italian seem to be the easier to understand, I think there should be a distinction: They are surely easy to understand, but of course, learning a neolatin language is not an easy thing to do: Italian people can barely speak Italian without making errors...

As for the Italic dialects I agree with Linnets: Gallo-Italic dialects are hard to understand, but you have also to consider southern dialects as the dialects of Calabria and those of northern Apulia... they have Arabic, Greek and Balcanic influences (especially for the Apulian ones) and most of the times they have few similarities with Italian or Latin...


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## Linnets

Ajura said:


> Originally, it was Romanesco and Neapolitan that are more closer but Romanesco got more Tuscan Influence after the second sack of rome...


I think Romanesco became more similar to Tuscan after the Renaissance period. Medieval texts of Rome dialect show non-Tuscan features, although it was still mutually intelligible with Tuscan itself. Then a lot of Tuscans went to Rome for work and the languages blended.


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## Angelo di fuoco

Linnets said:


> In my opinion, the "easiest tio understand" Romance languages are those that still resemble Latin structure and phonology: Spanish and Italian, then Catalan and (spoken) Portuguese. Written French is quite easy but the same is not true of spoken language; Romanian is hard to understand even if written,


The Romance language that is closest to Latin in structure and phonology is Sardinian (although I don't recall which variety)... 





Linnets said:


> but, of course, it is the easiest language to understand of all Eastern Europe.


For me, the Eastern European language easiest to understand is, *of course*, my mother tongue Russian, and amongst the Balcanic languages, Bulgarian.



Linnets said:


> As far as Italy is concerned, apart from dialects closely related to standard Italian (the various Tuscan and Umbrian dialects, Romanesco), the easiest are Venetian and Sicilian. Then comes Neapolitan and Central Southern dialects; Gallo-Italic dialects are very hard to understand, especially those from Emilia.


Neapolitan for me is the easiest to understand when written, Venetian has to much independent grammatical features. Sicilian when written is OK, when spoken I hardly can make out a word. With Tuscan and Umbrian dialects I have too little experience.


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## Ajura

Linnets said:


> I think Romanesco became more similar to Tuscan after the Renaissance period. Medieval texts of Rome dialect show non-Tuscan features, although it was still mutually intelligible with Tuscan itself. Then a lot of Tuscans went to Rome for work and the languages blended.



another factor was the second sacking of rome , I heard that corsican is close to Tuscan...


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## robbie_SWE

It's astonishing to see that so many people who have French, Italian, Spanish or Portuguese as their mother languages, have such a hard time understanding Romanian. It always fascinated me that Romanians perceive their language as being helpful, or even a tool, when learning other Romance languages but not vice versa. 

Why is it so? I don't see how Romanian "deviated" from the rest of the Romance language family(-ies). Romanian and Sardinian are the most archaic of the Latin languages due to isolation. When I first started studying French, Romanian helped me a lot to understand the composition of the French language and when I started studying Italian it helped me even more. When I started learning Portuguese for about a year ago, Romanian phonology was very helpful. 

 robbie


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## Angelo di fuoco

First, you have a vast amount of Slavic vocabulary (about 20 percent of the whole vocabulary of the language). For me, who have Russian as mother tongue, it´s quite helpful, but not for the speakers of the Romance languages.
Second, you have a quite different grammatical structure: the declination and the enclitic article, probably only periphrastic future instead of the "infinitive+habere"-derived structure in most of the other Romance languages (I'm not sure about Sardinian) and other features about which I am not very well informed.
Third, you have the phonological mutations which make the origin of the Latin words obscure to some degree (for me, learning Portuguese even after Spanish was quite hard in the beginning because of the many vowels and consonants that desappeared due to evolution of the language).

Even now, I, having mastered to great extent French, Spanish and Italian, and, to a lesser degree, Portuguese, don't understand Catalan quite well, Occitan less well, and Romanian still less.


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## robbie_SWE

Angelo di fuoco said:


> First, you have a vast amount of Slavic vocabulary (about 20 percent of the whole vocabulary of the language). For me, who have Russian as mother tongue, it´s quite helpful, but not for the speakers of the Romance languages.
> Second, you have a quite different grammatical structure: the declination and the enclitic article, probably only periphrastic future instead of the "infinitive+habere"-derived structure in most of the other Romance languages (I'm not sure about Sardinian) and other features about which I am not very well informed.
> Third, you have the phonological mutations which make the origin of the Latin words obscure to some degree (for me, learning Portuguese even after Spanish was quite hard in the beginning because of the many vowels and consonants that desappeared due to evolution of the language).
> 
> Even now, I, having mastered to great extent French, Spanish and Italian, and, to a lesser degree, Portuguese, don't understand Catalan quite well, Occitan less well, and Romanian still less.


 
In contemporary Romanian the amount of vocabulary of Latin origin totals to appr. 85% (slightly under French). The majority of the vocabulary of Slavic origin is either from Old Church Slavonic and Bulgarian (Russian for me is incomprehensible, even if I take into consideration words of the same origin). 
 
Some grammatical features are indeed different, but not completely foreign to other Romance speakers. Some regional Italian dialects for instance share grammatical similarities with Romanian and let's not forget that in some regional varieties of Romanian e.g. the future tense is formed like the Italian counterpart. 
 
Last but not least it is true that phonology in Romanian may make it hard for other Romance speaking people to understand, but the same thing can be said about all Romance languages since they have undergone immense changes since the days of the Roman empire. 
 

 robbie


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## Angelo di fuoco

For me, it is true that I learned French, Spanish and Italian in a systematical way, am learning Portuguese as an autodidact, but even so when I had learned neither Portuguese nor Catalan, the first was more comprehensible to me than the second, and I once tried to translate some lines of an Eminescu poem ("Egiptul") and it wasn't that easy, although I still remember that "deschis" is a cognate of Italian "dischiuso" (I think "dischiudere" or "schiudere" is even more rarely used in Italian that it's English counterpart "to unlock").


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## Ajura

Linnets said:


> Venetian dialect (or "language") resembles Spanish, but I wouldn't say it belongs to the same branch. It is surely a Western Romance language, but more similar to Tuscan (and Standard Italian) than, say, the dialects of Emilia-Romagna.



I think Veneto,Emilia-Romagnolo/SanMarinese and Friuli,have an Eastern Romance(which are ItaloRomance,Istriot,Dacian Romance and Dalmatian) strata.


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## DigitalepurpureA

Angelo di fuoco said:


> (I think "dischiudere" or "schiudere" is even more rarely used in Italian that it's English counterpart "to unlock").


Yes, it is more rare than "to unlock" but not uncommon...


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## Ajura

I said earlier that Tuscan sounds archaic or conservative but I found out that Corsican is more conservative compared to tuscan (and the most conservative of all italo romance idioms) for example is the word for son which is Figlio in Tuscan and Standard Italian is Figliu in corsican which is Fijo in romanesco and fighiu in sicilian.

I agree that Sardinian is the most archaic of Romance languages.


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## effeundici

Ajura said:


> I said earlier that Tuscan sounds archaic or conservative but I found out that Corsican is more conservative compared to tuscan (and the most conservative of all italo romance idioms) for example is the word for son which is Figlio in Tuscan and Standard Italian is Figliu in corsican which is Fijo in romanesco and fighiu in sicilian.
> 
> I agree that Sardinian is the most archaic of Romance languages.


 
Actually in Tuscan _figlio _is _figliolo_


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## DigitalepurpureA

effeundici said:


> Actually in Tuscan _figlio _is _figliolo_



I think he was analysing how the *gl* sound changes in all acceptations (gl>ghi>ji) and not the whole word.
Maybe =)


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## hajenso

This was a fascinating discussion, everybody!


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## Ajura

DigitalepurpureA said:


> I think he was analysing how the *gl* sound changes in all acceptations (gl>ghi>ji) and not the whole word.
> Maybe =)


that is what i was talking about.


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## XiaoRoel

Ha sido una experiencia, como filólogo, asomarme a este debate. Evidentemente, no me interesan muchos de los disparates pseudofilológicos que aquí se ha afirmado (¡lo de 1850 y las cinco lenguas es para nota!).
Me interesó sobre todo la percepción de los que hablamos romance acerca de la inteligibilidad mutua de las lenguas. Algún forero ha hecho notar, y con mucha razón, que una cosa es el lenguaje oral y su pronunciación y otra el lenguaje escrito.
Otra cuestión no bien debatida es dentro del lenguaje oral (en menor medida en el escrito) los niveles diatópicos (dialectos e idiolectos) y diastráticos (niveles culturales y sociales). Como una cosa son las hablas rurales y otra las hablas ciudadanas.
Otro problema es que muchas lenguas románicas no están normalizadas, o lo están caóticamente.
Claro está que hay varios dominios principales que tienen su origen en los distintos tipos de latín vulgar y en la época de su separación de Roma.
Otro problema son las relatinizaciones periódicas desde el latín medieval o desde otras lenguas romances más modernamente.
Las relaciones históricas entre lenguas también son otra clave (importantes en ciertos campos lexicals y por épocas).
También hay lenguas puente entre los dominios principales como el catalás entre el dominio ibérico y el galo.
Dentro de cada dominio también hay una gradación en el continuum, el leonés entre el diasistema gallego-portugués y las hablas castellanas (o español, si prefieren) y el aragonés entre esas hablas castellanas (españolas) y el catalán.
No recuerdo haber leído nada sobre el reto-romanche (o se me coló entre tanto inglés).
En cuanto al portugués, se viene hablando aquí, por lo entendí, en cuanto al portugués europeo del estándar (que es sureño, lisboeta), pero al norte del río Duero el portugués es muy diferente a nivel oral, muy parecido al gallego. (Por cierto, la intercomprensión rumano-portugués, incluso a nivel escrito, es una quimera).
El español es tan variado que hablantes de distintas modalidades de español pueden llegar a no entenderse.
El conocimiento del latín facilita mucho la comprensión por escrito de todas las lenguas romances, pero a nivel oral ya es otra cuestión.
Todas estas cosas se me han ocurrido al pronto, mientras leía el debate. Reflexiones que me gustaría que ayudasen a centrar el tema, que veo un poco desnortado y perdido en futilezas.
Las frecuencias de vocabulario que usamos los lingüistas son para usar con guantes, pues de penden mucho de quien las establezca y con qué criterios.
Otro problema no tratado es la globalización e influencia de las grandes lenguas de cultura sobre las demás. Y otro problema en España y Francia muy grave es la voluntad absorbedora o anuladora de las lenguas oficiales del estado sobre las demás.
Cuando explicamos este problema de las lenguas románicas los ingüistas solemos escoger interesadamente aquellos elementos que favorecen nuestras tesis (diferencialistas o unitaristas).
Para acabar una última reflexión sobre los sustratos prerromanos (el céltico es fundamental para expicar las características del diasistema gallego-portugués) y de los adstratos y superestratos (históricos y actuales).
Bueno que la cosa no es nada sencilla.
Volveré por aquí de vez en cuando para aprender algo de sus opiniones y percepciones. Muy interesante todo.


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## Linnets

effeundici said:


> Actually in Tuscan _figlio _is _figliolo_


And in Corsican it is _figliolu_ (both with [ʎ(ʎ)]).


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## Ajura

Linnets said:


> And in Corsican it is _figliolu_ (both with [ʎ(ʎ)]).



Corsican, I think is the most conservative of the ItaloRomance no yeismo(like tuscan) and no shifting/merging of vowels(like sicilian and sabino)....


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## Ajura

I think, Lazio was the center of ItaloRomance before Tuscan became the standard...


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## Linnets

Ajura said:


> Corsican, I think is the most conservative of the ItaloRomance no yeismo(like tuscan) and no shifting/merging of vowels(like sicilian and sabino)....


There's no _yeísmo_ in current Tuscan.



Ajura said:


> I think, Lazio was the center of ItaloRomance before Tuscan became the standard...


I don't think so: Rome was a rather small city during the Middle Ages and developed a Romance dialect quite different form the modern one, which has been heavlily influenced by Tuscan immigrants in the Renaissance period. A good example of a text in ancient Romanesco is _La cronica_ (the Life of Cola di Rienzo): you can notice the difference.


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## Ajura

Linnets said:


> There's no _yeísmo_ in current Tuscan.
> 
> 
> I don't think so: Rome was a rather small city during the Middle Ages and developed a Romance dialect quite different form the modern one, which has been heavlily influenced by Tuscan immigrants in the Renaissance period. A good example of a text in ancient Romanesco is _La cronica_ (the Life of Cola di Rienzo): you can notice the difference.



that is what i tried to say there is no yeismo in tuscan and corsican compared to the dialects or sublanguages of Italian proper like Laziale,Neapolitan and Sicilian what I was really trying to say is that the dialect of Lazio is the most neutral and central of the dialects of ItaloRomance/Italian Proper in short it's characteristics are between Sicilian and Tuscan...

actually before the invention of Television,Printing and Radio two far off dialects of languages would be as 80% inteligible not 90-100 percent...


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## Fer BA

XiaoRoel said:


> Todas estas cosas se me han ocurrido al pronto, mientras leía el debate. Reflexiones que me gustaría que ayudasen a centrar el tema, que veo un poco desnortado y perdido en futilezas.


 
I share Xiao's opinion, after all, this thread was created by Oct 2006, left alone for more than two years and _resurrected_ twice, with replies to things posted years ago. Nonetheless, it's fascinating. 

I take that most of you are linguists, so, as a lego(and using english, which seems to be the most intelligible language between people talking romance languages  and some spanish, just because is my native language) I have some naïf comments:

Robbie, I understand what you said about Romanian, but, then again somebody talked about the 5 money languages (I'd say power languages), and Romanian is not one of them. Can't talk for everybody, but I have a decent proficiency in 4 of the 5 languages (Catalá being the exception, but then again, it's not exactly a _power_ language) and never crossed my mind to learn Romanian. I have a certain amount of love for languages (and for granted, lesser than I see in here, from you, that are filologos, with a love that is inspiring and admirable) and a high degree of practicality. I'm trying to learn some galego and catalá because my grandparents were from there, but that's the most my love for languages will go.

Xiao,
Mi experiencia respecto a la diferencia entre la inteligibilidad oral y escrita es abismal, no solo en otros idiomas sino en el castellano mismo. Muchas películas españolas y mexicanas las tengo que ver subtituladas y para horror de mi esposa, hasta algunas argentinas. Creo que son dos discusiones diferentes que hacen a cuestiones diastráticas y aquí creo que se trató casi todo el tiempo de inteligibilidad escrita. 

One thing to note: I was said that when speaking in Portuguese or Italian I tend to use a "high register" and I found in a different thread (http://www.ethnologue.com/nearly_extinct.asp post #63 and more) that it's pretty common since I _select_ words closer to spanish, and those words are used, traditionally, in the "high register" derived from the years of Spanish (Castillian) domination in Portugal and Italy. That, which is a phenomenon less extended than the Roman Empire or the current globalisation trend, I guess with a lot of naïveté, has something to do with mutual intelligibility.


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## Ajura

Fer BA said:


> I share Xiao's opinion, after all, this thread was created by Oct 2006, left alone for more than two years and _resurrected_ twice, with replies to things posted years ago. Nonetheless, it's fascinating.
> 
> I take that most of you are linguists, so, as a lego(and using english, which seems to be the most intelligible language between people talking romance languages  and some spanish, just because is my native language) I have some naïf comments:
> 
> Robbie, I understand what you said about Romanian, but, then again somebody talked about the 5 money languages (I'd say power languages), and Romanian is not one of them. Can't talk for everybody, but I have a decent proficiency in 4 of the 5 languages (Catalá being the exception, but then again, it's not exactly a _power_ language) and never crossed my mind to learn Romanian. I have a certain amount of love for languages (and for granted, lesser than I see in here, from you, that are filologos, with a love that is inspiring and admirable) and a high degree of practicality. I'm trying to learn some galego and catalá because my grandparents were from there, but that's the most my love for languages will go.
> 
> Xiao,
> Mi experiencia respecto a la diferencia entre la inteligibilidad oral y escrita es abismal, no solo en otros idiomas sino en el castellano mismo. Muchas películas españolas y mexicanas las tengo que ver subtituladas y para horror de mi esposa, hasta algunas argentinas. Creo que son dos discusiones diferentes que hacen a cuestiones diastráticas y aquí creo que se trató casi todo el tiempo de inteligibilidad escrita.
> 
> One thing to note: I was said that when speaking in Portuguese or Italian I tend to use a "high register" and I found in a different thread (http://www.ethnologue.com/nearly_extinct.asp post #63 and more) that it's pretty common since I _select_ words closer to spanish, and those words are used, traditionally, in the "high register" derived from the years of Spanish (Castillian) domination in Portugal and Italy. That, which is a phenomenon less extended than the Roman Empire or the current globalisation trend, I guess with a lot of naïveté, has something to do with mutual intelligibility.



I think Castillian is still dominant in the latin world.


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## Ajura

I read one article about the GalloItalic idioms...
http://www.romaniaminor.net/ianua/Ianua07/03.pdf


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## jmnjmn

Me cuesta mucho creer en la mayor o menor comprensión entre leguas romances, cuando la gente se ve "obligada" a usar el inglés para mantener el hilo del diálogo (incluso entre foreros que hablan la misma lengua romance).


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## Fer BA

jmnjmn said:


> Me cuesta mucho creer en la mayor o menor comprensión entre leguas romances, cuando la gente se ve "obligada" a usar el inglés para mantener el hilo del diálogo (incluso entre foreros que hablan la misma lengua romance).


 
Jmnjmn:

¿Qué lengua propones? El hilo comenzó en inglés y hay gente que ha declarado que no lee o entiende el castellano...yo había pensado quq cada quien usara su lengua y a ver que pasa....

(_Just for the ones that can't read spanish_. What language do you propose? The thread began in English and there is people that have said that they can't read or understand Spanish...I was thinking that each one could use his/her own language and let's see where it goes...)


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## indiegrl

I am a Romanian native-speaker but I understand no other Romance language, maybe some written French,but that's all.
  Speakers of standard Romanian have some difficulties in understanding the Romanian spoken in Moldova(officially called Moldovan or Moldavian language) due to the many differences in pronounciation  ,use of archaic words or the so-called ''Rusisme''(words taken from Russian and adapted to the Romanian grammar ) as well as Russian expressions translated to Moldovan
 I will provide several examples

''A avea in vedere''from Russian имееть в виду (literally translated as ''to have in view'') in Moldovan means ''I mean that/ I want to say that),while a Romanian perceives it as ''to have in view/to see something in front of his eyes/

''normal'' in Moldavian also means ''good/fine''(Russian Нормально). Cum a fost filmul?/Normal (how was the movie?/good) / ce faci?/normal(how are you?/fine). In standard Romanian, ''normal'' means normal.

Cum la tine(how are you) from Russian Как у тебя дела? in Moldovan means ''how are you?'' while a Romanian understand this as ''how is your room/how is your place?''.

 Also,Moldavians as well have difficulties in understanding standard Romanian due to the abundance of neologisms and/or expressions from English.


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## franz rod

> ne thing to note: I was said that when speaking in Portuguese or Italian I tend to use a "high register" and I found in a different thread (http://www.ethnologue.com/nearly_extinct.asp post #63 and more) that it's pretty common since I _select_ words closer to spanish, and those words are used, traditionally, in the "high register" derived from the years of Spanish (Castillian) domination in Portugal and Italy.



The influence of Spanish in Italian is minimal. There's is only a superficial influence in the dialects of south Italy.


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## Ajura

franz rod said:


> There's is only a superficial influence in the dialects of south Italy.



That includes Romanesco/Laziale....



> I am a Romanian native-speaker but I understand no other Romance language, maybe some written French,but that's all.
> Speakers of standard Romanian have some difficulties in understanding the Romanian spoken in Moldova(officially called Moldovan or Moldavian language) due to the many differences in pronounciation ,use of archaic words or the so-called ''Rusisme''(words taken from Russian and adapted to the Romanian grammar ) as well as Russian expressions translated to Moldovan
> I will provide several examples


Other Eastern Romance languages might be easy to understand for you.


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## franz rod

> That includes Romanesco/Laziale....



Are you sure?
Do you have any evidence?


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## Ajura

franz rod said:


> Are you sure?
> Do you have any evidence?



I just think so but i think there are spanish influence there as well actually it is not only the spanish that influenced the southern dialects, Occitan,Albanian and Gallo-Italic enclaves have an influence too I think,Occitan and Old Spanish are quite similar I think.


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## Fer BA

franz rod said:


> The influence of Spanish in Italian is minimal. There's is only a superficial influence in the dialects of south Italy.


 
Franz,

I'd agree with that in everyday's italian, very little influence. It had a very strong influence during SXVI and SXVII in North Italy (most of all in Milano) and my personal experience is that several words pervive on the italian language. Unusual and very high register words from the times where learning and speaking spanish was a must in Milano (I assume the same happened in Napoli).

(I just realized that I put a wrong link to the thread, the right one is this one http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=1634151)


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## Ajura

Fer BA said:


> Franz,
> 
> I'd agree with that in everyday's italian, very little influence. It had a very strong influence during SXVI and SXVII in North Italy (most of all in Milano) and my personal experience is that several words pervive on the italian language. Unusual and very high register words from the times where learning and speaking spanish was a must in Milano (I assume the same happened in Napoli).
> 
> (I just realized that I put a wrong link to the thread, the right one is this one http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=1634151)



Milanese and other galloitalic idiom is more closely related to spanish and occitan than to standard italian.

I think Veneto and Sanmarinese are hybrid between eastern and western romance because of them in between eastern romance and western romance areas and i think veneto kind of looks similar to spanish but i think it is more like written italian pronounced by a spanish in his own phonology.


Veneto is quite similar to spanish.
Véneto	Italiano	Español
ava	ape	abeja
carega	sedia	silla
braghése	pantaloni	pantalón
całe	via	calle
ciapar	cogliere/prendere	coger/agarrar
càvara/cavra	capra	cabra
càmara/canbra	camera	cámara
caxa	casa	casa
rànzsego	acido	ácido
ocio	occhio	ojo
porzseło	maiale	cerdo
pón / pómo	mela	manzana / poma
scoła	scuola	escuela
schirat	scoiattolo	ardilla
tor	prendere	tomar
sciop	fucile	fusil
àmia	zia	tía
uncuò / anco'	oggi	hoy
subiar / supiar	fischiare	silbar
serar	chiudere	cerrar
vèrdar / vèrzar	aprire	abrir

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idioma_veneciano

note:
http://vec.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aiuto:Convenzsion_de_scritura
ł - bisogna metarła senpre tra vocałi (no metare però ła "£"! Anca parché on foresto el po' pensar ke sia un scherso). No se dòpara mìa in parołe foreste, anca se'l połe èsare sugerío da ła pronunzsia.
j - bisogna metare ła "j" co ke se dixe na "i consonantica" (parxenpio en tałian co ke na paroła ła gà na "gl" e ke en veneto se pò dire come na "i" o come na "gi" - maja (pronunzsia: maia o màgia) , faméja (pron. faméia o famégia)
zs - dìgrafo doprà senpre co ke na paroła ła gà en certe xone ła pronunzsia interdentałe (senpre parxenpio nteła paroła "nazsion=nazion, nazhion, nassion" , "razsa=razza, razha, rassa", "carezsà"=accarezzato/a). Sendo un dìgrafo el se scrive co do létare ma el se leze senpre un sono solo: o "s" (chi che no ga interdentali) o "z" (chi che le ga). L'è diversa da z!
z - Anca quà se uxa co ke ghe xe difarenzse tra pronunzsia interdental e no (i zeri, meze mate, pronunzsia zeri o xeri, meze o mexe; carezà=carreggiata). El se dopara in sostituzsion de ła ZX prevista sul Manual Gramaticałe Xenerałe. Ocio che l'è diversa da zs!
qû - no el xe oblìgatorio anca parché xe raro
x - in tuti i caxi de s "dolzse" che no vaga scrita z/zx. (par exenpio: xe, ti xeri, el méxe, caxa) Xe difarente da s!
s - ła vien senpre pronunzsià "dura" ma veloce confá ne ła paroła sałe, anca fra do vocałi (p.ex: saso, Mésa, rasa=gratta).
np e nb - en veneto quel ke en tałian xe "mp" en veneto xe "NP" (tenpo)
gnente dopie!


----------



## Angelo di fuoco

franz rod said:


> The influence of Spanish in Italian is minimal. There's is only a superficial influence in the dialects of south Italy.



What is superficial for you?
There are several quite important grammatical features that Southern Italian dialects share with Spanish. I don't know much about vocabulary because I haven't had that much contact with these dialects - mostly through vocal music - but those features are quite distinctive: more frequent use of "stare" (or its equivalents) in comparison to Standard Italian, "tenere" (or its equivalents) as verb of possession, distinction between personal/animated and impersonal/inanimated direct objects. If you call that superficial, I don't know what is profound, because usually grammatical features of one language don't enter another language as easily as just words.


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## Ajura

Angelo di fuoco said:


> What is superficial for you?
> There are several quite important grammatical features that Southern Italian dialects share with Spanish. I don't know much about vocabulary because I haven't had that much contact with these dialects - mostly through vocal music - but those features are quite distinctive: more frequent use of "stare" (or its equivalents) in comparison to Standard Italian, "tenere" (or its equivalents) as verb of possession, distinction between personal/animated and impersonal/inanimated direct objects. If you call that superficial, I don't know what is profound, because usually grammatical features of one language don't enter another language as easily as just words.


here is a comparison between romanesco,standard italian and napoletano.


> Napoletano [modifica]
> Un romano difficilmente riesce a comprendere un napoletano che si esprime integralmente in dialetto, tuttavia si possono citare piccole similitudini.
> La più rilevante è la costruzione dell'infinito del verbo. Come i romani, anche i napoletani eliminano le ultime due lettere -re, sicché la frase
> Andiamo a mangiare si tradurrà nei due casi
> Annamo a magnà (romano)
> Jamm' a magnà (napoletano)
> Sia i romani che i napoletani preferiscono, quando parlano al passato, un uso massiccio dell'imperfetto e del passato prossimo. Poco frequente il passato remoto, usatissimo invece più a sud.
> Il verbo andare, come nel caso del romano, evoca il latino. Andato si rende con iuto, quindi si avrà
> Sono andato a mangiare (Italiano)
> Sò ito a magnà (Romano)
> Sò iuto a magnà (Napoletano)
> Entrambi i dialetti contemplano l'uso dell'avverbio mo', che significa "ora, adesso".
> Adesso si mangia (Italiano)
> Mo' se magna (Romano)
> Mo' se magn' (Napoletano)
> Questo termine è comunque ampiamente diffuso nell'Italia centrale, fino in Puglia e alcune zone del calabrese.
> 
> Infine, anche il napoletano prevede un comportamento anomalo degli aggettivi possessivi riferiti a familiari. Abbiamo già visto che in romano si elimina l'ultima lettera dell'aggettivo, in napoletano invece si usa una costruzione agglutinante, ovvero la possessività viene espressa aggiungendo una particella alla fine della frase (-mo, -ma, -to, -ta...) Esempi:
> Tuo fratello (Italiano)
> Tu' fratello (Romanesco)
> Frateto (Napoletano) (la "o" è poco sentita).
> Mia moglie (Italiano)
> Mi moje (Romano)
> Mujerema (Napoletano)
> Foneticamente, si registra in entrambi i casi il cambio del gruppo "ng" con "gn. Esempi:
> Magna'
> (Mangiare)
> Chiagne , Piagne (napoletano prima, romanesco il secondo).
> (Piangere)


http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatica_del_romanesco


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## Angelo di fuoco

It is not easy for me to believe that the passato remoto is so rarely used in Romanesco and especially Napoletano (although, as for all I know, relatively rarely in comparison to Sicilian), but this is perhaps a subject for another thread.


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## federicoft

Angelo di fuoco said:


> What is superficial for you?
> There are several quite important grammatical features that Southern Italian dialects share with Spanish. I don't know much about vocabulary because I haven't had that much contact with these dialects - mostly through vocal music - but those features are quite distinctive: more frequent use of "stare" (or its equivalents) in comparison to Standard Italian, "tenere" (or its equivalents) as verb of possession, distinction between personal/animated and impersonal/inanimated direct objects. If you call that superficial, I don't know what is profound, because usually grammatical features of one language don't enter another language as easily as just words.



 All those features can be easily explained with the common Latin origin of both Spanish and Southern Italian dialects; the fact that in Standard Italian and other Romance languages they developed in a different way or didn't developed at all isn't a sufficient condition to think of an influence of one upon the other, despite this being a very common folk theory.


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## Ajura

federicoft said:


> All those features can be easily explained with the common Latin origin of both Spanish and Southern Italian dialects; the fact that in Standard Italian and other Romance languages they developed in a different way or didn't developed at all isn't a sufficient condition to think of an influence of one upon the other, despite this being a very common folk theory.



I think Standard Italian and other Central-Southern dialects or Appenninian Idioms are closely related to Romanian.


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## federicoft

Genetically they are as close to Romanian as to any other Romance language.


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## gregori

robbie_SWE said:


> _*Limba Română are mult în comun cu limba Franceză. *_
> 
> Portuguese, I think, would be the language that common Romanians would have a hard time understanding.



Funny that you mention that 
I'm Brazilian, and portuguese is my mother language .. what do you say about that:
A língua romena tem muito em comum com a língua francesa.


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## indiegrl

I also feel ,when I read a text,that French is the closest to Romanian(it's not that I speak French,but in fact Romanian borrowed almost 30% of its actual vocabulary from French beginning with the 19th century). A Romanian speaker who knows no French at all can understand like 60% from a text in French,and almost nothing from a text in Portuguese. Of course,spoken French is harder to understand.\



> I think Standard Italian and other Central-Southern dialects or Appenninian Idioms are closely related to Romanian.


 The closest languages to Romanian are the other East-romance languages(dialects): Istroromanian(which is mutually inteligible to Romanian)Aromanian ,spoken in Croatia(Istria),Northern Greece and Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
 Then follows French,which isn't at all that close as Istroromanian. After French follows Italian.


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## Ajura

indiegrl said:


> I also feel ,when I read a text,that French is the closest to Romanian(it's not that I speak French,but in fact Romanian borrowed almost 30% of its actual vocabulary from French beginning with the 19th century). A Romanian speaker who knows no French at all can understand like 60% from a text in French,and almost nothing from a text in Portuguese. Of course,spoken French is harder to understand.\
> 
> 
> The closest languages to Romanian are the other East-romance languages(dialects): Istroromanian(which is mutually inteligible to Romanian)Aromanian ,spoken in Croatia(Istria),Northern Greece and Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
> Then follows French,which isn't at all that close as Istroromanian. After French follows Italian.



I said Appenninian/ItaloRomance dialects are closely related to the Romanian group(such as Istro-Romanian,Romanian etc in general) in general...

An obvious reason to believe that they are closely related is that the pronunciation of the /c/ and /g/ of latin before i and e in those groups is tʃ and dʒ.

I think RhaetoRomance used to form a dialect continuum between Appennino-Balkan Romance(such as Italian and Romanian) to Western Romance(French,Occitan,Spanish) that was before the Cisalpine Dialects(Western Romance) expanded to the Venice area and German dialects in Bavaria and Austria and Hungarian to Pannonia.

Do you know that the sardinian word for language is Limba like romanian.

AustroBavarian is related to Standard German as Portuguese to Spanish/Castillian...


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## Linnets

Ajura said:


> http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatica_del_romanesco
> Napoletano [modifica]
> Un romano difficilmente riesce a comprendere un napoletano che si esprime integralmente in dialetto, tuttavia si possono citare piccole similitudini.
> La più rilevante è la costruzione dell'infinito del verbo. Come i romani, anche i napoletani eliminano le ultime due lettere -re, sicché la frase
> Andiamo a mangiare si tradurrà nei due casi
> Annamo a magnà (romano)
> Jamm' a magnà (napoletano)
> Sia i romani che i napoletani preferiscono, quando parlano al passato, un uso massiccio dell'imperfetto e del passato prossimo. Poco frequente il passato remoto, usatissimo invece più a sud.
> Il verbo andare, come nel caso del romano, evoca il latino. Andato si rende con iuto, quindi si avrà
> Sono andato a mangiare (Italiano)
> Sò ito a magnà (Romano)
> Sò iuto a magnà (Napoletano)
> Entrambi i dialetti contemplano l'uso dell'avverbio mo', che significa "ora, adesso".
> Adesso si mangia (Italiano)
> Mo' se magna (Romano)
> Mo' se magn' (Napoletano)
> Questo termine è comunque ampiamente diffuso nell'Italia centrale, fino in Puglia e alcune zone del calabrese.
> 
> Infine, anche il napoletano prevede un comportamento anomalo degli aggettivi possessivi riferiti a familiari. Abbiamo già visto che in romano si elimina l'ultima lettera dell'aggettivo, in napoletano invece si usa una costruzione agglutinante, ovvero la possessività viene espressa aggiungendo una particella alla fine della frase (-mo, -ma, -to, -ta...) Esempi:
> Tuo fratello (Italiano)
> Tu' fratello (Romanesco)
> Frateto (Napoletano) (la "o" è poco sentita).
> Mia moglie (Italiano)
> Mi moje (Romano)
> Mujerema (Napoletano)
> Foneticamente, si registra in entrambi i casi il cambio del gruppo "ng" con "gn. Esempi:
> Magna'
> (Mangiare)
> Chiagne , Piagne (napoletano prima, romanesco il secondo).
> (Piangere)



Many features are shared by other Romance dialects: for example infinitive without _-re_ can be found also in Tuscany and Lombardy; _ire_ (from Latin _īre_) for _andare _is common also in Tuscany and _mo_ (from Latin _modo_) was once more widespread; as far as _piàgne _is concerned, _piagner _is used in some Venetian dialects. The reason is simple: most languages/dialects spoken in Italy and Spain come from Latin, there's no need to invoke a direct Castilian influence.



Ajura said:


> An obvious reason to believe that they are closely related is that the pronunciation of the /c/ and /g/ of latin before i and e in those groups is tʃ and dʒ.



Please do not mix up orthography and phonology: /k, g/ before front vowels have palatalised in almost all Romance languages, except some Sardinain areas.


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## Ajura

Linnets said:


> Many features are shared by other Romance dialects: for example infinitive without _-re_ can be found also in Tuscany and Lombardy; _ire_ (from Latin _īre_) for _andare _is common also in Tuscany and _mo_ (from Latin _modo_) was once more widespread; as far as _piàgne _is concerned, _piagner _is used in some Venetian dialects. The reason is simple: most languages/dialects spoken in Italy and Spain come from Latin, there's no need to invoke a direct Castilian influence.
> 
> 
> 
> Please do not mix up orthography and phonology: /k, g/ before front vowels have palatalised in almost all Romance languages, except some Sardinain areas.


In western romance inc. galloitalic k and g before front vowels is th,s and z,ts and dz(ts and dz is the first stage) for some it only occurred medially like in Emiliano-Romagnolo and Norman.


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## franz rod

> Milanese and other galloitalic idiom is more closely related to spanish and occitan than to standard italian.



Surely not, only Piemontese is similar to Franch-area idioms.



> I think Veneto and Sanmarinese are hybrid between eastern and western romance because of them in between eastern romance and western romance areas and i think veneto kind of looks similar to spanish but i think it is more like written italian pronounced by a spanish in his own phonology.



Ehm, no:  Veneto is very similar to Italian and has some features spread in all Italy (yeismo, fall of the last wovels, ...)



> Veneto is quite similar to spanish [...]



The list is odd, however:
carega	sedia	silla  carega/cadrega is spread in all northern Italy dialects.  With Italian "catedra", it came from the latin form cathedra (from Greek kathedra)
braghése	pantaloni	pantalón  In Veneto we use braghe and the term braghe/brache exists also in Italian.
całe	via	calle In Italian exist also calle but  I've never heard całe in Veneto (the only exception is Venezia)
pón / pómo	mela	manzana / poma In Italian there's is also pomo.
tor	prendere	tomar In Veneto I've heard only "cior". In Italian exist torre which means "to take off/away".
subiar / supiar	fischiare	silbar We use fis'ciar.
serar	chiudere	cerrar Also this term is spread in north Italy. In Italian exist the verb "serrare"



> I'd agree with that in everyday's italian, very little influence.



We can say ther's is no influence.



> It had a very strong influence during SXVI and SXVII in North Italy (most of all in Milano) and my personal experience is that several words pervive on the italian language.



According to the litterarian production, the only language that has a strong influence in north Italy in that period was Italian.  Several words? Any example?



> I think RhaetoRomance used to form a dialect continuum between Appennino-Balkan Romance(such as Italian and Romanian) to Western Romance(French,Occitan,Spanish) that was before the Cisalpine Dialects(Western Romance) expanded to the Venice area and German dialects in Bavaria and Austria and Hungarian to Pannonia.



The Rhaeto-Romance languages were spread from canton Ticino to Istria.  I don't think we can consider them a dialect continuum between western and eastern neo latin languages.  For example Friulano is more similar to French then Veneto.  
Cisalpine Dialcets didn't expanded to Venice area, but Veneto dialects were born in this area.  In Istria a Veneto dialect (called Istriano) supplanted a Rhaeto-Romance one (Istrioto) and also in Trieste (from Tergestino to Triestino).


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## Linnets

Ajura said:


> In western romance inc. galloitalic k and g before front vowels is th,s and z,ts and dz(ts and dz is the first stage) for some it only occurred medially like in Emiliano-Romagnolo and Norman.


I think the first stage was [c, ɟ] (palatal stops).


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## Ajura

franz rod said:


> Surely not, only Piemontese is similar to Franch-area idioms.



Ligurian/Genoese is also another one similar to Occitan.


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## Ajura

> The Rhaeto-Romance languages were spread from canton Ticino to Istria. I don't think we can consider them a dialect continuum between western and eastern neo latin languages. For example Friulano is more similar to French then Veneto.
> Cisalpine Dialcets didn't expanded to Venice area, but Veneto dialects were born in this area. In Istria a Veneto dialect (called Istriano) supplanted a Rhaeto-Romance one (Istrioto) and also in Trieste (from Tergestino to Triestino).


Veneto I think has both Western and Eastern Romance isoglosses.


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## franz rod

> Veneto I think has both Western and Eastern Romance isoglosses


Some examples?


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## Ajura

franz rod said:


> Some examples?


I only know of it's western romance isogloss.

western romance isogloss
Italian ci and ce are /s/ and gi and ge are /z/  in veneto like Paxena,/z/ is writen as x in Veneto orthography.


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## traveling cloud

As a Romanian native speaker, the only Romance "language" that I can  understand nearly 100% is Moldovian, in fact a dialect of standard  Romanian. Aromanian is easy to learn, but for an untrained ear (as  mine), the only thing you can do is to get the idea, and fill up the  missing details using your own imagination. Istro-Romanian is even easier, the only problem is that it uses too many Croatian words to have a near-100% comprehension. (For Romanian speakers, look for "istro-romani" on YouTube)

As for the south and  western Romance languages is hard for me to say which is closer to  Romanian, as I have some basic to medium knowledge of French and Spanish  and very little of Italian. Anyway, I can get the whole image from any  of the Romance languages if basic words are used or it's about a  scientific text. For example, I have zero knowledge of Galician or  Piedmontese, but I understand 40-50% of any Wikipedia article written in  these languages (although it's easier for Galician as it is closer to  Spanish). Many words do not exist in Romanian, but they are used in  French and Spanish, so it's easy to guess what they stand for.

Also,  using my Spanish knowledge, I can understand pretty well the  Portuguese, say 60% of the degree I understand Spanish (if spoken) and  much more if written.


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## Ottilie

For me as well. Standard Romanian is the only language I understand without any problems whatsoever. Maybe Romanians have problems in understanding the Romanian language spoken in Moldova because we use many ''russisms''(words taken from Russian and adapted to Romanian grammar)
 As for the other Romance language,I don't understand them. 
I watched the video about Istro-Romanians,and I could understand it like 70%.


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## duvija

As Betulina said, (and I expand), passive lang. is easier than active lang. 
Reading is the easiest, then probably understanding, then we have to take a big step in order to speak (related to shyness more than knowledge), and an even bigger one to write a decent paper without help.

Not all languages are symmetric.
A Portuguese speaker deals better with spoken Spanish, than a Spanish speaker when somebody speaks Portuguese. Italian and Spanish are quite close. French is the most different of those four. Catalan, it depends - some people find it easy, others impossible.
Romanian is the one with the lowest % of Romance words, isn't it?


saludos


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## olaszinho

> Sia i romani che i napoletani preferiscono, quando parlano al passato, un uso massiccio dell'imperfetto e del passato prossimo. Poco frequente il passato remoto, usatissimo invece più a sud.


 
I'm Italian and in my view this is not correct. The passato remoto is still used in Rome and even more in Naples. Educated Roman people often use the passato remoto in speech. On the contrary most Sicilians or people from Calabria tend to switch to the Passato prossimo when they speak Italian because they consider the passato remoto to be too much regional.  It may sound a bit strange but the Passato remoto is still used in Bolonia, too.


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## olaszinho

[





> QUOTE]Italian and Spanish are quite close


.[/QUOTE] 

This is a sort of myth! Only people who have never studied these two languages can say a thing like this. They are both Romance languages and their pronounciation  is quite clear but that's all. 
Spanish and Portuguese are much more similar in vocabulary and structure. Italian is much more similar to French in this point (they both use two auxiliary verbs to form all compound tenses and the agreement of the past participle is not that easy). In addition both French and Italian use pronoun particles (French y, en) Italian (ci, vi, ce, ne). These particles do not exist neither in Spanish nor in Portuguese. Not to mention the Italian articles and plurals, which are more similar to the Romanian ones (even if these are enclitic) than other Western Romance languages, most of them just add a final -s.
As for the pronounciation. Italian has more phonemes than Spanish: tz, dz, z, gj é, è ò sounds, besides all consonants can be  pronounced simple or double. This is  a real nightmare for Spanish people and Portuguese. They still have trouble with geminate consonants even after many years they live in Italy. On the other hand, Spanish have phonemes, which do not exist in Italian like Jota and c/z sounds.


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## robbie_SWE

duvija said:


> As Betulina said, (and I expand), passive lang. is easier than active lang.
> Reading is the easiest, then probably understanding, then we have to take a big step in order to speak (related to shyness more than knowledge), and an even bigger one to write a decent paper without help.
> 
> Not all languages are symmetric.
> A Portuguese speaker deals better with spoken Spanish, than a Spanish speaker when somebody speaks Portuguese. Italian and Spanish are quite close. French is the most different of those four. Catalan, it depends - some people find it easy, others impossible.
> Romanian is the one with the lowest % of Romance words, isn't it?
> 
> 
> saludos


 
No it isn't. Statistically Romanian is in line with the other Romance languages (up to 80-85% of contemporary Romanian vocabulary has a Romance origin). 
 
Linguist Mario Pei (he's not completely uncontroversial) presented 1949 a study where the different Romance languages were compared to Latin. The aim of the study was to analyse the evolutionary divergence of the Romance languages. Romanian scored a 23,5% divergence from Latin (syntax, grammar, vocabulary etc.). French (44%), Portuguese (31%) and Occitan (25%) diverged even more from Latin than Romanian. 
 
 robbie


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## duvija

Yes, Mario Pei is quite controversial.

I'm a Spanish speaker, with many years of French on my back, plus 2 years of Italian and 1 of Brazilian Portuguese. Italian is by far the easiest one for a Sp. speaker. I never touched Romanian, but I tend to understand too little of it. Of course, because I'm referring to myself, this is just an anecdote, but my whole class found Italian waaaaaaaay easier than French. 
Once we did a little survey in my high school and first years of University, and the results were , from easiest to hardest : Italian, Port. French (and no, no Romanian involved). For Portuguese, we can learn it by listening at the border with Brazil - where, of course, they speak a different Port. than in Northern Brazil. 

Of course it has more vowel than Spanish (most lgs. in the world, except Hawaiian and Berber) have more than 5 vowels (not true. Many, many, have the same triangular vowel system). And that's the reason for the asymmetry. Verbs? we have plenty of problems with our own...

saludos


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## olaszinho

People! there are no 'easy' languages as opposed to 'difficult' ones. If it's easy in one area, it's going to be bad in another. 
For your languages, you may go in any direction you want to. Think of how would you use it, instead of how 'easy' it may be.

saludos 


Dunjia you must have changed your mind.


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## Istriano

olaszinho said:


> The passato remoto is still used in Rome


It is used only in narration when you try to impress someone (if you speak standard Italian with a Roman accent). Speakers of Romanesco (from Roman suburbs) are the only ones to use the passato remoto in relaxed colloquial speech (and they use it when they speak Romanesco). But even tho', you're not likely to hear: *Capisti?* instead of_ *Hai capito?*_ (or _Hai capido?_  ) in Rome.


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## olaszinho

Lots of professors and teachers use passato remoto but the ones who tend to imitate the people from  Northern Italy particularly (Veneto and Lombardy) do not use it. who knows well the Italian grammar uses both tenses, like in Tuscany.


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## olaszinho

Italian is by far the easiest one for a Sp. speaker

This is probably true. Most Italians  find Spanish to be the "easiest" romance language, too. Personally, I think Spanish is the most regular, straightfarward and logical among all Romance languages, even if French and Brazilian Portuguese are much more simplified, morphologically. Standard Brazilian Portguese makes use of just 2 or 3 different  endings for every verb tense, unlike Italian or European Spanish (generally six endings, American Spanish 5 or 4). Even oral French is extremely simplified from a morphological point of view: it has 3-4 endings for each verb tense, the plurals are not pronounced except when   liaison is required. French present subjunctive has almost the same forms as the indicative in all regular verbs. Imperfect Subjunctive is no longer used in contemporary French. Anyway I have to admit that French orthography and pronounciation are really complex, particularly if compared to the Spanish ones. In addition, Spanish lacks some basic sounds like z, sh, é, è and so on. I do believe French is a sort of nightmare for Spanish students


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## duvija

olaszinho said:


> People! there are no 'easy' languages as opposed to 'difficult' ones. If it's easy in one area, it's going to be bad in another.
> For your languages, you may go in any direction you want to. Think of how would you use it, instead of how 'easy' it may be.
> 
> saludos
> 
> 
> Dunjia you must have changed your mind.


 

I was talking about 'language families'. Of course, if you speak one Romance language, another one would be easier than, say, Chinese or Arabic. Within the Romance lang. some will be 'easier if you speak X' than some other one. But the link was about recommending languages out of your family lg. and they are all hard in their own way.


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## Istriano

Portuguese speakers can understand Galician, Spanish, Valencian and most of Italian with ease, but French, Catalan and Romanian can be be a lot harder to understand.


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## olaszinho

We were in Romania last year for a European project. The partnership was composed of Italian, Portuguese and Spanish partners. If Romanians spoke slowly, the Italians could understand the general meaning of what they were saying or at least a bunch of words. On the contrary, Spanish and Portuguese people could not understand a single word of Romanian. In my opinion, Romanian and Italian are much more similar, take a look at the articles, they're more or less the same even if in Romanian they are enclitic. The same occurs for the plurals: Italian is the only Romance language (with Romanian) to retain some neuter nouns in plural (le uovA, le murA, le ditA, le filA, le centinaiA and so on), according to the Italian grammar those plurals are feminine but they preserve the plurals Latin ending in -A. Romanian has lots of nouns which are masculine in singular  and feminine in plural, these names are called neuter in Romanian grammar but they present the same phenomenon mentioned above for some Italian nouns. BOth Romanian and Italian have lots of irregular past participles with more or less the same form. As far as I know Romanians can understand Italian even better than Italians


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## Favara

Istriano said:


> Portuguese speakers can understand Galician, Spanish, *Valencian* and most of Italian with ease, but French, *Catalan* and Romanian can be be a lot harder to understand.


How can it be both easy and hard? Those 2 languages are the same, with minor differences. In fact, as a native speaker (Southern Valencian dialect) I'm usually unable to notice differences between dialects in the Western Catalan variety (except Central Valencian or _apitxat_, that one sounds different from everything else). Eastern Catalan is more noticeable, but the only notable differences are 1st person singular of the present tense (Western uses -e instead of -o, -i or nothing) and the pronunciation of a few letters (j, non-tonic a/e/o)... It's more like an accent to us.


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## merquiades

Favara said:


> How can it be both easy and hard? Those 2 languages are the same, with minor differences. In fact, as a native speaker (Southern Valencian dialect) I'm usually unable to notice differences between dialects in the Western Catalan variety (except Central Valencian or _apitxat_, that one sounds different from everything else). Eastern Catalan is more noticeable, but the only notable differences are 1st person singular of the present tense (Western uses -e instead of -o, -i or nothing) and the pronunciation of a few letters (j, non-tonic a/e/o)... It's more like an accent to us.



Hi Favara.  I think I understand the point Istriano is trying to make.  Valencian sounds very pure to the ear, with its vowels sounds very well distinguished.  The spoken language seems also to match the written language almost perfectly. This is also a characteristic of standard Italian, so it must make it even easier for Italians to pick up Valencian.  Besides there is also the V sound and the strong J like in Italian, probably more consonants too.  Eastern Catalan on the contrary weakens non-tonic vowel sounds into neutral vowels.  It makes it hard for foreigners to pick out words, especially if they learned more the written language.  I'm not Italian, but I could understand Valencian far easier at first. I've gotten used to Eastern Catalan as I made it a goal, but it's not obvious at first to hear Shows Bridat and know it's Això és veritat.


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## Ottilie

olaszinho said:


> We were in Romania last year for a European project. The partnership was composed of Italian, Portuguese and Spanish partners. If Romanians spoke slowly, the Italians could understand the general meaning of what they were saying or at least a bunch of words. On the contrary, Spanish and Portuguese people could not understand a single word of Romanian. In my opinion, Romanian and Italian are much more similar, take a look at the articles, they're more or less the same even if in Romanian they are enclitic. The same occurs for the plurals: Italian is the only Romance language (with Romanian) to retain some neuter nouns in plural (le uovA, le murA, le ditA, le filA, le centinaiA and so on), according to the Italian grammar those plurals are feminine but they preserve the plurals Latin ending in -A. Romanian has lots of nouns which are masculine in singular  and feminine in plural, these names are called neuter in Romanian grammar but they present the same phenomenon mentioned above for some Italian nouns. BOth Romanian and Italian have lots of irregular past participles with more or less the same form. As far as I know Romanians can understand Italian even better than Italians



 I cannot say whether Italian and Romanian are mutual intelligible , I believe they're not,but Italian it's for sure more similar to Romanian than Spanish or Portuguese. I know people how speak Romanian and French(they don't speak Italian) and can understand Italian pretty well ,unlike those who speak no other Romance language more likely will not understand Italian that easy because there are several fundamental ,lexical differences  : parlare/ a vorbi , amare/ a iubi  and so on ,but if you know the French parler and aimer ,you can understand what they speak.


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## olaszinho

Ottilie said:


> I cannot say whether Italian and Romanian are mutual intelligible , I believe they're not,but Italian it's for sure more similar to Romanian than Spanish or Portuguese. I know people how speak Romanian and French(they don't speak Italian) and can understand Italian pretty well ,unlike those who speak no other Romance language more likely will not understand Italian that easy because there are several fundamental ,lexical differences : parlare/ a vorbi , amare/ a iubi and so on ,but if you know the French parler and aimer ,you can understand what they speak.


 
Ottilie, 
Romanian and Italian are not mutually intelligible, but to some extent one can understand a great deal of words in the other language, particularly in the written form. As for French and Italian you are right. If you already know French you can understand and learn Italian easier. These two languages shares a lot of features in vocabulary and structure that  do not exist in other Romance languages, except Catalan in some cases:
As for as vocabulary is concerned: 
trouver/trovare = to find
chercher/cercare = to look for
vouloir/volere = to want
prendre/prendere= to take
demain/domani = tomorrow
fenêtre/finestra = window and many others
frère/fratello = brother
soeur/sorella = sister
As for the structure, the use of two auxiliary verbs to form compound tenses; the agreement of the past participle and the idiomtic use of lots of pronominal particles, such as French (y, en) Italian (ne, ci, ce vi), the partitive article and so on


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## Fernando

merquiades said:


> Hi Favara.  I think I understand the point Istriano is trying to make.  Valencian sounds very pure to the ear, with its vowels sounds very well distinguished.  The spoken language seems also to match the written language almost perfectly. This is also a characteristic of standard Italian, so it must make it even easier for Italians to pick up Valencian.  Besides there is also the V sound and the strong J like in Italian, probably more consonants too.  Eastern Catalan on the contrary weakens non-tonic vowel sounds into neutral vowels.  It makes it hard for foreigners to pick out words, especially if they learned more the written language.  I'm not Italian, but I could understand Valencian far easier at first. I've gotten used to Eastern Catalan as I made it a goal, but it's not obvious at first to hear Shows Bridat and know it's Això és veritat.



I agree with merquiades. I have not knowledge of Catalan or Valencian but, to my "Castillian" ears, I can almost fully understand everything a Valencian is saying. Meanwhile, it is hard to me to understand a Catalan and IMPOSSIBLE to understand spoken Mallorquin.

I notice that, when written, I hardly notice the difference and that my perception is probably based in accent (the same reason a person with a strong accent from Cádiz could be speaking Japanese for a non-native Spanish speaker), rather than in vocabulary, grammar or even proper spelling.


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## Ottilie

olaszinho said:


> Ottilie,
> written form. As for French and Italian you are right. If you already know French you can understand and learn Italian easier. These two languages shares a lot of features in vocabulary and structure that  do not exist in other



 I've been told that if you know French and Romanian you understand Italian more than 90%. I believe that for a Romanian who speaks fluent French,learning Italian to a decent level in conversation is a matter of 2-3 months.


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## olaszinho

Ottilie said:


> I've been told that if you know French and Romanian you understand Italian more than 90%. I believe that for a Romanian who speaks fluent French,learning Italian to a decent level in conversation is a matter of 2-3 months.


 
well, a Romanian in 2-3 months could just learn the basics! I know most romanians are used to saying so, but most of them like boasting their languages skills . In my view 6 months are required to achieve a decent level at least in understanding and speaking decently. Anyway, it all depends on the person and his/her background. Generally Romanians are quite good at the beginning but they get stuck at a medium and advanced level. A correct use of the subjunctive mood and other tenses in Italian are quite complex for Romanians, because the structure of the two languages are quite different in this point.. particularly as for the concordance between verb tenses.


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## Ottilie

I said that Romanians who are fluent in French can learn Italian quite easy,because French grammar is close to the Italian one(also subjunctive) and French vocabulary is close to the Italian one .And in Romania(unlike Moldova) there are many people who studied French at school and speak it.The others,like me,for example,need a lot more time .And of course,speaking 2 Romance languages makes it easy to learn the 3rd.


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## olaszinho

Anyway French subjunctive is much easier than the Italian one. French do not use Imperfect and plus que imperfect  subjunctive any more. In addition, if  you know French well you cannot understand 90% of Italian... Probably you can just understand 30/40% till 50% (if you are particularly talented) without previous exposure to the Italian language.


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## Istriano

But, French pronunciation is more difficult because of nasal vowels, diphthongs, shwas...Openness/closeness of vowels seems to be more important (and more observed) in French than it Italian, and much more consistent too (unlike in Italian where there is: _ventitrè, perchè _in Milan and _ventitré, perché_ in Tuscany in Rome; _cèntro _in Tuscany, _céntro _in Milan and Rome, _vérde _in Milan, Tuscany and Rome and _vèrde _in Turin and in Taranto, _primavèra _in Tuscany and Rome, _primavéra _in Umbria, _Vèneto _in Venice, Rome and Tuscany and _Véneto _in Milan, _Còmo _in Tuscany and Rome, _Cómo _in Milan and Como,_ i vènti _in Tuscany, Rome, Turin, _i vénti _in Milan, vénti (20) in Tuscany, Rome and Milan, vènti (20) in Turin).  Outside the Center of Italy, every city has its own set of rules when o's and e's are pronounced open and close. Even in central Italy, there are more than 500 word which are pronounced different in Tuscany and Rome (and some dictionaries give both pronunciations, Paravia for example: lèttera, léttera; cèntro, céntro and so on, both Tuscan and Roman variants are given, but not Northern or Southern because all possible pronunciations would have to be included  ).

If you speak Italian with only 5 vowels you will sound like a foreigner (Greek or Spanish speakers do this)...You have to choose one local pronunciation and identify yourself with it with it, be it from Tuscany, Rome, Milan, Turin, Genoa. Dictionaries list only the Tuscan pronunciation and sometimes the Roman one (if the pronunciation is different as in lèttera, léttera), but normally Southern and Northern variants are not given.

Openness, closeness of o's and e's is less important from the phonological aspects (vènti = winds; vénti = 20 different in Central Italian), but it gives the Italian language sonority and sweetness it has. Italian spoken with only 5 vowels sounds like a dialect of Spanish...

English manuals often say: don't bother with e's and o's.
Well, what would happen if Italian manuals on English said: pronounce th as t : _tank you_ instead of thank you.   or _boat _instead of both


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## federicoft

Istriano said:


> [...] and much more consistent too (unlike in Italian where there is: _ventitrè, perchè _in Milan and _ventitré, perché_ in Tuscany in Rome; _cèntro _in Tuscany, _céntro _in Milan and Rome, _vérde _in Milan, Tuscany and Rome and _vèrde _in Turin and in Taranto, _primavèra _in Tuscany and Rome, _primavéra _in Umbria, _Vèneto _in Venice, Rome and Tuscany and _Véneto _in Milan, _Còmo _in Tuscany and Rome, _Cómo _in Milan and Como,_ i vènti _in Tuscany, Rome, Turin, _i vénti _in Milan, vénti (20) in Tuscany, Rome and Milan, vènti (20) in Turin).



I'm afraid I didn't get that part.

Each and every of those words has a unique pronunciation in standard Italian. Regional accents don't affect it and most surely they are not a peculiarity of Italian.


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## Istriano

In French, è, é, ò, ó are pronounced more uniformly across the country.
People don't use the wrong accents.

In Northern Italy, almost everyone writes perchè, ventritrè reflecting their local pronunciation (instead of Tuscan/Roman standard: perché, ventitré).
For example, the singer Alizée is from Còrsica but she does not have any accent, she speaks  with a standard French accent (as indicated in dictionaries).
In Italian North or South, only trained actors use the standard pronunciation (as given in dictionaries).


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## federicoft

I beg to differ.
Admittedly, in Italy there's a larger accent diversity compared to France. Still, regional accents do exist in French as well, and although vowels are pronounced rather [surely not entirely] consistently across the country, there are other divergent features among different accents.

On the other hand, standard pronunciation in Italian is far from being limited to trained actors. I'd say the pronunciation of most average people is a good approximation of it, while a thick accent is widely considered a sign of poor education. Even if most people do retain a hint of their native accent in everyday conversation, I doubt that would ever pose a problem to someone learning Italian as a foreign language.


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## olaszinho

I do not agree with Istriano. If you check all Italian dictionaries,  you can find a standard Italian based on Tuscan. Northern Italians do not follow those rules and northern Italian accents different a lot from the standard: mix of open and closed vowels, tz and dz sounds, lack of raddioppiamento sintattico and so on. An Italian from the north tends to deny these rules but a standard Italian does exist.


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## olaszinho

Openness, closeness of o's and e's is less important from the phonological aspects (vènti = winds; vénti = 20 different in Central Italian), but it gives the Italian language sonority and sweetness it has. Italian spoken with only 5 vowels sounds like a dialect of Spanish...

I distinguish not only vénti e vènti but also hò ( I have) and o (or) è (is) é (and) bòtte and botte, accétta and accètta, corso and còrso and pèsca and pésca. This kind of pronunciation is perfecty natural to me. 
In my view, the main difference between Spanish and Italian are geminate consonants! Spanish does not have them, except RR,  Foreign people tend to disregard this phenomenom but in Italian is phonological and basic for good pronunciation. If one wants to pronounce  Italian properly, it is essential to  learn to distinguish not only open and closed e and o vowels but also simple and double consonants. Most foreigners particularly Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian and Slavic people have trouble with them.
Belem, a beautiful girl from Argentina, has been living in Italy for more than 5-6 years, she is also a presenter on Italian tv but she cannot pronounce properly double consonants: all her consonants tend to be simple, like in Spanish.


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## OldAvatar

olaszinho said:


> Most foreigners particularly Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian and Slavic people have trouble with them.


I don't think that Romanians have any problems with double consonants in Italian.


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## olaszinho

They've got lots of problems, believe me, both in writing and in speech, not only Romanians anyway....I've got lots of Romanian students....


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## olaszinho

I would like  to add that Romanians who have Hungarian as native language do not have problems with double consonants, because the Hungarian language has double consonants too....


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## L'irlandais

Ciao olaszino,
I agree with that.
Also I find that many young people today tend to have a poor command of their own mother tongue.  (In France and the UK at any rate.)  This may account for the very subjective approach to mutual intelligibility of other languages.  For example, though I speak fluent French, I do not yet understand even 5% of Italian.  This discussion would be better to my mind, if it were more objective.

*Capisci?* doesn't evoke "Me *comprenez*-vous?" to my outsider's way of hearing.


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## Pedro y La Torre

L'irlandais said:


> Ciao olaszino,
> I agree with that.
> Also I find that many young people today tend to have a poor command of their own mother tongue.  (In France and the UK at any rate.)  This may account for the very subjective approach to mutual intelligibility of other languages.  For example, though I speak fluent French, I do not yet understand even 5% of Italian.  This discussion would be better to my mind, if it were more objective.
> 
> *Capisci?* doesn't evoke "Me *comprenez*-vous?" to my outsider's way of hearing.



Spoken? Maybe not.

I bet you can understand a lot of written Italian though.


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## Angelo di fuoco

There's still: "comprendi" and "intendi", although both non so frequently used, but still not uncommon.


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## Ottilie

OldAvatar said:


> I don't think that Romanians have any problems with double consonants in Italian.



 In Romanian there are no double consonants ,unlike Italian or Russian,therefore,there can be some problems.  But I believe that anyone with linguistic abilities can  get used to pronounce double consonants.


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## cherine

Hi,

I'm sorry I have to put an end to this thread. The Other Languages forum is about vocabulary and grammar questions concerning languages that don't have their own independent forum on WR. Questions about mutual intellegibility, similarities, language comparisons...etc are beyond the scope of the forum. 
The fact that some of them passed unnoticed for a time, doesn't mean that they are ok.

Sorry,
Cherine
Moderator


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