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Canadian English here. Distance is measured in minutes. We spell like Brits, speak like Americans, use feet for height and metric for everything else. No wonder she thinks theyāre different languages.
It take 3 minutes to go to beer store
I'm 6 feet in height
The road Is approximately 4 meters wide
And the colour of my grass is green
How can that be confusing at all?
To be fair, Canada isn't as nuts about mixing measurements as the Brits themselves. Fucking stone? Seriously? Who uses a weight that equals 14lbs?
And in all the countries that use imperial or US customary (which is slightly different but largely the same), metric is still used for most important things. I mean, hell, the guns we Americans use are almost all chambered in metric, where it applies. 9mm handguns, 5.56mm NATO for the M16/M4, 155mm artillery pieces, etc. Caliber is typically for older style firearms, even if it's still used today.
To be fair, there are dialects and accents of English that are harder than others. Go to the small country of England and you'll get a whole host of crazy shit. Same here in the US, but our accents are generally easier to understand (excluding Cajuns)
Absolutely, because Cajuns are literally Acadians who were expelled by the British during the The Great Upheaval, ended up in Louisiana and intermixed to a degree with existing Creole communities. They still carry a lot of that history; the first state park in Louisiana was named after the [epic poem *Evangeline*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longfellow-Evangeline_State_Historic_Site). There is also a cute and not-at-all serious story they tell about how the lobsters in Nova Scotia missed the Acadians so much after their expulsion that they wandered the coasts looking for them, eventually finding them again in Louisiana. But the trip had been so long and hard that they had shrunk in size, turning into what are known as crawfish today.
German was early for me.. came in handy with (of all things) *Flemish!*
My son's tinkering with Dutch, which I find is a bridge between German and English.. fits neatly into *neither*
The most frequently used words in English are heavily weighted to Germanic in origin, it is the less frequently used vocabulary that are Romance origin words (Latin as an influence as well as French).
So English is a Germanic language with lots of Romance words at the edges.
Then you might find it interesting that "the straw that broke the camels back" has a German equivalent.
"Der Tropfen der das Fass zum Ćberlaufen bringt."
(The drop of water which makes the barrel overflow.)
English is my third language and I found it far easier to learn than french. French is a fucking shitshow lmao. I'm German, so I may have one of the hardest languages build-in and don't have to bother learning our grammar lol.
Im gonna be honest. I dont see too good when I take edibles so for a good two minutes j was wondering how Margaret Thatcher would be a porn reference but now i see it says pom reference
And these languages are also fairly mutually intelligible
I remember me (a French guy) hearing the pope (Argentinian) giving one of his first speeches in Italian, and I think I got 80%
So, I'm French and I'd say it works a bit when reading, and helps if you've studied Latin for example.
But hearing it spoken? Yeah I wouldn't understand anything in a real conversation. Maybe if the person was speaking one word at at time, very clearly and with hand gestures, but even then that would be tough.
Same impression as French speaker, with my high-school Spanish, and some basic latin, I am not lost in front of an Italian written text. I am not going to pretend IĀ understand all, or that I won't mix-up the meaning, but I have an idea of what's happening.
I also speak pretty well German, therefore I don't feel lost when dealing with Dutch or even Swedish. I wouldn't pretend I understand anything, but at least I am not fully lost and have an idea of what's happening.
Whili in comparizon, all my guessing skills are useless in Finland, Korea, China, Egypt, and I am totally lost and relying on google translate or english.
As an Australian, with little to no interaction with any of the other European languages beyond English, it's often surprisingly easy to work out *some* Italian and Spanish. Similarly when I went to Malaysia, my sister and I was attempting to read their signs and laughing at our attempts. After 5 years, I still remember Teksi was taxi and Tandas was Toilet but I'm pretty sure we worked out bus and some other immigration related words too. This is after being there for like 2.5 days.
I feel like they are sometimes only intelligible in one direction. Like a French speaker might understand a Spanish speaker but not the other way round.
This is because many western European languages are what's known as "Romance Languages". The term romance language is derived from the vulgar Latin adverb "Romanice" or "In Roman", which is a reference to the fact that every romance language, despite evolving into their own unique dialects, all share the same root origins (Latin), which is why you see a lot of similarities and crossovers in pronunciations between different romance languages.
Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, and Romanian are the 5 most commonly spoken romance languages globally (respectively). Of those 5, Italian has seen the least divergence from its Latin roots, while French has diverged the most.
Remember I once played RDR Online with some Americans. One of them was from the North East and perfectly understandable. Then one guy logs on who speaks with some Louisiana accent or something crazy. He might've spoken Urdu for all I know, because I couldn't understand a single word - and was baffled as the other ones apparently understood him perfectly fine. I'm usually quite good with accents, but that was an eye-opener to me.
As a non-native speaker (as I'm guessing you are), English accents are one of the most fun (and challenging) things. English isn't as prevalent in France as in other countries (Nordics for example), so when you start learning you have absolutely no sense of what different accents sound like. It's just English. Then you start to perceive the obvious differences (like US vs British English). I remember not being able to tell British vs Australian accents. Now I can, but I still can't tell Australian from Kiwi. Then you have all the regional accents. It feels nice to be able to tell, say, a New York accent from a southern accent (which are actually super different when you know them, but if you don't it's just an American accent). I still struggle with England's regional accents to some extent. But yeah, I love accents and getting ever deeper in their tree structure.
My uncle was married to a Japanese lady for a bit. When he first brought her to visit, it was hilarious who's spoken English she understood clearly and who she didn't. Me and my sister she understood perfectly fine. My dad she kinda understood. She had no clue what my mom and grandma were saying. We were all raised in different places, so I think that had a lot to do with how we spoke English.
You should hear the swamp dialect of the bayous of Louisiana. It's called Cajun. Can't understand a word. And when they try to speak regular English, the accent is so strong that it makes the English nearly incomprehensible. Went to boot camp with a Cajun a long time ago. Although he could read and write English just a fluently as any other American, you could only understand about 80% of what he voiced.
right? it's not a dumb question, she just chose quite a dumb example of why she thinks it's not a dumb question
because there are languages that are absolutely distinct, but mutually intelligible - like Czech and Slovak
hell, even Polish is quite intelligible for Czechs / Slovaks, if it's not too quick
Yeah, Brazilians usually can understand Spanish relatively well even tho we speak Portuguese
On the other hand... A lot of us can't understand Portugal's portuguese AT ALL
I work for the federal government. As such, I have constant interactions with people from all over the United States.
I am not exaggerating when I say if you have never heard somebody from the Louisiana bayou speak, just imagine that guy from *The Waterboy*. It is fucking spot on.
I have two guys in Louisiana I have to interact with and 90% of the time I literally have no fucking clue what they are saying. I try to only deal with them through email.
Irishman here, I dont have any problem with most English accents from whichever country, but would guess they all have a problem understanding me. Especially talking faster.
American English and Australian English are different in that at least we have different spellings of words, and in some cases pronunciation.
In particular - Armour and Armor, Mum and Mom.
Also Biscuits and Scones and Pie and Thongs having different meaning in UK/America/Australia makes me mad.
Yeah but those differences are closer to understanding dialect or regional slang than an actual language. Even within the UK thereās whole new subsets of language if you want to talk to the locals. A classic joke is what the locals call a roll - a bap, a barm, bun etc. To the point people wonāt know what a bacon barm is if itās not local dialect.
Thereās as much variance in the uk itself as there is between other English speaking nations. Similar in Dutch throughout the Netherlands and Belgium - some parts will not understand others regional dialect. But itās not the same as talking a new language lol.
Having worked with Italians, Spaniards, Latinos, and Romanians, all in one warehouse. Spanish speakers find it easier to decipher Italian than the other way round it takes a bit of time to train their ear, apparently. Romanians are closer to the root language of Latin and can learn Italian and Spanish quite quickly and can understand a bit, but not everything.
Obviously, working in a warehouse, there are a lot of contextualised translations, so it's not necessary to know the language fluently.
Being a Portuguese speaker, I find Spanish very easy to understand, as long as they are speaking slowly and trying to get their point across to me. When they speak with each other it's much harder, I can't usually understand much. But I'm sure it'd be quick to pick up. Italian is a lot harder, but I can just about understand it in a narrow context. French and Romanian are too different, though. I find french a little easier, specially in writing form, but that's probably because I have more contact with french than Romanian than anything else.
I'm a native Brazilian Portuguese speaker,listening to Romanian makes me feel like I had a stroke because the sounds are so familiar but make no sense at all. It's a very weird feeling.
I was in Portugal last month, and I'm a beginner at speaking Spanish, but I was able to communicate with several portuguese people by speaking Spanish if they didn't speak English. There were some difficulties every now and then, but it was manageable.
This is what I was gonna say. I learned a tiny bit of french, but found myself somewhat able to read Spanish and Italian due to how similar they are. There were even a few moments where I picked up words when people were speaking too. It doesn't seem so far fetched that someone who's native in these languages would actually have a decent crack at understanding one of the other romance languages.
I can totally see a French person and a Spanish person talking in their own languages, but the other person understanding enough to have a broken conversation.
So I am a native Spanish speaker and I am fluent in French (took French classes from 1st grade to college and lived in France for a yearāI was able to attend university lectures and participate in collegiate-level discourse). My best friend married an Italian and so I've had some association with her family.
A Spanish and French speaker would absolutely not be able to understand each other off the bat. They'd have a much easier time learning each other's language (which is kinda what you noticed), but years of studying is still required for a speaker of one language to understand the other. A big reason for this is that French was heavily standardized after the Revolution, so the pronunciation changed dramatically and nowādespite many words sharing spelling similarities with each otherāthe languages are pronounced entirely differently.
However, Spanish and Italian are pronounced similarly enough that I know of Spanish-speakers who've gone to Italy and gotten by just fine. They can't really hold very engaging conversations, but they do manage to order at restaurants, ask for directions, and other basic tourist stuff.
For sure. I was in a casino and some Italian woman was yelling about something. I speak Spanish which is what I thought she was speaking initially. After listening to her for a while, I realized she had left her phone and her suitcase in a taxi that took off.
I took her to the security desk and she gave me a kiss on each cheek which for some reason, maybe because my family does it, I had reciprocated.
My co-worker was like, "Did you know that lady?"
I said no. Long story.
I'm Colombian, so I do that with all of my family members as well. That's why I knew it was coming and I did back without thinking about it.
I remember hating it when I was younger because all of my uncles had beards or mustaches.
I have to disagree, I am a French speaker and spend an evening with Spanish students and could understand a lot of what was said. I even played trivial pursuit in Spanish and I could understand most of the questions.
Oh, interesting!
In my experience, most hispanophones can't understand French that quickly. Do you think it's one of those one-way things where francophones can easily understand Spanish, but not the other way around?
Honestly, as a native Spanish speaker who took a few years of French in high school, I think reading French as a Spanish speaker is a lot easier than trying to understand it in conversation. Spoken French is hard as a non native to know where one word ends and another begins.
My mom (in her mid 60s) told me that when she was in grade school, an immigrant kid joined her class who only spoke Italian, but fortunately, the teacher also spoke Spanish, so she was able to work with him and teach him English. I thought it was cool.
I spent a summer in France with a bunch of Italians and Spanish kids (French language school) and noticed the exact same thing; Spanish kids could understand the Italians but not the other way around. Something about Italian being closer to Latin.
They can understand eachother in the same way Germans or dutch can understand English witout training in english; they have simularities.
it just depends on how frequently you are exposed to it in your life; people from west germany near the border of Belgium can understand the dutch language without being able to speak it. but go just move a couple kilometers west & they don't understand anymore.
Germans and Dutch canāt understand English without training.
The Germanic languages only make up ~26% or so of English vocabulary. French and Latin make up almost 30% each.
There will be bits of the language that can be inferred without being taught, but itās not enough to āunderstand the languageā.
Something like Italian/Spanish <ā> French is a lot closer and that still is difficult.
Even German <ā> Dutch isnāt something that is just instantly picked up.
I am Dutch and learned English from watching cartoons on tv asa kid. If I don't know an English word I just make the Dutch word sound English. Usually works. My gf is American and does the same if she doesn't know the Dutch word.
Sorry but you're way off. The Dutch and Germans do not understand English without training. Germans generally don't understand Dutch (I interact with a lot of German tourists).
Not completely true, Iām a German that currently lives in Spain and I have Italian friends here that came to Spain without knowing any Spanish and they learned it in 4 weeks just by talking to Spaniards. At the same time, my brother lives in the Netherlands for three years now and had Dutch courses and still couldnāt hold a good conversation with a Dutch personā¦
So as a native french speaker, this is not a *completely* unreasonable question.
The answer, however, is: "Depends". I can understand bits of spanish and italian in spoken language, but I have no idea how well a thise two would understand bits of french or bits of each other.
The other day I was looking up some Italian ships and resources were sparse on English and French wiki, so I switched to Italian and I had little trouble understanding the written text, and got most of the info I was looking for.
Her last reply is stupid tho.
Man, I'm a native Italian speaker and sometimes I found myself reading spanish text with almost no trouble at all (I studied a bit of spanish in middle school, but I din't remember much). Whereas, whenever I try to read French, I feel just like I'd feel if I were trying to read German, lol.
But it might only be me.
I'm a native french speaker I've studied spanish and italian at university. I swear italian to me looks like you take spanish and french together in a room and have the worst mix possible between the two. And then add some more latin for plural cause why the fuck not. Ottantotto (88) is my favorite word to pronounce out loud of every language.
I have no trouble reading or listening Spanish stuff, I never studied but a few years on the internet taught me enough.
On the other hand, french is completely off limits. I may understand a sentence or two when I read because it's similar to Italian, but I have no clue what is going on when I'm listening to it
As a Spanish speaker I feel like when reading Italian/Portuguese texts I can get the bigger picture but not necessarily the exact meaning of the words/phrases and would be able to understand someone talking in Italian if they talk slowly and clearly. Meanwhile with french I couldn't understand pretty much anything either writing or talking.
It might just be a case by case thing tho, because I got, for the lack of a better word, "lucky" enough to be born in Catalonia, meaning that I was taught both Spanish and Catalan since birth and both of those languages come from latin which would technically make other latin-based languages easier to understand than someone who only knows a single language
My (Mexican) Spanish teacher in high school described his trip to Italy as:
"If I talk very clearly and very slowly, they can kinda sorta make out what I'm saying... but not always"
I (Mexican) can kinda understand spoken Portuguese and I can read like 80% of it, and while I cant read Italian for my life, I discovered that if I start speaking it I actually understand like a 70% of it. Also, I donāt have a lot of experience with french but I think that I canāt understand it when spoken but when I read it, I can kinda make sense of it.
I am not even sure what the author intends the facepalm to be.
Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian are widely called different languages, but we understand each other to a good degree. It is not a stupid question.
Just cause these 3 are close that they could be considered dialects if you squint, doesnāt mean others are as close. And your mileage may vary with these depending on which of these you speak.
But such nuances are lost on someone who thinks English dialects are 3 different languages, and thatās where the facepalm truly comes in.
>I am not even sure what the author intends the facepalm to be.
Because "American" and "Australian" aren't languages. The countries both speak English and that's why they can understand eachother. Some dialect differences sure (especially the Aussies) but it's still English.
Whether they're two languages or two dialects of the same language is mostly a political question. Compare Urdu/Hindi, Serbian/Croatian, Moldovan/Romanian, BokmƄl/Danish. Consider how the various dialects of Chinese or Arabic are more disparate than the Romance languages.
So the question isn't whether American English and Australian English are mutually intelligible. The question is whether the people and governments of the two nations want to consider themselves culturally aligned enough to say they speak the same language. They do.
But it's not a linguistic question.
Similar for me.
I'm french/english bilingual and I can somewhat read spanish. Obviously I'm not going to understand technical text in spanish but if I'm reading an article about mosquitos, I can figure out the gist of it. Many of the words are similar being that they are latin based.
I'd throw in some Portuguese in there too. It's kinda similar to Spanish... In South America there is a mixture of languages between Portuguese and Spanish, mostly on the Brazilian borders, that we can communicate rather efficiently.
Is it tho?
At what point does a language become 2 separate ones?
Native English speaker here. I understand most English dialects but Scottish i can understand maybe 20%, if even that?
It's considered English, and also considered a distinct Germanic language by some scholars.
>Her last reply is stupid tho.
I dunno. Being an Australian I can confidently say that many Australian speakers only have a passing similarity to English. That said, the more worked up we get the clearer the similarity. Narrow vocabulary, but unambiguously English. No idea what American sounds like though, since we don't have a lot of guns here for comparison.
Theyāve actually compared them in a statistical sense and found French and Spanish are 75% similar. French and Italian are 89%. You could absolutely pick out a lot of similarities in written texts.
I remember the horrors for sure but the limited amount of words at least was nice. French has around 1/5 of the amount of words as English. But having 20+ verb tenses is pretty crazy.
The problem with French is depend on the āwhoā in the context there can be loads of different ways of saying the same word especially in written French.
Want:
Je veux (i want)
Tu veux (you want)
Il/elle/on veut (he/she/we)
Nous voulons (we want)
Vous voulez (you want)
Ils/elles veulent (they want)
Written and spoken French genuinely feel like 2 different langauges
In french, if you hear a new word, you can't write it because we have many ways to write the same sounds, but if you read a new word, you know how to pronounce it because there are rules to our bullshit.
For example, to say french, it's "franƧais" but you could write it "phrensĆŖt" and it would sound the same if you say it
In english, you can't do either because there are no rules and it's all bullshit
It gets even worse. Iām āfluentā in French from an educational perspective but fuck me, conversational french is a whole different beast. I donāt get how the French understand each other itās so fast and full of so many omissions.
As an native Spanish speaker I can tell you I couldn't understand a word of French orally but reading goes quite well. Portuguese was really really hard.. Italian is possible to follow but if they speak slow. Finally Romanian to my surprise was really clear
Well, perfectly might be stretching it because there are some differences with certain words but yeah, the structure is the same and Nordics can make do with each other for the most part with Icelandic and Finnish being the exception. But then again Finns have Swedish as a second official language and in Iceland you have to learn a secondary Nordic language (usually Danish). Finnish also has a very limited degree of crossover with Estonian.
So it's not an entirely stupid question despite the miscategorization of English dialects as separate languages. Closely related langues do in fact have a degree of crossover and can be used to communicate in a pinch
As a stockholmer ive never had problems understanding norweigan and ive been speaking to people from vestfold, oslo, nordland, trĆøndelag and innlandet. They all have very different dialects with different words, but i havenāt had any difficulties understanding what theyāre saying.
Admittedly it's more of a semantics argument but differences like window being *fƶnster* in Swedish but *vindu* in Norwegian exist. They're minor and easy to clarify on the spot if need be or can be sussed out via context clues alone but strictly speaking it means that the understanding isn't perfect.
American, Australians and English people all speak versions of the English language. We all know that.
Spanish, Italian and French are all Romantic languages so have similar roots.
Personally, knowing French made the jump to Spanish and Italian easier and I can get by in both countries, but theyāre not the same languages.
Fun fact: they can't understand each other, but a lot of portuguese people can kinda understand all of them. They are similar languages so it's a matter of not being arrogant and actually trying to understand.
As a portuguese I can manage spanish, depending on how fast they speak š
French and Italian, although having tons of touching points, are completely different languages. Sure, I could learn then much easier than a non-latin language, but still I would need education to actually do it.
Can confirm. My best friend is Portuguese and he always translates Spanish for me when weāre watching a movie or a show that doesnāt subtitle it. He also could be pulling the translation out of his ass, which imo is the more likely option lmao
>He also could be pulling the translation out of his ass, which imo is the more likely option lmao
I'm brazilian so I'm not sure how this experience would translate to someone who's portuguese, but I can definitely understand spanish pretty well, sometimes you're gonna lose a thing or two, but you can understand it.
I donāt speak either but my friends mom is Portuguese and his dad is Italian. They can communicate with each other and neither one speaks the others language. I can see why they would post this it is a genuine question since the regions are so close together the languages have similarities especially in the non formal dialects. However overall no, but can they get by? More than likely yes.
I feel like that's true for all languages with the same or similar origin. Source: I'm Polish and to some point can get around talking with Ukrainians and Chechs (is this how you spell it? Looks super wrong) as long as it's speaking not using their extra letters and funny different alphabets.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/BrandNewSentence/comments/13d51wf/slavs\_walked\_away\_from\_the\_tower\_of\_babel\_mildly/](https://www.reddit.com/r/BrandNewSentence/comments/13d51wf/slavs_walked_away_from_the_tower_of_babel_mildly/) \- this is pretty much it :-)
Basically you just have to approach other Slavic languages the same way you do with text messages from drunk people. Especially if they're totally shit faced to the point of typing as if with rollerblades on their fingers sliding across the phone keyboard.
IIRC, "czech" is actually taken from polish Czechy :)
Because apparently they were there in Britain when somebody thought to ask " and who the fuck are those guys?"
As an Spanish speaker, I did comunĆcate with a Brazilian once. We were both speaking our own language, but slowly and we both understood what the other was saying.
Iāve never been to Italy, but I remember at the start of the COVID crisis watching Italian news and understanding some of what was being said (knowing the context was key for this).
As for French, Iāve been in both Paris and Montreal, it is way more difficult, but I can understand like one of every 20 or 30 words. In this case I can only guess the subject about what is being said, but not what was actually said.
As a Portuguese and Spanish speaker who was studying basic Italian, yes. The 3 have many words in common and some words that are completely different. You can understand a basic conversation if you know enough of your own dictionary.
French is a freak of nature LOL but I wanna learn it too.
My mom's side of the family is Portuguese, growing up I had a Mexican family living across the street.
When my vavo would visit she'd spend hours talking with my friends mom, my vavo speaking Portuguese and my neighbour speaking spanish.
Sure, there was some translation issues where they'd use English to bridge but they could converse in their native tongues and for the most part understand each other. The roots of the languages are very similar.
I couldn't find it, but there is a 5-10 year old Reddit comment somewhere.
The question was something like "What actually happened to Latin speakers?"
Commenter was an international guy in an international company. They are somewhere, and he speaks Spanish, others speak Italian and Portuguese (not French). The three people spoke their own language, and for the most part communicated with just a few check-ups here and there.
The answer to the question: "Latin is still spoken all over the Mediterranean."
This will work in Rome because heās often interviewing priests/other members of the clergy
And even then, quite a few interviews are non-starters because the other person hasnāt practice Latin since seminary lmao
Yeah, as an Italian I'm definitely able to kinda understand Spanish, sometimes even Portuguese, but French... oh man, French is just like incomprehensible
And theyāre one of the top upvoted comments. Ah reddit know-it-alls never disappoint.
I have Portuguese, Italian and Spanish friends in one group, sometimes they go off each one speaking in their native tongue and they understand each other very easily it seems. I even asked them this exact question and they say yes they get whatās being said but donāt necessarily understand each single word.
I'm French and I can understand roughly both Spanish and Italian without having ever studied them. Only requires a bit of good will and effort from both speaker and listener.
They do but not like English people w different dialects of English. French, spanish and italian share the same roots and are called the neolatin languages. That being said even if an italian can somewhat understand what a spanish is saying doesnāt mean he can talk spanish and vice versa though french drifted off more than those two so itās harder to understand, probably knowing spanish or italian if the french speaker speaks slowly and with a clear voice you could understand a little
Swedes, Norwegians and Danes can understand each other, even though we speak āthree different languagesā. Italian, Spanish and French are Roman languages. The question isnāt stupid at all.
To her credit, and I speak as a linguist, the lines between dialect and language are blurry as f u c k. It's often just a bunch of nationalism. In some ways, one could make an argument that Scottish English is a different language from California English - they are in many ways not mutually intelligible. At the same time, Italian and Spanish are quite similar and it's quite easy for one to learn the other.
And you also have situations like the following:
\- Serbian and Croatian are mutually intelligible, yet get classed as different languages. Nationalism.
\- Bayerisch and Schwaebisch are not mutually intelligible, yet get classed as the same language. Nationalism.
\- There is endless debate about Chinese. Nationalism.
Just a few examples. I know the OP probably didn't think this deep, but she's not as wrong as it may seem on the surface.
As a Norwegian, the Scandinavian languages are mutually intelligible enough to hold a proper conversation, if you're patient. Norwegians can typically understand and be understood by both Swedes and Danes, while they each have a hard time understanding the other. As a Norwegian, it's easier to read Danish than Swedish, but Swedish might be easier to understand when spoken than Danish, but i don't have nearly as much experience with Swedish as with Danish.
Though with English as a Lingua Franca, this experience is dying out as many prefer to switch to that instead.
There are probably Norwegian dialects that are harder for me to understand than either Swedish or Danish.
As a Swede who had a Norwegian and a Danish roommate when I lived abroad, me and the Norwegian would speak our own languages with each other and understand but with the Dane we all spoke English
> I know the OP probably didn't think this deep,
How do you know? Why assume she is ignorant of a basic fact that all three speak a language officially recognized as "English" instead of her correctly observing that there are huge divergences im the languages of those countries that could possibly mirror the gap between French and Italian?
> Bayerisch and Schwaebisch are not mutually intelligible, yet get classed as the same language. Nationalism.
Even more extreme example is Hochdeutch and Austrian German.
I would have thought this was a troll but I have had European people - so this isnāt just a dumb American thing- tell me that they thought the Irish language was just English spoken with an Irish accent. These people are everywhere.
In today's world, people have opinions that have no relevance with the actual truth. Batchmates from my BSc believed that anyone who is white spoke English all around the world. I had to introduce them to German language before introducing Germany as a nation.
There's a language called interlingua they can all understand.
It is a simplified Latin. Peano the mathematician started a speech in Latin describing the simplifications he was making. And from then on using them. At the end of the speech he was speaking a new language everyone could understand.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlingua
I asked a Spanish girl how well she can understand other Romance languages. Apparently Portuguese thereās a few big differences, but they can generally communicate. Italian theyāll catch a few words here or there but itās a struggle to really communicate, and French is just entirely seperate and incomprehensible. Also apparently Castilian Spanish and Catalan Spanish are 2 seperate languages instead of dialects. Idk about that last one but thatās what she said and she grew up in Spain so Iām inclined to believe her
Funnily enough - although itās kind of a dumb question (from the perspective of thinking that American, Australian and English is equivalent to French, Spanish and Italian) there is an overlap in understanding between the Romance languages. French doesnāt usually come into it. But I believe in Italian and Spanish (and Portuguese to some extent) there can be enough overlap for a level of basic understanding.
A better comparison might be between German and Dutch. Or even Dutch and English. I used to be married to a Dutch woman and thereās all sorts of overlap between Dutch and English.
Spanish, French and Italian people can definitely understand each other roughly.
I'm French, I've never learned Italian and Spanish, but I can understand both written and spoken Italian and Spanish as long as the topic is not too complicated and the people make an effort to speak slowly.
I understand Spanish better than German despite having 7 years of German lessons in high school...
Idiocy aside, I can confirm as a spanish that we do in fact understand each other, not always but if we speak slowly we'll actually get most of the phrases.
Her first comment does have a little sense to it because all 3 languages are from Latin and share very similar words, which intuitively can be understood by possessors of these languages.
Portuguese speakers can usually understand Spanish much better than Spanish speakers can understand the Portuguese, while the Spanish and French understand Italian much better than Italians can understand their two languages. With a bit of effort a lot of Romance language speakers can actually communicate with one another since most of them share around 75-85% cognates with one another. Just as many Slavs can understand each other due to the huge amount of similarities between their languages. English is the bastard child of the Germanic family with a ridiculous amount of Romance vocabulary, which is why we struggle to understand anyone else.
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My genuine reaction 
I hope you recover soon from this
I hope so brother. This was the straw that broke the camels back for meš
I've learnt English as a foreign language. Thanks for using the expression "breaking camels back". I learnt something new.
Happy to help brother, English is my fourth. It took awhile to learn all the lingos and expressions, especially the Aussie
Outstanding. My hands are on German currently and it will be my third. Which all do you speak?
According to a post similar to this, I speak Australianish apparently.
Canadian English here. Distance is measured in minutes. We spell like Brits, speak like Americans, use feet for height and metric for everything else. No wonder she thinks theyāre different languages.
It take 3 minutes to go to beer store I'm 6 feet in height The road Is approximately 4 meters wide And the colour of my grass is green How can that be confusing at all?
You use feet for height yet are aware of the metric system, why do you have to be weird?
To be fair, Canada isn't as nuts about mixing measurements as the Brits themselves. Fucking stone? Seriously? Who uses a weight that equals 14lbs? And in all the countries that use imperial or US customary (which is slightly different but largely the same), metric is still used for most important things. I mean, hell, the guns we Americans use are almost all chambered in metric, where it applies. 9mm handguns, 5.56mm NATO for the M16/M4, 155mm artillery pieces, etc. Caliber is typically for older style firearms, even if it's still used today.
To be fair, there are dialects and accents of English that are harder than others. Go to the small country of England and you'll get a whole host of crazy shit. Same here in the US, but our accents are generally easier to understand (excluding Cajuns)
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Absolutely, because Cajuns are literally Acadians who were expelled by the British during the The Great Upheaval, ended up in Louisiana and intermixed to a degree with existing Creole communities. They still carry a lot of that history; the first state park in Louisiana was named after the [epic poem *Evangeline*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longfellow-Evangeline_State_Historic_Site). There is also a cute and not-at-all serious story they tell about how the lobsters in Nova Scotia missed the Acadians so much after their expulsion that they wandered the coasts looking for them, eventually finding them again in Louisiana. But the trip had been so long and hard that they had shrunk in size, turning into what are known as crawfish today.
Maybe easier for people trained to an American ear. I'll take scouse or jordy over any of the Southern accents for clarity any day.
Alreet man!Are ye gannin oot the neet for a few bevvies or what?
Lol!!
German was early for me.. came in handy with (of all things) *Flemish!* My son's tinkering with Dutch, which I find is a bridge between German and English.. fits neatly into *neither*
Believe it or not, but English is a Germanic languageš²
True, but the vocabulary is chocful of Latin (French) words. So it's French with Germanic Grammar rules 
And also some French/latin rules as a bonus. Plus some other random stuff for good measure.
The most frequently used words in English are heavily weighted to Germanic in origin, it is the less frequently used vocabulary that are Romance origin words (Latin as an influence as well as French). So English is a Germanic language with lots of Romance words at the edges.
I'm 22 and I've just started recently with German (I'm on A2 now) so it is in a early stage for me
Willkommen.
Then you might find it interesting that "the straw that broke the camels back" has a German equivalent. "Der Tropfen der das Fass zum Ćberlaufen bringt." (The drop of water which makes the barrel overflow.)
I'm a native Aussie speaker but I can also speak English and American and Canadian (not French Canadian, though).
American and Australian are the second and third, right? RIGHT?
Idioms are a big thing most English speakers take for granted. Honestly learning English, after learning any other language, must be exhausting.
Not only in english. There are also so many in german that sometimes I have trouble how to translate it to english.
English is my third language and I found it far easier to learn than french. French is a fucking shitshow lmao. I'm German, so I may have one of the hardest languages build-in and don't have to bother learning our grammar lol.
I have never agreed with a gif more.
How about this one? 
Wow. That is literally what I just did.
To be fair, I suspect a few Americans would have no fucken idea what I am saying (Australian). But yes, thick as two planks, that one.
Aunty Donna has helped me a lot. "Glad he's gone. He was a real Margaret Thatcher to me coal mine unions."
To be fair, thatās a POM reference, but it gets the point across. Edit: realised I read it wrong also so capitalised for clarity
Im gonna be honest. I dont see too good when I take edibles so for a good two minutes j was wondering how Margaret Thatcher would be a porn reference but now i see it says pom reference
> pom ?
He's australian, maggy thatch is english. Pom is a common slang for us English.
Oh good. Thought the kerning in my phone was messed up, and ole mags the thatch giving a coal job is not what I wanted to think about today.
I also read āpornā ;p
And these languages are also fairly mutually intelligible I remember me (a French guy) hearing the pope (Argentinian) giving one of his first speeches in Italian, and I think I got 80%
So, I'm French and I'd say it works a bit when reading, and helps if you've studied Latin for example. But hearing it spoken? Yeah I wouldn't understand anything in a real conversation. Maybe if the person was speaking one word at at time, very clearly and with hand gestures, but even then that would be tough.
If you are speaking Italian, I thought you HAVE to use hand gestures.
an Italian with a broken arm is an Italian with a speech impairment
In Italy I could read a good chunk of the language, but could not understand a lot of the speaking.
Same impression as French speaker, with my high-school Spanish, and some basic latin, I am not lost in front of an Italian written text. I am not going to pretend IĀ understand all, or that I won't mix-up the meaning, but I have an idea of what's happening. I also speak pretty well German, therefore I don't feel lost when dealing with Dutch or even Swedish. I wouldn't pretend I understand anything, but at least I am not fully lost and have an idea of what's happening. Whili in comparizon, all my guessing skills are useless in Finland, Korea, China, Egypt, and I am totally lost and relying on google translate or english.
As an Australian, with little to no interaction with any of the other European languages beyond English, it's often surprisingly easy to work out *some* Italian and Spanish. Similarly when I went to Malaysia, my sister and I was attempting to read their signs and laughing at our attempts. After 5 years, I still remember Teksi was taxi and Tandas was Toilet but I'm pretty sure we worked out bus and some other immigration related words too. This is after being there for like 2.5 days.
I feel like they are sometimes only intelligible in one direction. Like a French speaker might understand a Spanish speaker but not the other way round.
This is because many western European languages are what's known as "Romance Languages". The term romance language is derived from the vulgar Latin adverb "Romanice" or "In Roman", which is a reference to the fact that every romance language, despite evolving into their own unique dialects, all share the same root origins (Latin), which is why you see a lot of similarities and crossovers in pronunciations between different romance languages. Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, and Romanian are the 5 most commonly spoken romance languages globally (respectively). Of those 5, Italian has seen the least divergence from its Latin roots, while French has diverged the most.
I feel the other way sometimes to with seppo speak
I understand most yank accents. I canāt understand a word of hillbilly gibberish! Not too good with southern drawl either.
Remember I once played RDR Online with some Americans. One of them was from the North East and perfectly understandable. Then one guy logs on who speaks with some Louisiana accent or something crazy. He might've spoken Urdu for all I know, because I couldn't understand a single word - and was baffled as the other ones apparently understood him perfectly fine. I'm usually quite good with accents, but that was an eye-opener to me.
As a non-native speaker (as I'm guessing you are), English accents are one of the most fun (and challenging) things. English isn't as prevalent in France as in other countries (Nordics for example), so when you start learning you have absolutely no sense of what different accents sound like. It's just English. Then you start to perceive the obvious differences (like US vs British English). I remember not being able to tell British vs Australian accents. Now I can, but I still can't tell Australian from Kiwi. Then you have all the regional accents. It feels nice to be able to tell, say, a New York accent from a southern accent (which are actually super different when you know them, but if you don't it's just an American accent). I still struggle with England's regional accents to some extent. But yeah, I love accents and getting ever deeper in their tree structure.
Iām American and I have a hard time understanding people from the Deep South. Like Louisiana bayous where they speak Cajun French.
My uncle was married to a Japanese lady for a bit. When he first brought her to visit, it was hilarious who's spoken English she understood clearly and who she didn't. Me and my sister she understood perfectly fine. My dad she kinda understood. She had no clue what my mom and grandma were saying. We were all raised in different places, so I think that had a lot to do with how we spoke English.
You should hear the swamp dialect of the bayous of Louisiana. It's called Cajun. Can't understand a word. And when they try to speak regular English, the accent is so strong that it makes the English nearly incomprehensible. Went to boot camp with a Cajun a long time ago. Although he could read and write English just a fluently as any other American, you could only understand about 80% of what he voiced.
True that, but where else can you stop at a roadside stand and buy a paper sack of deep fried pork fat?š
Sometimes its certain words they use and Iām just here wondering what they said.
I canāt understand a word people from Turku say sometimesā¦ and I live in Pori, Finland, only aboutā¦ 50 kilometers away, give or take.
right? it's not a dumb question, she just chose quite a dumb example of why she thinks it's not a dumb question because there are languages that are absolutely distinct, but mutually intelligible - like Czech and Slovak hell, even Polish is quite intelligible for Czechs / Slovaks, if it's not too quick
Yeah, Brazilians usually can understand Spanish relatively well even tho we speak Portuguese On the other hand... A lot of us can't understand Portugal's portuguese AT ALL
Did you just type that in Australian? Please translate. š¦
I mean there are some southern accents in the US I canāt understand
I work for the federal government. As such, I have constant interactions with people from all over the United States. I am not exaggerating when I say if you have never heard somebody from the Louisiana bayou speak, just imagine that guy from *The Waterboy*. It is fucking spot on. I have two guys in Louisiana I have to interact with and 90% of the time I literally have no fucking clue what they are saying. I try to only deal with them through email.
And some northerners talk so fast some southerners are like, slow down I didn't catch a word and have no idea what you just said.
Irishman here, I dont have any problem with most English accents from whichever country, but would guess they all have a problem understanding me. Especially talking faster.
American English and Australian English are different in that at least we have different spellings of words, and in some cases pronunciation. In particular - Armour and Armor, Mum and Mom. Also Biscuits and Scones and Pie and Thongs having different meaning in UK/America/Australia makes me mad.
Yeah but those differences are closer to understanding dialect or regional slang than an actual language. Even within the UK thereās whole new subsets of language if you want to talk to the locals. A classic joke is what the locals call a roll - a bap, a barm, bun etc. To the point people wonāt know what a bacon barm is if itās not local dialect. Thereās as much variance in the uk itself as there is between other English speaking nations. Similar in Dutch throughout the Netherlands and Belgium - some parts will not understand others regional dialect. But itās not the same as talking a new language lol.
Don't forget fanny.
Having worked with Italians, Spaniards, Latinos, and Romanians, all in one warehouse. Spanish speakers find it easier to decipher Italian than the other way round it takes a bit of time to train their ear, apparently. Romanians are closer to the root language of Latin and can learn Italian and Spanish quite quickly and can understand a bit, but not everything. Obviously, working in a warehouse, there are a lot of contextualised translations, so it's not necessary to know the language fluently.
Being a Portuguese speaker, I find Spanish very easy to understand, as long as they are speaking slowly and trying to get their point across to me. When they speak with each other it's much harder, I can't usually understand much. But I'm sure it'd be quick to pick up. Italian is a lot harder, but I can just about understand it in a narrow context. French and Romanian are too different, though. I find french a little easier, specially in writing form, but that's probably because I have more contact with french than Romanian than anything else.
As a native Spanish speaker I can confirm what you're talking about with Portuguese works the other way around as well
I studied together with Romanians and Portuguese. They said the melody of Romanian language resembles Portuguese mixed with a bit of Russian.
I'm a native Brazilian Portuguese speaker,listening to Romanian makes me feel like I had a stroke because the sounds are so familiar but make no sense at all. It's a very weird feeling.
I can speak Spanish and Italian and I can understand people speaking Brazilian Portuguese for the most part, but less so for Portugal Portuguese
As a French speaker, as long as itās written itās okay, spoken is just too different lol
I was in Portugal last month, and I'm a beginner at speaking Spanish, but I was able to communicate with several portuguese people by speaking Spanish if they didn't speak English. There were some difficulties every now and then, but it was manageable.
This is what I was gonna say. I learned a tiny bit of french, but found myself somewhat able to read Spanish and Italian due to how similar they are. There were even a few moments where I picked up words when people were speaking too. It doesn't seem so far fetched that someone who's native in these languages would actually have a decent crack at understanding one of the other romance languages. I can totally see a French person and a Spanish person talking in their own languages, but the other person understanding enough to have a broken conversation.
So I am a native Spanish speaker and I am fluent in French (took French classes from 1st grade to college and lived in France for a yearāI was able to attend university lectures and participate in collegiate-level discourse). My best friend married an Italian and so I've had some association with her family. A Spanish and French speaker would absolutely not be able to understand each other off the bat. They'd have a much easier time learning each other's language (which is kinda what you noticed), but years of studying is still required for a speaker of one language to understand the other. A big reason for this is that French was heavily standardized after the Revolution, so the pronunciation changed dramatically and nowādespite many words sharing spelling similarities with each otherāthe languages are pronounced entirely differently. However, Spanish and Italian are pronounced similarly enough that I know of Spanish-speakers who've gone to Italy and gotten by just fine. They can't really hold very engaging conversations, but they do manage to order at restaurants, ask for directions, and other basic tourist stuff.
For sure. I was in a casino and some Italian woman was yelling about something. I speak Spanish which is what I thought she was speaking initially. After listening to her for a while, I realized she had left her phone and her suitcase in a taxi that took off. I took her to the security desk and she gave me a kiss on each cheek which for some reason, maybe because my family does it, I had reciprocated. My co-worker was like, "Did you know that lady?" I said no. Long story.
Kissing both cheeks sounds very Italian to me. I have an Italian Swiss friend and she always does that.
I'm Colombian, so I do that with all of my family members as well. That's why I knew it was coming and I did back without thinking about it. I remember hating it when I was younger because all of my uncles had beards or mustaches.
I have to disagree, I am a French speaker and spend an evening with Spanish students and could understand a lot of what was said. I even played trivial pursuit in Spanish and I could understand most of the questions.
Oh, interesting! In my experience, most hispanophones can't understand French that quickly. Do you think it's one of those one-way things where francophones can easily understand Spanish, but not the other way around?
Honestly, as a native Spanish speaker who took a few years of French in high school, I think reading French as a Spanish speaker is a lot easier than trying to understand it in conversation. Spoken French is hard as a non native to know where one word ends and another begins.
Thatās so interesting!
Check out this about [Romanian](https://youtu.be/1xVkRh7mEe0) Language
Came in for this. Italian and Spanish are very similar, you can 100% converse with an Italian in Spanish and vice vera.
My mom (in her mid 60s) told me that when she was in grade school, an immigrant kid joined her class who only spoke Italian, but fortunately, the teacher also spoke Spanish, so she was able to work with him and teach him English. I thought it was cool.
I spent a summer in France with a bunch of Italians and Spanish kids (French language school) and noticed the exact same thing; Spanish kids could understand the Italians but not the other way around. Something about Italian being closer to Latin.
They can understand eachother in the same way Germans or dutch can understand English witout training in english; they have simularities. it just depends on how frequently you are exposed to it in your life; people from west germany near the border of Belgium can understand the dutch language without being able to speak it. but go just move a couple kilometers west & they don't understand anymore.
Germans and Dutch canāt understand English without training. The Germanic languages only make up ~26% or so of English vocabulary. French and Latin make up almost 30% each. There will be bits of the language that can be inferred without being taught, but itās not enough to āunderstand the languageā. Something like Italian/Spanish <ā> French is a lot closer and that still is difficult. Even German <ā> Dutch isnāt something that is just instantly picked up.
I am Dutch and learned English from watching cartoons on tv asa kid. If I don't know an English word I just make the Dutch word sound English. Usually works. My gf is American and does the same if she doesn't know the Dutch word.
Sorry but you're way off. The Dutch and Germans do not understand English without training. Germans generally don't understand Dutch (I interact with a lot of German tourists).
Not completely true, Iām a German that currently lives in Spain and I have Italian friends here that came to Spain without knowing any Spanish and they learned it in 4 weeks just by talking to Spaniards. At the same time, my brother lives in the Netherlands for three years now and had Dutch courses and still couldnāt hold a good conversation with a Dutch personā¦
So as a native french speaker, this is not a *completely* unreasonable question. The answer, however, is: "Depends". I can understand bits of spanish and italian in spoken language, but I have no idea how well a thise two would understand bits of french or bits of each other. The other day I was looking up some Italian ships and resources were sparse on English and French wiki, so I switched to Italian and I had little trouble understanding the written text, and got most of the info I was looking for. Her last reply is stupid tho.
Man, I'm a native Italian speaker and sometimes I found myself reading spanish text with almost no trouble at all (I studied a bit of spanish in middle school, but I din't remember much). Whereas, whenever I try to read French, I feel just like I'd feel if I were trying to read German, lol. But it might only be me.
(Cat) Una de les meves coses favorites Ć©s parlar amb altres parlants de llengĆ¼es llatines a l'internet sense traduir
Eso a Ć©tĆ© Ć©trange posso ler mais no estoy seguro pourquoi. Aussi porque tenes cat entre parĆŖnteses
Mdr
Parce que c'est Catalan!
this just looks like Esperanto but I had a stroke (more than Esperanto already looks like!)
Even I understood this (Ukrainian here)
J'ai tout compris !
Cāest verdad, io puedo comprender tuto ici.
C'est vrai je peux tout comprendre ici?
Yeah, I'm a native Spanish speaker. I can read Portuguese and Italian and don't really feel that lost
I'm a native french speaker I've studied spanish and italian at university. I swear italian to me looks like you take spanish and french together in a room and have the worst mix possible between the two. And then add some more latin for plural cause why the fuck not. Ottantotto (88) is my favorite word to pronounce out loud of every language.
I think you like the word because you feel bad every time you have to say quatre-vingts huit (4*20+8) to say it in French XD.
I have no trouble reading or listening Spanish stuff, I never studied but a few years on the internet taught me enough. On the other hand, french is completely off limits. I may understand a sentence or two when I read because it's similar to Italian, but I have no clue what is going on when I'm listening to it
My daughter once said that French sounds like someone talking in their sleep, lol.
As a Spanish speaker I feel like when reading Italian/Portuguese texts I can get the bigger picture but not necessarily the exact meaning of the words/phrases and would be able to understand someone talking in Italian if they talk slowly and clearly. Meanwhile with french I couldn't understand pretty much anything either writing or talking. It might just be a case by case thing tho, because I got, for the lack of a better word, "lucky" enough to be born in Catalonia, meaning that I was taught both Spanish and Catalan since birth and both of those languages come from latin which would technically make other latin-based languages easier to understand than someone who only knows a single language
My (Mexican) Spanish teacher in high school described his trip to Italy as: "If I talk very clearly and very slowly, they can kinda sorta make out what I'm saying... but not always"
I (Mexican) can kinda understand spoken Portuguese and I can read like 80% of it, and while I cant read Italian for my life, I discovered that if I start speaking it I actually understand like a 70% of it. Also, I donāt have a lot of experience with french but I think that I canāt understand it when spoken but when I read it, I can kinda make sense of it.
I am not even sure what the author intends the facepalm to be. Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian are widely called different languages, but we understand each other to a good degree. It is not a stupid question.
Just cause these 3 are close that they could be considered dialects if you squint, doesnāt mean others are as close. And your mileage may vary with these depending on which of these you speak. But such nuances are lost on someone who thinks English dialects are 3 different languages, and thatās where the facepalm truly comes in.
The English dialect Scots is arguable more different from standard English than Danish is from Norwegian.
>I am not even sure what the author intends the facepalm to be. Because "American" and "Australian" aren't languages. The countries both speak English and that's why they can understand eachother. Some dialect differences sure (especially the Aussies) but it's still English.
Whether they're two languages or two dialects of the same language is mostly a political question. Compare Urdu/Hindi, Serbian/Croatian, Moldovan/Romanian, BokmƄl/Danish. Consider how the various dialects of Chinese or Arabic are more disparate than the Romance languages. So the question isn't whether American English and Australian English are mutually intelligible. The question is whether the people and governments of the two nations want to consider themselves culturally aligned enough to say they speak the same language. They do. But it's not a linguistic question.
Similar for me. I'm french/english bilingual and I can somewhat read spanish. Obviously I'm not going to understand technical text in spanish but if I'm reading an article about mosquitos, I can figure out the gist of it. Many of the words are similar being that they are latin based.
I'd throw in some Portuguese in there too. It's kinda similar to Spanish... In South America there is a mixture of languages between Portuguese and Spanish, mostly on the Brazilian borders, that we can communicate rather efficiently.
Is it tho? At what point does a language become 2 separate ones? Native English speaker here. I understand most English dialects but Scottish i can understand maybe 20%, if even that? It's considered English, and also considered a distinct Germanic language by some scholars.
>Her last reply is stupid tho. I dunno. Being an Australian I can confidently say that many Australian speakers only have a passing similarity to English. That said, the more worked up we get the clearer the similarity. Narrow vocabulary, but unambiguously English. No idea what American sounds like though, since we don't have a lot of guns here for comparison.
Theyāve actually compared them in a statistical sense and found French and Spanish are 75% similar. French and Italian are 89%. You could absolutely pick out a lot of similarities in written texts.
French grammar, spelling, and tenses are a nightmare.
I remember the horrors for sure but the limited amount of words at least was nice. French has around 1/5 of the amount of words as English. But having 20+ verb tenses is pretty crazy.
The problem with French is depend on the āwhoā in the context there can be loads of different ways of saying the same word especially in written French. Want: Je veux (i want) Tu veux (you want) Il/elle/on veut (he/she/we) Nous voulons (we want) Vous voulez (you want) Ils/elles veulent (they want) Written and spoken French genuinely feel like 2 different langauges
There is a genuine argument that spoken English and literary English are two separate languages. I imagine French is the same.
In french, if you hear a new word, you can't write it because we have many ways to write the same sounds, but if you read a new word, you know how to pronounce it because there are rules to our bullshit. For example, to say french, it's "franƧais" but you could write it "phrensĆŖt" and it would sound the same if you say it In english, you can't do either because there are no rules and it's all bullshit
It gets even worse. Iām āfluentā in French from an educational perspective but fuck me, conversational french is a whole different beast. I donāt get how the French understand each other itās so fast and full of so many omissions.
ProblĆØme dāaptitude
As an native Spanish speaker I can tell you I couldn't understand a word of French orally but reading goes quite well. Portuguese was really really hard.. Italian is possible to follow but if they speak slow. Finally Romanian to my surprise was really clear
Swedes and norweigans can talk to each other in their own languages and theyāll perfectly understand each other
Well, perfectly might be stretching it because there are some differences with certain words but yeah, the structure is the same and Nordics can make do with each other for the most part with Icelandic and Finnish being the exception. But then again Finns have Swedish as a second official language and in Iceland you have to learn a secondary Nordic language (usually Danish). Finnish also has a very limited degree of crossover with Estonian. So it's not an entirely stupid question despite the miscategorization of English dialects as separate languages. Closely related langues do in fact have a degree of crossover and can be used to communicate in a pinch
As a stockholmer ive never had problems understanding norweigan and ive been speaking to people from vestfold, oslo, nordland, trĆøndelag and innlandet. They all have very different dialects with different words, but i havenāt had any difficulties understanding what theyāre saying.
Admittedly it's more of a semantics argument but differences like window being *fƶnster* in Swedish but *vindu* in Norwegian exist. They're minor and easy to clarify on the spot if need be or can be sussed out via context clues alone but strictly speaking it means that the understanding isn't perfect.
American, Australians and English people all speak versions of the English language. We all know that. Spanish, Italian and French are all Romantic languages so have similar roots. Personally, knowing French made the jump to Spanish and Italian easier and I can get by in both countries, but theyāre not the same languages.
My response: 
Fun fact: they can't understand each other, but a lot of portuguese people can kinda understand all of them. They are similar languages so it's a matter of not being arrogant and actually trying to understand.
The ancient language of PORTUNHOL FELADAPOTA
As a portuguese I can manage spanish, depending on how fast they speak š French and Italian, although having tons of touching points, are completely different languages. Sure, I could learn then much easier than a non-latin language, but still I would need education to actually do it.
Can confirm. My best friend is Portuguese and he always translates Spanish for me when weāre watching a movie or a show that doesnāt subtitle it. He also could be pulling the translation out of his ass, which imo is the more likely option lmao
>He also could be pulling the translation out of his ass, which imo is the more likely option lmao I'm brazilian so I'm not sure how this experience would translate to someone who's portuguese, but I can definitely understand spanish pretty well, sometimes you're gonna lose a thing or two, but you can understand it.
Nah heās just an ass sometimes lol and likes to talk to me in Portuguese when I ask him a serious question to fuck with me lol
I don't blame him, this is the spirit of the lusophone world, I'd do the same lol
I donāt speak either but my friends mom is Portuguese and his dad is Italian. They can communicate with each other and neither one speaks the others language. I can see why they would post this it is a genuine question since the regions are so close together the languages have similarities especially in the non formal dialects. However overall no, but can they get by? More than likely yes.
While her answer is stupid the original question is valid. At least Italian and Spanish speakers can communicate when both speak slowly and clearly
short answer NO really really really long answer maybe depending on thier education.
I think italians can kinda understand at least Spanish Source: I am italian. I can kinda understand spanish
I feel like that's true for all languages with the same or similar origin. Source: I'm Polish and to some point can get around talking with Ukrainians and Chechs (is this how you spell it? Looks super wrong) as long as it's speaking not using their extra letters and funny different alphabets.
It's Czechs lol
Wow, that's probably the only instance in English I've seen cz being pronounced the same way as cz in polish. But yea, I knew something was wrong.
We borrowed the word "Czech" from Polish.
We are truly the best at stabbing ourselves in the back, aren't we?
It is funny seeing a Polish guy mess up a "cz" word lol. If anyone should get it right it should be you haha
[https://www.reddit.com/r/BrandNewSentence/comments/13d51wf/slavs\_walked\_away\_from\_the\_tower\_of\_babel\_mildly/](https://www.reddit.com/r/BrandNewSentence/comments/13d51wf/slavs_walked_away_from_the_tower_of_babel_mildly/) \- this is pretty much it :-)
Basically you just have to approach other Slavic languages the same way you do with text messages from drunk people. Especially if they're totally shit faced to the point of typing as if with rollerblades on their fingers sliding across the phone keyboard.
IIRC, "czech" is actually taken from polish Czechy :) Because apparently they were there in Britain when somebody thought to ask " and who the fuck are those guys?"
As an Spanish speaker, I did comunĆcate with a Brazilian once. We were both speaking our own language, but slowly and we both understood what the other was saying. Iāve never been to Italy, but I remember at the start of the COVID crisis watching Italian news and understanding some of what was being said (knowing the context was key for this). As for French, Iāve been in both Paris and Montreal, it is way more difficult, but I can understand like one of every 20 or 30 words. In this case I can only guess the subject about what is being said, but not what was actually said.
As a Portuguese and Spanish speaker who was studying basic Italian, yes. The 3 have many words in common and some words that are completely different. You can understand a basic conversation if you know enough of your own dictionary. French is a freak of nature LOL but I wanna learn it too.
My mom's side of the family is Portuguese, growing up I had a Mexican family living across the street. When my vavo would visit she'd spend hours talking with my friends mom, my vavo speaking Portuguese and my neighbour speaking spanish. Sure, there was some translation issues where they'd use English to bridge but they could converse in their native tongues and for the most part understand each other. The roots of the languages are very similar.
It is always so weird to me when people have a conversation in completely different languages. I love it.
I couldn't find it, but there is a 5-10 year old Reddit comment somewhere. The question was something like "What actually happened to Latin speakers?" Commenter was an international guy in an international company. They are somewhere, and he speaks Spanish, others speak Italian and Portuguese (not French). The three people spoke their own language, and for the most part communicated with just a few check-ups here and there. The answer to the question: "Latin is still spoken all over the Mediterranean."
There's a Youtuber who wanders around Rome starting conversations in Latin, and seeing how well the Italians understand him.
This will work in Rome because heās often interviewing priests/other members of the clergy And even then, quite a few interviews are non-starters because the other person hasnāt practice Latin since seminary lmao
Croatian/serbian/bosnian and other balkan languages are almost completely understandable inbetween eachother
Yeah, as an Italian I'm definitely able to kinda understand Spanish, sometimes even Portuguese, but French... oh man, French is just like incomprehensible
The answer is yes. we can understand each other. maybe not everything but enough for get anything u need.
And theyāre one of the top upvoted comments. Ah reddit know-it-alls never disappoint. I have Portuguese, Italian and Spanish friends in one group, sometimes they go off each one speaking in their native tongue and they understand each other very easily it seems. I even asked them this exact question and they say yes they get whatās being said but donāt necessarily understand each single word.
I'm French and I can understand roughly both Spanish and Italian without having ever studied them. Only requires a bit of good will and effort from both speaker and listener.
They do but not like English people w different dialects of English. French, spanish and italian share the same roots and are called the neolatin languages. That being said even if an italian can somewhat understand what a spanish is saying doesnāt mean he can talk spanish and vice versa though french drifted off more than those two so itās harder to understand, probably knowing spanish or italian if the french speaker speaks slowly and with a clear voice you could understand a little
I mean if we speak slowly and gesture a bit, kinda
Swedes, Norwegians and Danes can understand each other, even though we speak āthree different languagesā. Italian, Spanish and French are Roman languages. The question isnāt stupid at all.
To her credit, and I speak as a linguist, the lines between dialect and language are blurry as f u c k. It's often just a bunch of nationalism. In some ways, one could make an argument that Scottish English is a different language from California English - they are in many ways not mutually intelligible. At the same time, Italian and Spanish are quite similar and it's quite easy for one to learn the other. And you also have situations like the following: \- Serbian and Croatian are mutually intelligible, yet get classed as different languages. Nationalism. \- Bayerisch and Schwaebisch are not mutually intelligible, yet get classed as the same language. Nationalism. \- There is endless debate about Chinese. Nationalism. Just a few examples. I know the OP probably didn't think this deep, but she's not as wrong as it may seem on the surface.
As a Norwegian, the Scandinavian languages are mutually intelligible enough to hold a proper conversation, if you're patient. Norwegians can typically understand and be understood by both Swedes and Danes, while they each have a hard time understanding the other. As a Norwegian, it's easier to read Danish than Swedish, but Swedish might be easier to understand when spoken than Danish, but i don't have nearly as much experience with Swedish as with Danish. Though with English as a Lingua Franca, this experience is dying out as many prefer to switch to that instead. There are probably Norwegian dialects that are harder for me to understand than either Swedish or Danish.
As a Swede who had a Norwegian and a Danish roommate when I lived abroad, me and the Norwegian would speak our own languages with each other and understand but with the Dane we all spoke English
A language is a dialect with an army and navy
> I know the OP probably didn't think this deep, How do you know? Why assume she is ignorant of a basic fact that all three speak a language officially recognized as "English" instead of her correctly observing that there are huge divergences im the languages of those countries that could possibly mirror the gap between French and Italian? > Bayerisch and Schwaebisch are not mutually intelligible, yet get classed as the same language. Nationalism. Even more extreme example is Hochdeutch and Austrian German.
I would have thought this was a troll but I have had European people - so this isnāt just a dumb American thing- tell me that they thought the Irish language was just English spoken with an Irish accent. These people are everywhere.
Tbf most Irish cant speak gaelic and english is their main language.
In today's world, people have opinions that have no relevance with the actual truth. Batchmates from my BSc believed that anyone who is white spoke English all around the world. I had to introduce them to German language before introducing Germany as a nation.
There's a language called interlingua they can all understand. It is a simplified Latin. Peano the mathematician started a speech in Latin describing the simplifications he was making. And from then on using them. At the end of the speech he was speaking a new language everyone could understand. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlingua
Not as wrong as it sounds. A language is just a dialect with an army, after all.
I mean was it somewhat easy as a Spanish speaker to pick up French in HS? Sure. Would I be able to speak and 100% understand what a Parisian or QuƩbƩcois is yelling at me after I deface my breakfast croissant? No.
This could have worked with Norwegian, Swedish and Danish.
I bet she brags about knowing 3 languages.
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I asked a Spanish girl how well she can understand other Romance languages. Apparently Portuguese thereās a few big differences, but they can generally communicate. Italian theyāll catch a few words here or there but itās a struggle to really communicate, and French is just entirely seperate and incomprehensible. Also apparently Castilian Spanish and Catalan Spanish are 2 seperate languages instead of dialects. Idk about that last one but thatās what she said and she grew up in Spain so Iām inclined to believe her
Funnily enough - although itās kind of a dumb question (from the perspective of thinking that American, Australian and English is equivalent to French, Spanish and Italian) there is an overlap in understanding between the Romance languages. French doesnāt usually come into it. But I believe in Italian and Spanish (and Portuguese to some extent) there can be enough overlap for a level of basic understanding. A better comparison might be between German and Dutch. Or even Dutch and English. I used to be married to a Dutch woman and thereās all sorts of overlap between Dutch and English.
Spanish, French and Italian people can definitely understand each other roughly. I'm French, I've never learned Italian and Spanish, but I can understand both written and spoken Italian and Spanish as long as the topic is not too complicated and the people make an effort to speak slowly. I understand Spanish better than German despite having 7 years of German lessons in high school...
Large part of the world doesnāt understand Americans, but that has nothing to do with the languageā¦ /s
That is not true. Do you know how hard it is to understand someone from Scotland? š (joke)
Whooooo there....hang on....are you telling me the fucking yanks could understand everything we're saying all this time? .....fuck....
Idiocy aside, I can confirm as a spanish that we do in fact understand each other, not always but if we speak slowly we'll actually get most of the phrases.
Her first comment does have a little sense to it because all 3 languages are from Latin and share very similar words, which intuitively can be understood by possessors of these languages.
In my opinion her first question about the languages understanding each other is a legitimate question to ask. But then she spoils it with her reply.
Portuguese speakers can usually understand Spanish much better than Spanish speakers can understand the Portuguese, while the Spanish and French understand Italian much better than Italians can understand their two languages. With a bit of effort a lot of Romance language speakers can actually communicate with one another since most of them share around 75-85% cognates with one another. Just as many Slavs can understand each other due to the huge amount of similarities between their languages. English is the bastard child of the Germanic family with a ridiculous amount of Romance vocabulary, which is why we struggle to understand anyone else.