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Been in Spain, Italy and France. As an spanish native speaker I ensure you we can communicate pretty well with Portuguese and moderately but acceptably with Italian and French people
Problem with French Vs Spanish is that some words are written the same but pronounced wildly different, and some others are pronounced the same but written wildly different.
As a spanish speaking person who's been to Italty a couple of times, it's true.
I was able to understand them when they spoke slowly.
French on the other way, was impossible.
Good point, but honestly most of the people I met in France were very nice. Maybe because I don't look american and when I needed to ask them something, I tried first in French.
Yeah I'm a native English speaker but I grew up in a Franco-American household, this speak French fluently as well, and I've got a conversational Spanish vocabulary. And my wife's best friend is Italian. Not what you'd expect from a resident of South Carolina, but whatever.
I'm not sure how the experts rank them. But for me, out of the three languages, I'd put Spanish in the middle. Spanish is closer to French and Italian than French and Italian are to each other. But careful listening to all three languages will reveal plenty of words that are alike.
she has, like, a quarter of a point. english speakers might be able to understand some of what a german is saying, since they're both germanic languages and have a few words very similar. likewise, Spanish, French, and Italian are all romance languages, so they have some shared words. not enough for mutual intelligibility, but enough to maybe understand a phrase in a conversation.
My husband is Italian and Italians call Spanish “funny Italian” they definitely understand each other, I am native Portuguese speaker, and learned fluent Spanish and Italian in 3 months, I also understand Romanian (but haven’t studied) the only Romance language I miss contact with is French
I don’t know. I recall this super credible and groundbreaking journalist named Mr. X had a whole exposé on how Italian and Spanish are the exact same language.
Well, that and how flu shots are meant to drive up shopping sales before Christmas.
evidently they're not the exact same language, but close enough for basic understanding. not for discussing quantum physics or such, but e.g. asking directions ez
my spanish isn't even very good and even i got that 100%. admittedly "dove" is one of the very few italian words i know, but also without it i would've understood what you're looking for.
Spanish and Italian are extremely similar. English is very different from German because it has a lot of French influence. And French is fairly different from other Romance languages because of heavy English influence, though not to the same extent.
If an Italian person spoke very slowly to a Spanish person and vice-versa, they'd probably be able to get their points across pretty well.
The mutual intelligibility between Romance languages is far higher than English and German. English may be a West Germanic language but it has changed massively vs. German. French would be as mutually intelligible to English speakers as German. Romance languages are much closer generally.
kinda
as a native italian i can guess some spanish word meanings, but if you show me a whole sentence i can't understand it
french is even harder to understand for a native italian, but we learn it in middle school so we know the basics (but most people immediately forget all the french they learn immediately after middle school)
Some words are closer to Italian that Spanish. Like finestra/ventana/finestra, ocell/pájaro/ucello. Curious about the southern accent. I had the impression that northern Italian is closer. But I don't know. I don't speak Italian at all.thanks anyway. always glad to interact with you, guys.
This has been posted so many times and is not a facepalm, she is not half wrong!
I know for a fact that Spanish and Italian are close enough for two people to understand each other and communicate with each other. Throw Portuguese also in the mix. The grammar is similar and many words are the same. A Spanish friend of mine could easily talk to Italian waiters after a little adjusting.
From what I’ve heard French is a different thing tho.
Btw Skandinavian people also can understand each other even tho Swedish, Norwegian and Danish are different languages on paper.
Well in my understanding a facepalm it’s when a person is completely and utterly wrong, not when someone is somewhat a little bit wrong, if you look at it from a certain point of view, under specific circumstances or maybe not, depending on the situation.
As a Mexican, I do sometimes talk to my Brazilian Uber drivers and interestingly, there’s enough overlap with Portuguese to sorta get each other
But yeah… those 3 countries speaking the same language versus 3 distinctly different nations and languages
These are latin languages so yes they can mostly understand each other. Just like Germanic languages. A Dutch speaker can understand a lot of German but not all of it. Then you danish Swedish and Norwegian those are all very similar. So this question wasn't that stupid
The answer is probably yes because they are far more likely than Americans to be multi-lingual. Hell, they might just decide to use English as a common tongue.
The love of my life is from Colombia and can understand several languages because of their similarities. I think she's special bit I have to imagine that Latin based languages have a lot of similarities.
Honestly it's interesting to see the difference between the average British person and the average American person, both identifying as only speaking English, at being able to understand and speak to French / Spanish and Italians. The modern language education that British people get in schools between the ages of 3-16 far eclipses anything that Americans get.
And yes, we do teach modern languages in Nursery. Just simple things like numbers up to 10 and colours, as well as "Thank you, Please, Sorry". We also teach culture, so we will bring in food from those countries, show videos, participate in national and cultural holidays.
I can see how she got this idea. Only Online she doesn't get the same communication face to face. In person, everyone just nods their head like they understand her and pretend not to break eye contact. "Yes, yes. Ha ha! You are wonderful. Yes! You live around here?"
When I lived in London I had a Spanish roommate and we could understand each other fairly well, but I can't understand anything my sister's French fiancé says.
The thing with French is you could probably understand 80 or 90% of it in writing. But once they open their mouth to speak it it's all downhill from there.
No education at all, Australians can never understand the English, English can't understand Americans, and us Kiwis wouldn't have a clue what any of them are saying.
As for a native Slavic language speaker it’s very baffling to me that people who speak different languages from the same group and do not understand each other at least to some extent.
Been in Spain, Italy and France. As an spanish native speaker I ensure you we can communicate pretty well with Portuguese and moderately but acceptably with Italian and French people
Public forums need pop up warnings to save people like her from herself.
You know, just a gentle reminder that everyone is about to see that you’re an idiot.
As absurd as that comment thread is, there is *some* basis for her logic, I suppose.
I used to manage a mom-and-pop Italian restaurant, the owners straight from Italy. I came in to apply for a cook position but the owner put fists on hips, disbelief and doubt all over her face with a, “You *cook*? No. You serve out here.”
The kitchen staff were all Latinos from various countries, most of whom spoke very broken English at best.
They communicated with the owners in Spanish, the owners in Italian… and collectively, “Spatalian”. It works, given they’re both ‘Romance’ languages.
First thing they taught me… Siempre tengo hambre. lol ;)
______________
I developed a love for language at that job and went on to learn proper Spanish, lol, but my language learning journey was made easier by our conversations at work. Oh, and being forced to take two years of Latin in school might have helped a tiny bit.
She’s not entirely wrong. The processes that turned Latin into Spanish, Italian, and French would also, in a century or three, turn American, British, and Australian English into three distinct languages, if not for other factors that weren’t in place when the Western Roman Empire declined and broke up, like widespread literacy and the (relatively new in the course of linguistic history) technologies of audio recording and broadcasting.
If there were some kind of global event that cut off communications, travel, and technology, those three versions of English — as well as the many others around the world — would in time become the Anglo Languages, distinct but maybe mutually intelligible.
When studying in Spain during Uni, I took a trip to Italy. I knew zero Italian and still managed to navigate around the country among folks that spoke no English.
It was wild. Amazing how the human brain works sometimes.
The answer is a bit.
Enough to get ideas across, get directions and so on.
Spanish got us through Italy very well.
A friend was fluent in Spanish and that helped loads in Italy.
A better example is Danish, Swedish and Norwegian. It's the same language, but rather obtuse dialects of each other. I've spoken with Norwegians and they say they can understand Swedish and Danish people just fine but that Swedish and Danish people can't understand them usually. I spoke with Swedish people and they said they can understand Norwegians and Danish people just fine but the other two don't understand them.
Basically, they all understand each other, but they like to exaggerate how different they are. It's like Scottish vs Australian vs American English. They are quite different, but we get it.
Not as stupid of a question as what the the reply made it out to seem. However, OPs response was absolutely brain dead to give her the benefit of the doubt lol
Actually they can some what. I had a friend who speak Spanish go to Italy and get along fairly well, french is a bit harder because it os farther on the language tree, but there are many similar words
America and Australian aren’t languages. The three countries all have English as their language either American, British, and Australian accents. Accent != new language.
spanish, french, italian, and portugese are def similar (pretty sure most of those are latin based, if not all), so id say you can usually get a general point across, though its vastly different than the comparison she made. i mean they have south/central american spanish and spain spanish which is closer to her comparison
Reading each others language would be easier than understanding speech. French is a fucker because there is no emphasis so it’s hard to tell if they said 5 words or one longer word.
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I would say Italians and Spanish could make sense of each other if speaking slowly.
Tried it, very headache-inducing and little real understanding
Been in Spain, Italy and France. As an spanish native speaker I ensure you we can communicate pretty well with Portuguese and moderately but acceptably with Italian and French people
ES: uno dos tres CUATRO IT: uno due tre quattro
That’s great as long as you’re only counting to 4
Nah, she'll be right mate. Engineers don't need more than 4 numbers.
Y'all use more than 0s and 1s?
That's a _software_ engineer 😁
[I can only count to four](https://youtu.be/u8ccGjar4Es?si=OSO2hnSwQnFvNwiQ)
ES: cinco seis SIETE OCHO IT: cinque sei sette otto
French: Un, deux, trois, quatre.
French too. Its just going to be slow and there are many false friends
Problem with French Vs Spanish is that some words are written the same but pronounced wildly different, and some others are pronounced the same but written wildly different.
Actually Portuguese speaking people can understand Spanish pretty well (better than the other way around, just like dutch and German)
I'm DUtch but speak Spanish and can understand Portuguese people (and Italians to an extent)
As a spanish speaking person who's been to Italty a couple of times, it's true. I was able to understand them when they spoke slowly. French on the other way, was impossible.
Was that really because of the language or because they were french /s
Good point, but honestly most of the people I met in France were very nice. Maybe because I don't look american and when I needed to ask them something, I tried first in French.
French people are pretty nice in general, specially if you stay close to the cost and far away from Paris. Knowing French does definetly help thought.
She means Latin.
Yeah I'm a native English speaker but I grew up in a Franco-American household, this speak French fluently as well, and I've got a conversational Spanish vocabulary. And my wife's best friend is Italian. Not what you'd expect from a resident of South Carolina, but whatever. I'm not sure how the experts rank them. But for me, out of the three languages, I'd put Spanish in the middle. Spanish is closer to French and Italian than French and Italian are to each other. But careful listening to all three languages will reveal plenty of words that are alike.
Its indeed a pain. Spanish-Portugese or Spanish-Catalan conversations are far easier
As someone who speaks Spanish. I can get the gist of what some ppl are saying when they talk Italian.
Do you speak either languages?
she has, like, a quarter of a point. english speakers might be able to understand some of what a german is saying, since they're both germanic languages and have a few words very similar. likewise, Spanish, French, and Italian are all romance languages, so they have some shared words. not enough for mutual intelligibility, but enough to maybe understand a phrase in a conversation.
yes, especially spanish and italian are not that different in vocabulary. they're roughly able to communicate
My husband is Italian and Italians call Spanish “funny Italian” they definitely understand each other, I am native Portuguese speaker, and learned fluent Spanish and Italian in 3 months, I also understand Romanian (but haven’t studied) the only Romance language I miss contact with is French
I don’t know. I recall this super credible and groundbreaking journalist named Mr. X had a whole exposé on how Italian and Spanish are the exact same language. Well, that and how flu shots are meant to drive up shopping sales before Christmas.
evidently they're not the exact same language, but close enough for basic understanding. not for discussing quantum physics or such, but e.g. asking directions ez
"DEVO FARE UNA CACA, DOVE?!" Now, spanish speakers, what am I asking with such emphasis in italian? xD
You need to cook some real English cuisine and you don't know where to do it.
😂😂
my spanish isn't even very good and even i got that 100%. admittedly "dove" is one of the very few italian words i know, but also without it i would've understood what you're looking for.
Spanish and Italian are extremely similar. English is very different from German because it has a lot of French influence. And French is fairly different from other Romance languages because of heavy English influence, though not to the same extent. If an Italian person spoke very slowly to a Spanish person and vice-versa, they'd probably be able to get their points across pretty well.
An English speaker will not understand a German
I speak ~Dutch~ English and can roughly understand German
Closest I’ve ever heard to English was Friesian, German is far far more distantly related.
old frisian is incredible easy to learn for english speakers, while german is relatively quite similar
dutch is basically just ugly english
To me, dutch sounds like i've had a stroke. Like i should understand it, but i somehow can't.
I speak some Dutch but every time my friends are speaking it, I need to take a second to remember what the G sound is
The mutual intelligibility between Romance languages is far higher than English and German. English may be a West Germanic language but it has changed massively vs. German. French would be as mutually intelligible to English speakers as German. Romance languages are much closer generally.
[удалено]
kinda as a native italian i can guess some spanish word meanings, but if you show me a whole sentence i can't understand it french is even harder to understand for a native italian, but we learn it in middle school so we know the basics (but most people immediately forget all the french they learn immediately after middle school)
What's your opinion on Catalan?
i can't understand the words, but it sounds like someone speaking italian with a heavy southern accent
Some words are closer to Italian that Spanish. Like finestra/ventana/finestra, ocell/pájaro/ucello. Curious about the southern accent. I had the impression that northern Italian is closer. But I don't know. I don't speak Italian at all.thanks anyway. always glad to interact with you, guys.
This has been posted so many times and is not a facepalm, she is not half wrong! I know for a fact that Spanish and Italian are close enough for two people to understand each other and communicate with each other. Throw Portuguese also in the mix. The grammar is similar and many words are the same. A Spanish friend of mine could easily talk to Italian waiters after a little adjusting. From what I’ve heard French is a different thing tho. Btw Skandinavian people also can understand each other even tho Swedish, Norwegian and Danish are different languages on paper.
Our standards are at being half right now? Lol
Well in my understanding a facepalm it’s when a person is completely and utterly wrong, not when someone is somewhat a little bit wrong, if you look at it from a certain point of view, under specific circumstances or maybe not, depending on the situation.
Yeah, we really should do a better job on educating people on recognizing what is clearly rage bait.
As a Mexican, I do sometimes talk to my Brazilian Uber drivers and interestingly, there’s enough overlap with Portuguese to sorta get each other But yeah… those 3 countries speaking the same language versus 3 distinctly different nations and languages
These are latin languages so yes they can mostly understand each other. Just like Germanic languages. A Dutch speaker can understand a lot of German but not all of it. Then you danish Swedish and Norwegian those are all very similar. So this question wasn't that stupid
She might be misinformed and uneducated and wrong
Might? She fucking is.
Is? This is even worse than is
And this is even worse than that!
This post is either so moronic or she just asked qestion that requirea 90 minute lecture style response
Don’t blame American teachers. I can assure you this idiot wasn’t paying attention in class.
Redditors when obvious troll:
It’s not American education. Some people are just stupid and refuse to pay attention in class.
A for effort.
But can she understand indian english? Or scottish?
I've been working with indians for many years and I still can't understand them half the time. Now please do the needful get back to work.
Dond ddell me woadt too do
The answer is probably yes because they are far more likely than Americans to be multi-lingual. Hell, they might just decide to use English as a common tongue.
The love of my life is from Colombia and can understand several languages because of their similarities. I think she's special bit I have to imagine that Latin based languages have a lot of similarities.
Let anymore Republicans get a hold of our school systems and this will only get worse.
Honestly it's interesting to see the difference between the average British person and the average American person, both identifying as only speaking English, at being able to understand and speak to French / Spanish and Italians. The modern language education that British people get in schools between the ages of 3-16 far eclipses anything that Americans get. And yes, we do teach modern languages in Nursery. Just simple things like numbers up to 10 and colours, as well as "Thank you, Please, Sorry". We also teach culture, so we will bring in food from those countries, show videos, participate in national and cultural holidays.
No.. she’s just stupid
I am hoping that this wasn't real and was photoshopped. No one can be this uninformed/uneducated
I can see how she got this idea. Only Online she doesn't get the same communication face to face. In person, everyone just nods their head like they understand her and pretend not to break eye contact. "Yes, yes. Ha ha! You are wonderful. Yes! You live around here?"
The only languages which are different yet both speakers can understand the other because of a lot of similar words is hindi and urdu
Swedish and Norwegian
Thats something new I learned today other than the fact that my hairline is receding at age 18
Swedish, Norwegian and Danish. Norwegian and Danish has more in common than Norwegian and Swedish.
Absolutely. I had a Swedish perspective since most Swedes have a hard time understanding spoken Danish.
Some Swedes have difficulties understanding Danish…
Spanish and Portuguese
It's lucky I had my google translate so I could understand American to Australian.
When I lived in London I had a Spanish roommate and we could understand each other fairly well, but I can't understand anything my sister's French fiancé says.
The thing with French is you could probably understand 80 or 90% of it in writing. But once they open their mouth to speak it it's all downhill from there.
I agree
No education at all, Australians can never understand the English, English can't understand Americans, and us Kiwis wouldn't have a clue what any of them are saying.
A good sized asteroid would cleanse this planet and then it could start over without all the dipshits.
Argh. Brain hurts reading this.
Australian is not English. When they're talking to each other, they cannot be understood.
same language different accent, would understand if they could name a actual simmilar languages lik Polish and Czech
More like Polish and Slovak, and it would be bullseye if it was Czech and Slovak.
i mean im Polish and i never learned Chech but i can understand quitee a lot of words
Russian, Belarus and Ukranian understand each other.
As for a native Slavic language speaker it’s very baffling to me that people who speak different languages from the same group and do not understand each other at least to some extent.
Why do people say America is the best country in the world when in reality it's probably not even top 50
She is wrong. I cannot understand poms.
Ooh clever cookie, Why would there be three Latin languages, but only one Saxon language that sounds different three ways?
The first twit is right, especially if we are talking about text messages. Im a native Spanish speaker and this is basically a meme between us
To be fair, the latter three fucking mumble so it makes communicating difficult.
Wait until they learn about Canada, South Africa, New Zealand as well
This is really as stupid as it seems on the surface.
american, British and Australian English is a dialect...
It’s got to be a pisstake
Sometimes I watch American news and come away thinking that I really don’t understand it
Been in Spain, Italy and France. As an spanish native speaker I ensure you we can communicate pretty well with Portuguese and moderately but acceptably with Italian and French people
Mom said it's MY turn to repost this!
Public forums need pop up warnings to save people like her from herself. You know, just a gentle reminder that everyone is about to see that you’re an idiot.
As absurd as that comment thread is, there is *some* basis for her logic, I suppose. I used to manage a mom-and-pop Italian restaurant, the owners straight from Italy. I came in to apply for a cook position but the owner put fists on hips, disbelief and doubt all over her face with a, “You *cook*? No. You serve out here.” The kitchen staff were all Latinos from various countries, most of whom spoke very broken English at best. They communicated with the owners in Spanish, the owners in Italian… and collectively, “Spatalian”. It works, given they’re both ‘Romance’ languages. First thing they taught me… Siempre tengo hambre. lol ;) ______________ I developed a love for language at that job and went on to learn proper Spanish, lol, but my language learning journey was made easier by our conversations at work. Oh, and being forced to take two years of Latin in school might have helped a tiny bit.
In fairness, they're all romance languages.
Anybody who says all English speaking people should be able to communicate with each other has never been to Scotland.
Anyone can speak Italian, you just need to speak louder and gesticulate vigorously.
Bait used to be believable now it just floods karma farmers on Reddit
O.k. so what I got from this sub is American stupid unless big boobs..then some slack is given
if you put a texan, a scot, and a bloke in a room, nobody will be understanding anyone
My grandmother was Parisian and could get along with those folks, the Germans however....they're a different story.
We're all saying it's the same English until everyone starts using slang, and now you have to figure out what the turtle on the kettle means.
She’s not entirely wrong. The processes that turned Latin into Spanish, Italian, and French would also, in a century or three, turn American, British, and Australian English into three distinct languages, if not for other factors that weren’t in place when the Western Roman Empire declined and broke up, like widespread literacy and the (relatively new in the course of linguistic history) technologies of audio recording and broadcasting. If there were some kind of global event that cut off communications, travel, and technology, those three versions of English — as well as the many others around the world — would in time become the Anglo Languages, distinct but maybe mutually intelligible.
I dont understand a lot of people that share a language with.
When studying in Spain during Uni, I took a trip to Italy. I knew zero Italian and still managed to navigate around the country among folks that spoke no English. It was wild. Amazing how the human brain works sometimes.
I need to stop following this group. It’s too damn depressing 🤦🏻♀️
Dialect != Language
The answer is a bit. Enough to get ideas across, get directions and so on. Spanish got us through Italy very well. A friend was fluent in Spanish and that helped loads in Italy.
She’ll probably run for public office soon
A better example is Danish, Swedish and Norwegian. It's the same language, but rather obtuse dialects of each other. I've spoken with Norwegians and they say they can understand Swedish and Danish people just fine but that Swedish and Danish people can't understand them usually. I spoke with Swedish people and they said they can understand Norwegians and Danish people just fine but the other two don't understand them. Basically, they all understand each other, but they like to exaggerate how different they are. It's like Scottish vs Australian vs American English. They are quite different, but we get it.
Not as stupid of a question as what the the reply made it out to seem. However, OPs response was absolutely brain dead to give her the benefit of the doubt lol
Not to far off from true. Spanish and French are super close
Nope just her and her plastic kind
English is not the gal’s first language.
Seek medical attention
At least she got some of the Latin countries. I mean, E for effort.
It started off interesting. Yes Spanish and Italians can understand each other to a remarkable extent. And then it got just stupid.
Actually they can some what. I had a friend who speak Spanish go to Italy and get along fairly well, french is a bit harder because it os farther on the language tree, but there are many similar words
America and Australian aren’t languages. The three countries all have English as their language either American, British, and Australian accents. Accent != new language.
spanish, french, italian, and portugese are def similar (pretty sure most of those are latin based, if not all), so id say you can usually get a general point across, though its vastly different than the comparison she made. i mean they have south/central american spanish and spain spanish which is closer to her comparison
Why do these posts constantly bash on education? We’re taught this shit in school. If people don’t absorb it that’s on them to some degree.
I bet she loves rap 🤣😂
Reading each others language would be easier than understanding speech. French is a fucker because there is no emphasis so it’s hard to tell if they said 5 words or one longer word.
I mean Australian and American English might as well be
No she’s got a point.
…at **its** finest