What language is easiest for Spanish Speakers to understand?

Brazilians speak very slowly. Portuguese speak very fast and sing even faster. Brazilians miss words and sounds. It is not that you don't understand a word, you only do not listen all the sounds in a word because they sing very fast.

John
"Tell me..how is Portuguese older than Spanish? no..show me proof"
Show me proof that Spanish is older than Portuguese.

Spanish and Portuguese are both beautiful languages..they are siblings but with their own identity..They both can sound romantic and melodious and they have great history behind them! We shouldn't fight over why they are so similar or wether one is a dialect of the other and all that other crap. It's awesome that there is great uniformity and intelligibility between them..it means we don't have to work as hard to understand each other's languages. Not many languages are like that! They both have done amazingly well for themselves in the modern world..both are right up there as some of the most spoken languages in the world..as we know there are thousands upon thousands of languages and they are in the top 10! Not even Latin got to that level...For the Brazilians..don't hate the Portuguese..they accept the differences between your PORT and theirs plus they gave you a beautiful language..be proud to be representing the Portuguese language amongst so many Spanish speaking nations! Forget the past..those things aren't happening anymore! :-)

Wake up.The Brazilians don't hate the Portuguese. Anyone can say he is Brazilian just for fun.
I do not see any proof that says Spanish is older than Portuguese and I already saw the proof that Portuguese is older. The wise guys that say that Spanish is older than Portuguese should give proof now, to stop the argument.

I'm Italian and from my point of view (and many other Italians I know) the following is the actual situation for an Italian native speaker with an average culture and with no knowledge of foreign languages:

reading: he would understand about 85% of French, and about 70% of Spanish and Portuguese.

speaking: he would understand about 60% of Spanish, while only around 40% of Portuguese and French.

The reason of these facts is that Spanish pronounciation is the closest to Italian one, while French and Portuguese have sounds that we don't have nor understand at first hearing.

All things being equal, we learn most easily in descending order French, Spanish and Portuguese.

I guess French is the most taught language in Italian schools,

Actually, I believe it's English.

English, definitely English. After that, I'd say French (2nd place), German (3rd) and Spanish (4th).

That sounds about right Dani. Dove abiti?

I live in Milan at present, but my native city is Verona.

I suppose Italian is not taught in Italy anymore....
;-)

We meant foreign language, obviously, JR ;-)

@Dani - cool, never been to Milan, but I, and most of the English-speaking world have heard all about Verona - imaginary city of Romeo and Juliet.

For the Italians ONLY..how much of this song can you understand?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eViBRGuDSs

Maybe at the most 50% of it - not nearly enough to conceptualize the main message of the song. There are too many words Spanish words in it which are different from the Italian equivalents. But my Portuguese friend Miguel understood almost all of it.