What language is easiest for Spanish Speakers to understand?

No, they are different. Valencian has a mozarabic influence which Catalan lacks. An Spaniard would not understand Catalan as easily as Valencian.

Perhaps a few words are different here and there, but linguists classify them as the same language. The only people who say they are different languages are the Valencians themselves. They are 100% mutually intelligible! Any book(published outside of Valencia) would tell you this.

<<Perhaps a few words are different here and there, but linguists classify them as the same language. The only people who say they are different languages are the Valencians themselves. They are 100% mutually intelligible! Any book(published outside of Valencia) would tell you this.>>

And most of the people who say they are different languages speak rather Spanish anyway in their daily lives. ;-)

I personally know some Valencians who really speak Valencian naturally. All of them say that it's the same language as Catalan.
For them Valencian is a language they use naturally, and not some kind of a political instrument.

If the Valencians themselves consider it a different language it's that what only matters. A language is a dialect with an Army behind it, or in this case, with a community which considers it different in some way. Galician and Leonese are mutually intelligible with Spanish and that does not make them dialects of Spanish. Another example: Catalan and Languedocien are mutually intelligible but they are two different languages. Why is Catalan considered a separate language from the rest of the Occitan dialects? Just because it was highly supported by the Catalan society while Occitan was almost dead. Many times linguists adapt their criteria to the social context in which languages/dialects evolve rather than analyzing them isolated from the human context, so I guess that Valencian if it isn't should be considered a different language if that is what their speakers consider, just like Catalan is not the same as Languedocien or Limousin. Curiously the Catalan language was known as Limousin by their speakers until late XIX century.

Guest: Even the Valencians are split on the issue. As Tamu pointed out many view Valencian and Catalan to be the same. Valencia is not a country and thus has no army so you're argument is flawed. That aside, this whole dialect with an army thing has to stop somewhere. It's a bunch of political B.S. There's the same problem in the former yugoslovia. They're all speaking the same language, but now the bureaucrats have created serbian, croatioan, and bosnian. I'm sure a fourth "language" called Herzegovnian will be created soon.

Valencia is a country, it is called el país Valencià , and also an autonomous community with money for themselves to promote the Valencian language. You can criticize if you want that they consider Valencian a language, but it is what they want and I respect it.

People who say that Valencian and Catalan are the same are mostly Catalans with a nationalist agenda. Valencians don't think this way. If they were, also Catalan should be called southern Occitan or something like that.

In my opinion Spanish Speaking people can understand:

1) Galician
2) Valencian
3) Catalan
4) Brazilian, Italian
5) European Portuguese
6) French
7) Romanian

Writen French is quite understandable by a Spanish speaker, even more than writen Italian, but spoken French is a different story.

In my opinion Spanish Speaking people can understand:

1) Galician
2) Valencian
3) Catalan
4) Brazilian, Italian
5) European Portuguese
6) French
7) Romanian

<<People who say that Valencian and Catalan are the same are mostly Catalans with a nationalist agenda. Valencians don't think this way.>>

As I said before, I know many Valencians who speak the language naturally and say that it's the same language as Catalan.

None of them would call their language Catalan, nor a dialect of Catalan, but they do not deny that Valencian and Catalan are the same language.

What you say is quite baseless, also I do know many Valencians who don't consider their language a mere dialect of Catalan, but a different one. Try to tell a true Valencian that he or she speaks Catalan. The truth is that foreign audivisual contents are adapted to Valencian and Catalan separately and many official sites of the Spanish Government are translated both to Catalan and Valencian.

<<What you say is quite baseless, also I do know many Valencians who don't consider their language a mere dialect of Catalan, but a different one. Try to tell a true Valencian that he or she speaks Catalan.>>

I wrote quite clearly that they don't consider their language as a dialect of Catalan, and that they would never call their language Catalan. You may reread what I wrote. ;-)

LOL...Guest is a Valencian sympathizer. Why don't we all create our own language?! I speak American english and the differences between it and british english are greater than Valencian and Catalan. Now we have American...LOL, we actually have our own army too, in fact the best army in the world. As I said before, there are hundreds of scenarios around the world similar to the Catalan/Valencian problem and it has nothing to do with linguistic differences, it's politics. I don't care how the Valencians view their language. They're incredibly biased whereas myself as an American can take the logical neutral stance. I will continue to call Valencian, Catalan and so will any other outsider.

They already have their Valencian grammar , which differs from Catalan in some ways, for example prepositions are used differently, personal pronouns diverge, and so on. For example , to cite a few ,in Valencian Mosatros means We, while in Catalan it is Nosaltres. You (plural) is Vosatros instead of the Catalan Vosaltres