Lexical similarities between French-Spanish-Italian
OK I have a question, since Spanish & Portugese are mutual intelligibil, with a Lexical similarity of 89%, And French & Italian have Lexical similarity of 89%, I was wondering if French & Italian are also mutual intelligibil to each other...? or just the French to Italian or the Italian to French
what I have discovered is that...
Portuguese understand Spanish
Spanish understand Italian and vice versa
Rumanian understand Italian
Where does that leave French...?
The Spanish speakers understand Portuguese too. Haven't you been reading any of the posts about this? How much mor proof do you need? there's tons of it out there if you care to look.
As has been mentioned many times before, generally, intelligibility depends on who's doing the talking and who's doing the listening. Without formal training, one Italian might not understand any spoken French, whereas another Italian who has an ear for languages may understand it. It's a pretty subjective thing when it comes right down to it. But it is universally ackowldeged that Spanish and Portuguese are, without question, very close brother romance languages. The closest of them all. Period.
I'm french, and don't get why a lot of people seems to think that French and Italian are close languages...
I mean, I'm not able do catch a word in italian, while I'm more or less able to follow a (quite slow spoken) convo in spanish.
Granted, I've learned spanish years ago, but i sucked at it and i've forgotten it all. Still, I can read a newspaper and understand the gist of it. A large part of the vocabulary only substitute the french "e" by a "a" or "o" in the words. It's not hard to understand... but don't ask me to speak it lol.
And portugese is also pretty far from french, at least as far as italian is. I'm not able to understand anything. Too bad though, cuz it's the most sexiest-sounding language in the world to me. :-)
Hi Emilie. You make some valid points. Italian and French, when spoken do not sound alike, but do share a large vocabulary and similar grammatical structure.
Spanish would in some instances sound closer to French, but...I have never, ever heard someone speaking French to a Spanish speaker and vice-versa, in a conversation. I think they would both have to be very gifted in languages to make that work. Catalan, on the other hand, would be much more intelligible to French and vice-versa.
Between Spanish, Portuguese and Italian, intelligibility works much better, although to the greatest extent between Spanish and Portuguese speakers, from my experience.
I live in France, and there are plenty of Italian, Portuguese and Spanish speaking people. I myself am of Spanish ancestry (my parent's). I am actually fluent in French, Spanish and English, but I am also well versed in Portuguese...I just have a basic grasp of Italian.
So I have the benefit of being in a position to compare each language to the other. Here in Paris, in my neighbourhood, the coffee houses are frequented by all of the above mentioned speakers. The Portuguese and Spanish speakers are always engaged in lively chit-chat in their own languages - no problems for them. I have not seen this happen between speakers of other languages, except perhaps ocassionally between the Dutch and German speaking patrons.
Sometimes French and Italians will speak a mixture of both languages to one another and make due this way reasonably well. But I suspect that sometimes that might be because maybe they had already studied the other's language in school, or picked up the language a little somewhere along the way. Just my thoughts guys...and gals.
<<OK I have a question, since Spanish & Portugese are mutual intelligibil, with a Lexical similarity of 89%, And French & Italian have Lexical similarity of 89%, I was wondering if French & Italian are also mutual intelligibil to each other...? or just the French to Italian or the Italian to French>>
I agree with the bloke above... Grammatically Italian and French are similar. I can read and understand French thanks to my Italian knowledge. But when speaking, due to the French complex phonology... Well, you need to have taken lessons or have a previous knowledge, or maybe just be exposed to the language very often, like me. Only then you can pick up some words and make out the general sens of what is said, of course if they speak very slowly.
And yes, nothing else to argue. Portuguese and Spanish are very close and we can more or less understand each other fairly easily. But then again, it quite depends on the accent of the Portuguese speaking person or the Spanish one. I know that in Spain and Portugal there's no problem at all. But here in South America, some people have a bit more of trouble to understand Portuguese, Personally it was not difficult before and now that I'm learning Portuguese, it's quite easy in fact.
Pete from Peru
the differences in pronunciation between french and spanish or italian is because french was strongly influenced by the franks and their language; hence the name France. im not saying that any of you are wrong saying that italian is closer to french than spanish its just the pronunciation.
Portuguese can understand more Spanish than the other way around?
If I speak good "European Portuguese", I can talk with not only Portuguese or Brazilian, but also Spanish or Argentine?
If I speak good "Brazilian Portuguese", I can talk with not only Portuguese or Brazilian, but also Spanish or Argentine?
Which kind of Portuguese should I choose to learn?
European style OR Brazilian style? Thank you!
"ZhongGuoRen"
If you live in the Americas I would recommend Brazilian Portuguese because most Castellano speaking Latin Americans understand the Brazilians (and vise versa) much more than they can understand European Portuguese. Most variations of Brazilian Portuguese (except Nordestino and maybe some fast speaking Cariocas) are phonetically closer to Latin American Castellano than European Portuguese. If you are in Europe or the Eastern Hemisphere learn European Portuguese.
JGreco
Hello! I have been always living in China, and perhaps will not move to Latin America or Portugal in the future, in this case, then which kind of Portuguese would suit me better? Thank you very much again!
ShongGuoRen:
European Portuguese: sopken in Portugal, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Buissau, Cape Verde Islands, Sao Tome & Principe Islands, East Timor, and other Asian Portuguese speaking places such as Macau (China) and Goa (India). And the people of Spain, and other European countries are most familiar with the Portuguese of Portugal.
Brazilian Portuguese: spoken in, of course Brazil, but this is the Portuguese variety that most of the Spanish speaking Latin American countries are most familiar with.
It's a toss-up, really a matter of personal choice. You will be well served by either variety as you cannot go wrong whichever way you choose. Hope this helps.
ZhongGuoRen: I forgot to say that European Portuguese is also what is spoken in the Azores and Madeira islands; these islands are part of the country of Portugal proper.
In North America, there is also a large population of Portuguese speakers who mostly speak the European Portuguese, and some smaller population pockets of Brazilian Portuguese speakers.
Rolando wrote:
"OK I have a question, since Spanish & Portugese are mutual intelligibil, with a Lexical similarity of 89%, And French & Italian have Lexical similarity of 89%, I was wondering if French & Italian are also mutual intelligibil to each other...? or just the French to Italian or the Italian to French"
what I have discovered is that...
Portuguese understand Spanish
Spanish understand Italian and vice versa
Rumanian understand Italian
Where does that leave French...?
--->>>>
I wrote:
Agreed. I too have found similarity to this analogy. Nothing is black and white. People must remember that, they ought to avoid their 'passion' and rely more on their knowledge.
Guest：＜European Portuguese: sopken in Portugal, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Buissau, Cape Verde Islands, Sao Tome & Principe Islands, East Timor, and other Asian Portuguese speaking places such as Macau (China) and Goa (India). And the people of Spain, and other European countries are most familiar with the Portuguese of Portugal.
Brazilian Portuguese: spoken in, of course Brazil, but this is the Portuguese variety that most of the Spanish speaking Latin American countries are most familiar with.
It's a toss-up, really a matter of personal choice. You will be well served by either variety as you cannot go wrong whichever way you choose. Hope this helps.
I forgot to say that European Portuguese is also what is spoken in the Azores and Madeira islands; these islands are part of the country of Portugal proper.
In North America, there is also a large population of Portuguese speakers who mostly speak the European Portuguese, and some smaller population pockets of Brazilian Portuguese speakers.＞。
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Thank you very much!
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Pedro
There is even talk (hypothetical) in some language forums in Spain and Portugal that a political merger/union between Spain and Portugal into 1 nation would be great for economic and political reasons. Believe it or not, there are many Spaniards and Portuguese alike who favour such a union, because their languages and cultures are already so close, that it would only make sense.
---------------------------
This is an old ideology called Iberismo :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iberic_Federalism
The only political merge that is going on is called European Union. All european countries are much closer politically and at many other levels.
Iberism is only supported by a very small faction of portuguese and spanish people. The great majority of people prefere their own countries separated and you also have groups like some bascos and some other groups in Spain who want to separate from Spain.
So, you have those who are in favor of one only peninsula ruler and country , and those who want many countries in the peninsula. Most people are happy the way it is. Cultural diversity and languages is what all gain from being separated, which does not mean people have to turn their back to the fact they are all iberians and not work together. In fact the portuguese and spanish are working together at many levels and sharing many resources. You have for instance the Iberian nanotechnology lab that will be in Braga and will be a portuguese- sapanish lab. You also have the cooperation of Portugal and Galicia at the cultural level and so on. Cooperation and diversity means portuguese and spanish people respect each other.
:D I am a French but I do understand no word of Portuguese when spoken.I understand Italian well enough to learn about the events on the newspaper as Italian words are almost the same as French except e few.When I look into the Italian writings, the language seems to be athrilled verison of French and a bit simplified reform or French is a much more complexed form of Italian ;) The same thing works for Spanish but to a lesser degree.But I can assure you that I understand almost no sense in the terms of Portuguese.As you see, I don't even mention about Romanian as I don't regard it as a Romance language after all the differences.