Are you able to understand what language is that??

I have a question for all people who are not- romance languages native speakers:
Is it possible for you to distinguish a neolatin language by the other only hearing or writing it?
For example: an english or a german or a chinese speaker who never studied before latin languages can understand if a sentence is written in italian or spanish or if they hear a someone speaking can they understand what language is he/she speaking?
And for an english is it possible distinguish if a text is written (or if someone if speaking) in german, neederlands, swedish, danish, afrikaans or icelandic?
Having only few bases, for me (neolatin speaker) it is possible distinguish german by neederlands in the written form even if I don't speak neither german or ducht; I can also understand if a text is written in a scandinavian language, but I am not able to understand if it is swedish, danish or norvegian...

Is it possible for you to distinguish a neolatin language by the other only hearing or writing it?

ERRATA CORRIGE: sorry...."only hearing or reading (not writing) it"....I really am sorry

For distinguishing Spanish and Italian, there are a few spelling clues. Italian makes more use of groups like 'gl' and 'gn' than Spanish (I don't think they occur in the latter). For hearing the languages, an important distinction is in rhythm. Spanish is a syllable-timed language, meaning all syllables are approximately the same length whether they are stressed or not, creating a "machine-gun" pattern of even rhythm. Italian, on the other hand, is stress-timed, meaning that the space between stressed syllables is approximately equal, with unstressed syllables shorter than stressed ones. It's hard to explain in writing, but if you listen to some samples of the two languages and listen for this quality, it should be easy to hear.
As for German and Dutch, I can't really give you any clues about hearing the language, but in spelling there are some simple clues. Dutch uses a digraph 'ij', which is often capitalized together as 'IJ'. This is a dead give-away that you are looking at a Dutch text. German also uses ü, ä, and ö, where as Dutch doesn't to my knowledge. Dutch also tends to use more sequences of vowels than German (in writing).
There are some clues among the Scandinavian languages in writing. Norwegian and Danish use the letters 'æ' and 'ø', whereas Swedish uses 'ä' and 'ö'. In pronunciation, there are also some subtle clues. Swedish is a pitch-accent language, which means that it has a sort of "sing-song" quality. Danish has a well-know phenomenon call stød which makes some vowels have a "creaky" sound. Norwegian has neither. These are fairly difficult to pick out though, so don't feel bad if you don't notice them. Icelandic is easy to spot because of the letters 'ý', 'þ', and 'ð', which I believe only occur in Icelandic. I can't really help with the pronunciation differences without getting too technical, and I can't think of any clues for Afrikaans either.
Hope that helps.

<<groups like 'gl' and 'gn' than Spanish (I don't think they occur in the latter)>>

They are rare, but they do occur:

Glaciar, glacial, glotis, regla, renglón, ingle, glúteo, troglodita...

ígneo, ignoto, magnífico

Hi everyone, I am a new user...I would like to know what is the intellegibility level between these language pairs (and if there's a simmetric or asymmetric intellegibility)

English- German

German- Danish

German- Icelandic

German- Neederlans

Norvegian- Swedish

Portouguese- Italian

Romanian- Italian

Catalan- Italian

Spanish- French

Could someone answer me, please??
Thank you very much.

No we can't understand the difference bet. romance languages cause we're half-wits. of course we can. how can someone not know the diff bet. Spanish, Italian, French, Romanian?

I can't say much about most of these pairs, because I only speak French and English. English and German have very limited intelligibility. In writing, I can get some words, maybe a sentence or two in a whole page. In speech, less then that. Spanish and French are a little more inter-inteligible (though French is my second language, so native speakers might do better). Norwegian and Swedish I know are quite close, though I've read that Norwegians understand Swedes better than the other way around.

Guest, here are some exemple of inteligibility:

Let's take this ENGLISH sentence : "You bought a new house".

German: Du hast ein neues Haus gekauft;

Dutch: U kocht een nieuw huis;

Norvegian: De kjopt en ny hus;

Swedish, I don't know!

Italian: Hai comprato una casa nuova;

Romanian: Ai cumparat o casa noua;

Spanish: Tu compro una nueva casa;

Portouguese: Comprou uma nova casa;

French: Tu a achete une nouvelle maison...

Now, do you notice some inteligibility between languages?

English: You bought a new house?
Spanish: Has comprado una nueva casa? or Compraste una nueva casa?
Italian: Hai comprato una casa nuova?

In spanish it's both ways:
Has comprado una casa nueva?
Has comprado una nueva casa?

Maybe, it looks like you know spanish better than me! In fact the form I used was for Usted!

Italian:
Hai comprato una casa nuova?
Comprasti una casa nuova? -used a lot in southern Italy

Spanish:
Has comprado una casa nueva?
Compraste una casa nueva?

eh, if we go on regionalisms, than we have all kind of forms...

cumparasi o casa noua - southern Romanian

many regionalisms or dilaectical forms are to be found in all languages, Southern Germany, Flammish etc

Sinbad, the French "achete" is cognate with "accata" (buy) in many Italian dialects.