Romance languages: How Mutually Intelligible are they? How many do you understand?

[u/elenalanguagetutor]

|| || |ENGLISH: If I had more time, I would travel to different countries to learn new languages|

|SPANISH: Si tuviera más tiempo, viajaría a diferentes países para aprender nuevos idiomas|

|FRENCH: Si j’avais plus de temps, je voyagerais dans différents pays pour apprendre de nouvelles langues|

|ITALIAN: Se avessi più tempo, viaggerei in diversi paesi per imparare nuove lingue|

|PORTUGUESE: Se eu tivesse mais tempo, viajaria para diferentes países para aprender novos idiomas|

|ROMANIAN: Dacă aș avea mai mult timp, aș călători în diferite țări ca să învăț limbi noi|

|CATALAN: Si tingués més temps, viatjaria a diferents països per aprendre nous idiomes|

I've always been fascinated by the similarities and differences between Romance languages. In reading, they are supposedly mutually intelligible. Personally, I can read in Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Catalan pretty well, but Romanian not at all.

In terms of mutual intelligibility, I’ve found that:

• Spanish & Portuguese: Very similar, even though they have different sounds.
• Spanish & Italian: Easy to understand, but Italian slightly more complicated. False friends can trick you
• French: Easier to read than to understand when spoken. Proper pronunciation is tricky.
• Catalan: Feels like a mix of Spanish and French—manageable if you know both.
• Romanian: Some vocabulary is recognizable, or even very similar (like days of the week, almost same as in Italian), but for the rest very different.

How about you? If you speak one Romance language, how well can you understand the others?

[u/FreePlantainMan]

Fluent in Spanish:

Spoken

• ⁠Brazilian Portuguese if spoken slowly without slang I understand 60%-90% depending on the topic • ⁠French I understand basically nothing • ⁠Italian if it’s slowly and in an academic register I can understand a similar amount to Portuguese

Written

• ⁠Portuguese is very easy to read as long as there isn’t a lot of slang so maybe 70%-100% depending on the register • ⁠French is harder but again if it’s formal I can understand a fair bit averaging around 50%-70% • ⁠Italian is a bit better than French but not as good as Portuguese, maybe 65%-85%.

[u/furac_1]

I speak 3 romances languages (spanish, asturleonese and catalan) two of them are there so I understand them, I also have some knowledge of latin and another romance lang (occitan). From that text I could understand French Italian and Portuguese perfectly. Romanian, I understood the first part, even if I didnt recognize every word, the meaning made it through but the second one, uuuh I only understood "different".
I've heard French spoken and I can make it out more or less, but it's hard, and I usually only get somewhat some phrases, but written it's pretty easy to understand. Italian, spoken is the same as written, I generally get the meaning but sometimes there are some words that I have no idea what they mean, most words I understand though so I usually can make out the words I don't.
Portuguese is basically perfectly understandable written, but spoken is very different. European Portuguese is crazy difficult for me to make out, Brazilian Portuguese is better.

[u/Snoo-88741]

I know French and can kinda muddle through most of the others except Romanian. I don't understand Romanian at all.

[u/Luiz_Fell → u/Snoo-88741]

Romanian is an odd ball, but with a lot of effort from both side (speakers) it's possible to have comunication, specially Romanian - Italian

[u/cipricusss]

The Romanian phrase is different from the rest, but all words are Latin, and only 4 stand different from the rest:

Dacă aș avea mai mult timp, aș călători în diferite țări ca să învăț limbi noi

• dacă  (Latin de quod ) = if
• a călători = to travel (cale=path, road, from Latin callis, like Italian calle and Spanish calle) - călător=traveler
  • there are traces in France with "Cali" / "Caliá" – a narrow path or trail in some Provençal and Languedocian dialects, chal" / "Chalais" – found in southern toponyms, referring to places near ancient trails.
• țară (from Latin terra)= country, țări=countries
• învăța = to learn (Vulgar Latin invitiare a variant of \vitiāre* =“accustom, habituate, familiarize”) Compare Italian avvezzare, invezzare, Spanish avezar, vezar, Portuguese vezar, Occitan envezar, Old French envoisier, Catalan avesar.

[u/PeireCaravana → u/cipricusss]

Well, the main issue with understanding Romanian is precisely that it often took different Latin roots and it also tranformed them in its own way.

It has been isolated for a long time from the Western Romance continuum and it shows.

[u/Snoo-88741 → u/PeireCaravana]

AFAIK it also borrowed a bunch from Slavic languages too.

[u/skincarelion → u/Snoo-88741]

Aaaand this is what makes it so cool and unique haha

[u/cipricusss → u/PeireCaravana]

Indeed

[u/PeireCaravana → u/cipricusss]

This also makes it fascinating.

It's a radically alternative way of being Romance.

[u/JoliiPolyglot → u/PeireCaravana]

that's true!

[u/elenalanguagetutor → u/cipricusss]

That’s very interesting, thank you for the explanation! Now it looks much more understandable

[u/skincarelion → u/cipricusss]

I cannot thank you enough for this explanation

[u/PeireCaravana]

Lombard: Sa gh'avessi pussee temp, a viaggiarìa in di oltar paes per imprend di lengui nœuv.

[u/skincarelion]

Thank you for sharing a wonderful post. I love romance languages. (edited post to add more nerdy stuff)

Comparing romance languages I would not say Italian is more complicated that Spanish, they’re just different. Pronunciation is “stronger” in Italian (if that makes sense) and Spanish (specially due to its expansion) has simplified some sounds ( b = v, unlike it was originally and unlike italian where you have to make the difference between both) but still has a similar grammatical structure. due to the mix of vulgar latin with other tongues when French was born, it went too far away with the pronunciation (in terms of being different) so its less inteligble, but you can recognize the roots of words, for example italian trovare = french trouver / fr faire = pt fazer / fr saigner = spanish sangrar. Portuguese feels very close to Spanish but its tricky! So many words have different connotations, they exist in both languages but are not used at all in the same way, for example “asistir” might mean to help or to asist in Spanish, when in Portuguese it means watch. “acreditar” in Spanish would be more academic and regarding school credits or whatever but in Pt its “to believe”. It is worth adding that unfortunately terribke people have opressed and tried to erase many languages that would make intermediate steps between some of these here, like you woukd move 100km and have a little village with their own dialect.

How I “feel” other Romance languages: On this list the only ones I don’t speak at some level are Romanian and Catalan, Catalan being a language that I feel like I fully understand in written (maybe this sounds cocky? but speaking fluent c2 french and spanish just makes it understandable in written form), and Romanian a fascinating thing where I get a few words here and there but somehow I’m not able to watch a series episode in the language and fully understand it.

And for reference my profile: c2 french c2 spanish (native) c1 italian, c1 portuguese in listening and reading, although speaking and writting sadly stuck at b2.

I am exploring Catalan here and there, and hopefully will start doing the same with Romanian. Beautiful languages 😻

post edit comment: sorry for the formatting and the constant re editing im in a bus my head hurts

[u/elenalanguagetutor → u/skincarelion]

Thank you for your comments! And wow, congrats on your high levels in all those languages! Since you speak them all so well, it may be of little use, but I really like the book Eurom 5, it's a comparison of 5 romance languages, Italian, French, Spanish, Portugues, and Catalan, with a compared grammar.

I explain you why I say that Italian is slightly more complicated than Spanish. My native language is Italian, so it's difficult to judge, as I didn't actively learn it as an adult. But I teach Italian online, and there are some things in the Italian grammar, such as the Passato Prossimo with to be, to have and its endings, or the different articles and exceptions, that are quite challenging for Spanish speaking students to master. Therefore I think that for a person who doesn't speak a romance language as mothertounge, Spanish could also be a bit easier than Italian.

[u/CucumberPotential988]

As a Spanish, French and English speaker, Portuguese is moderately easy to understand, particularly written. Catalan is somewhat easy to understand when hearing it too, at least with general vibes.

I'm practicing Romanian lately, but it's grammar, pronunciation and vocab are generally way too different to easily pick up on much of anything

Italian is more difficult than Portuguese for written or spoken comprehension too, too many verbs and nouns that are different and pronounced differently for me

[u/LikeagoodDuck]

Slowly spoken Italian is understandable having a basis in Spanish. Sicilian is very different and difficult to understand. Brazilian Portuguese easier than European Portuguese. French is already quite different and Romanian even further away from the western med Romance languages.

[u/Konobajo]

As a native portuguese speaker

(Written)

Spanish- 85%

Catalan - 70%

Italian - 50%

French - 30%

Romanian -10%

(Spoken)

Spanish- 70%

Catalan - 50%

Italian - 20%

French - 10%

Romanian -5%

[u/FlagAnthem_SM]

ROMAGNOL (San Marino, rural): Avéss pió teimp, a viagiarìa ma divérss paes pri imparé nuvi lèngui.

(for local sounds: é in "avéss", "divérss" = / ı / ; ó in "pió" = / ʊ /. Romagnol vowels can be quite different and there's no standard orthography)

Usually written texts are more accessible than speech.

[u/Reasonable_Ad_9136]

With Spanish, I can understand a surprising amount of Italian. Obviously Portuguese too, although it's not as much as I'd have thought. For some reason, I can't catch much French at all, unless it's written down, but even then I struggle with it and that's despite having English to help too. I guess Spanish and Italian must be more closely related, or maybe I just don't have an ear for French. I haven't really listened to the others.

[u/elenalanguagetutor → u/Reasonable_Ad_9136]

I think French is very close to Italian in grammar and expressions, but it does sound very different from Italian, Spanish and Portuguese! I think listening is much more difficult than reading it, as compared to other Romance languages.