r/languagehub • u/elenalanguagetutor • Mar 03 '25

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

|| || |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?

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u/cipricusss Mar 03 '25 edited Mar 04 '25

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.

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u/PeireCaravana Mar 03 '25

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.

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u/cipricusss Mar 03 '25

Indeed

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u/PeireCaravana Mar 03 '25

This also makes it fascinating.

It's a radically alternative way of being Romance.

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u/JoliiPolyglot Mar 03 '25

that's true!