Moderator:Forum Administrators
Antea wrote:It happens to me with Italian persons. I usually understand them very well, but I'm not fluent in Italian. And they also understand a lot of Spanish, so usually there's no need to change languages or to switch to English.
linguoboy wrote:Antea wrote:It happens to me with Italian persons. I usually understand them very well, but I'm not fluent in Italian. And they also understand a lot of Spanish, so usually there's no need to change languages or to switch to English.
I was kind of sceptical when I first heard this was possible. (Mario Pei talks about it in his book The story of language, my first introduction to linguistics.) But then I witnessed it firsthand when I was in Rome.
vijayjohn wrote:I'm always surprised when I see Spanish-speakers claiming that they understand Italian better than Portuguese. Maybe that's just the narcissism of small (in this case, probably mostly phonological) differences again? (Or of course it could make sense if they just happened to be exposed to be Italian more for whatever reason).
eskandar wrote:vijayjohn wrote:I'm always surprised when I see Spanish-speakers claiming that they understand Italian better than Portuguese. Maybe that's just the narcissism of small (in this case, probably mostly phonological) differences again? (Or of course it could make sense if they just happened to be exposed to be Italian more for whatever reason).
I have studied just a tiny bit of both languages and know Spanish, and somehow I feel like I understand more written Portuguese than Italian, but more spoken Italian than Portuguese.
eskandar wrote:vijayjohn wrote:I'm always surprised when I see Spanish-speakers claiming that they understand Italian better than Portuguese. Maybe that's just the narcissism of small (in this case, probably mostly phonological) differences again? (Or of course it could make sense if they just happened to be exposed to be Italian more for whatever reason).
I have studied just a tiny bit of both languages and know Spanish, and somehow I feel like I understand more written Portuguese than Italian, but more spoken Italian than Portuguese.
Prowler wrote:The worst is when Italian tourists assume you're gonna understand them. Or maybe they just speak Italian because they can't speak English. I mean most Italian tourists I see are old. They must get a lot of blank stares.
eskandar wrote:Prowler wrote:The worst is when Italian tourists assume you're gonna understand them. Or maybe they just speak Italian because they can't speak English. I mean most Italian tourists I see are old. They must get a lot of blank stares.
What about Spanish tourists? In your experience, do they use Spanish or English more often in Portugal? When I briefly visited Lisbon I would ask people I had to talk to, in Portuguese, whether they understood English or Spanish, and the answer was almost invariably "both." (The exception was a cab driver who didn't know English but was happy to put up with my Portunhol). I couldn't figure out if one of the two languages was more annoying for them.
That's an interesting understatement for "totally wacked out".vijayjohn wrote:Yeah, this is the sort of thing that makes me think it's probably mostly the phonology. My understanding is that both Spanish and Italian are pretty phonologically conservative whereas Portuguese is a bit more innovative.
If they mean ecclesiastical Latin, then it's basically Italian. Otherwise, no Romance language is all that close IMO.In fact, when I first started studying Latin on my own from the Oxford Latin Course, one of the first things the first book in the series said was that the pronunciation of Latin was relatively similar to Spanish or Italian.
mōdgethanc wrote:That's an interesting understatement for "totally wacked out".vijayjohn wrote:Yeah, this is the sort of thing that makes me think it's probably mostly the phonology. My understanding is that both Spanish and Italian are pretty phonologically conservative whereas Portuguese is a bit more innovative.
If they mean ecclesiastical Latin, then it's basically Italian. Otherwise, no Romance language is all that close IMO.In fact, when I first started studying Latin on my own from the Oxford Latin Course, one of the first things the first book in the series said was that the pronunciation of Latin was relatively similar to Spanish or Italian.
vijayjohn wrote:Nah, "totally wacked out" would be French.
Return to “General Language Forum”
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 28 guests