How Much Spanish Can An Italian Understand?

[yuiyoshida]

[elleng]

1. Grazie!

[guillaumeb]

2. D'accord!

[mitch96]

3. wow this is fascinating!!!

Living in south Florida we have a lot of "tongues" in the air.. I love to hear them and listen to the similarities... To do my job I needed to learn remedial spanish but always wanted to learn enough to be fluent.. si?
m

[UTUSN]

4. Whups, sorry I hijacked your content, forgot where I got the link!1

[CTyankee]

5. My pet peeve is when Americans say "graazee" for grazie.

Notice he says "grazyay."

Why Americans think it's grazee I don't know...

[yuiyoshida]

6. That's like ''Hentai''

to Americans it means naughty animation. In Japan they refer to videos like that as ''Adult content'' for someone over 18 years of age.

The word ''Hentai'' is a descriptive word that refers to anything considered ''perverted" including a person who might be sexually attracted to those kinds of videos.

老人は変態者だった = Rōjin wa hentai-shadatta = The old man was a pervert.

[hunter]

8. Those sounds are difficult for Americans.

American English speakers even have trouble with some of the sounds of English as it is spoken in England.

The subtle sounds that English speakers have trouble catching

You've probably noticed how speakers of some languages can't seem to tell certain sounds apart. As a result, they can confuse word pairs such as wet and vet, beat and bit, thin and tin, or long and wrong.

But have you noticed how you do the same kind of thing? You and everyone who speaks English?

It's not simply that there are some sounds we don't make in English. It's that there are sounds we actually make, but we think they're the same as some other sounds. Here's your guide to some pairs of sounds that other languages treat as different sounds, but we in English treat as the same — and may not even hear the difference.

--more--

http://theweek.com/articles/569137/subtle-sounds-that-english-speakers-have-trouble-catching

[hunter]

7. My Spanish speaking father-in-law said he picked up Italian quickly...

... and my Italian speaking great uncle said the same about Spanish.

I've read that along the coast from France to Spain to Portugal and back along the Mediterranean through Italy, the spoken languages flowed fairly smoothly from one to another. Coastal people had no trouble speaking to their neighbors for some distance either way along the coast. There were no specific boundaries between any of the languages.

Formal boundaries for languages are a modern invention. I think we can blame religion for a lot of that. For a long time the Roman Christians insisted on Latin, just as Islam insists on Arabic. (A quick google search landed me here: The Importance of the Arabic Language In Islam.) Some of the pressure to define boundaries was driven by those translating holy books into vernacular languages.

"We're all going to read the Bible in the English of King Jame's men!" isn't any different than insisting the Bible be read in Latin.

That these boundaries are artificial is one reason I have little patience for people who complain about grammar or spelling in ordinary written communications. Whenever the meaning of a post here on DU isn't clear, "bad" grammar or spelling isn't usually the problem. The problem is poor critical thinking skills. Anti-intellectual blather often comes packaged in excellent grammar with perfect spelling.

We all have equal ownership of the languages we speak. The evolution and diversity of languages is a very natural thing. I put some effort into the grammar of my own posts, but I can also be OCD about stuff. If I sought perfection in my own grammar I'd never finish writing anything.

[July]

9. Interesting, though I'm not sure about some of his conclusions.

I lived in Spain for several years, arriving with a little Latin, a bit more French, and a tiny bit of Spanish.

My Spanish friends always said the opposite of what this man says, i.e. , that Spaniards understood Italian more readily than Italians understood Spanish. Spanish television shows typically did not provide any dubbing or subtitles when Italians appeared as guests. Normally, an interview would be conducted in both languages (Spaniard speaking Spanish, Italian answering in Italian), and the Spanish audience was presumed to have understood.

That sounds more like parity between speakers of the two languages, rather than one side being advantaged, as the guy in the video suggests, and contrary, also, to my Spanish friends' claims.

I can say that after I had learned a lot more Spanish, I, too, could understand Italians on Spanish television, much to my surprise.

[LeftInTX]

13. I speak a little bit of Spanish, but find Italian easier to understand

It probably has to do with accentuation and silent sounds. Italian is more drawn out and not as rapid.
.

[WilmywoodNCparalegal]

10. I'm a native Italian speaker

I think that in general it is easy for speakers of Romance languages to understand more or less each other. However, I think it is not totally correct to say that 'most' Italians can understand Spanish or 'most' Spaniards can understand Italian. (note: I am fluent in Spanish-Spain, Spanish-Lat.Am. and French)

Firstly, it depends on the part of Italy. Those parts where dialects are prominent, particularly southern Italian dialects with heavy Moorish influences, probably may have an easier time. Those of us in northern Italy (where dialects have a French or Germanic root) may not have as easy a time. French and German were always easier for me to understand even when I didn't know those languages.

A curious factoid... many in my family are from Liguria, the region around Genova (Genoa). For some reason, those who speak the dialect there have a very easy time understanding Portuguese. In fact, they sound very similar (it may have to do with the seafaring heritage of both the Genovese and Portuguese people).

To me, Spanish from Spain was easy to pronounce and learn, but when I came to the U.S., it was somewhat difficult to adjust the Spanish I knew to the Latin American version.

But beware of false cognates... my favorite one: burro (it's butter in Italian but donkey in Spanish).

[CTyankee]

11. To me, it is not a matter of understanding, it is a matter of mispronunciation.

"Grazee" is just a lazy way for Americans not to learn how it is said in Italian. Americans seem to think it is pronounced that way and not as it actually is in Italian.

[area51]

12. Folks might also like the langfocus videos

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=langfocus