Okay so I got into a small debate with a very stubborn guy about this. To my understanding the main "romatic" languages are french, spanish, portuguese, and italian, though some people throw romanian or others in. I am only discussing the four I mentioned myself. Anywase I heard it said that Spanish is next closest to portuguese, portuguese is next closest to Italian, and Italian is next closest to french. Therefore spanish and french are at the ends with the other two in the middle based on simularity. Does anyone know it differently? I am FLUENT in spanish and portuguese. Learning portuguese made me understand Italian better and although the pronounciation of spanish and italian are very similar, there is no way that I believe italian is more similar to spanish. That was our main discussion. Take any eductaed or non-eductaed spanish speaker and I swear they will understand portuguese alot more, especially the southern Brazilian accent which is even more similar to Spanish
2007-08-04 11:28:06 · 8 answers · asked by pirouette_130 3 in Society & Culture ➔ Languages
You're right, the lexical similarity of Spanish and Portuguese (89%) is very high... I remember, before learning Portuguese, I could understand it, in its written form at least. Whereas that of French and Spanish (75%) is the lowest out of the '4 international Romance languages.'
Italian is much closer to French (sharing 89% lexical similarity) than Spanish (a still impressive 82%)...
Best wishes,
C.s.
2007-08-04 11:39:55 · answer #1 · answered by carnation-soul 5 · 2⤊ 1⤋
There are 5 major Romance languages, those are French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and Romanian. Romanian has some lexical items seen also in Slavic languages.
Take for instance the Romanian word for "I", it's Eu, look like the Portuguese form.
Now, as far as I understood it, Portuguese speakers have an easier time understanding Spanish than the other way around, due to the more regular vowel pronunciation in Spanish.
Now Spanish and French have a lot of similar vocabulary and spelling, as you would expect. Remember that there is a bit of cross over since France and Spain are right next to each other. Now Italian and French are both very much concerned with Phonetics. Their grammar and orthography revolve around how the vowels and consonants interact.
Remember that Portuguese and Spanish are too far apart now to be considered dialects of each other, which makes it harder for them to understand each other. I would say it's similar to the difference between Danish and Swedish, or maybe even as far as the difference between Dutch and English.
Oh, and they are called Romance Languages.
2007-08-04 19:51:51 · answer #2 · answered by Timothy 4 · 2⤊ 0⤋
I find it near impossible to understand Portuguese, but very simply to understand most Italian. (I speak Spanish). Although someone above mentioned that the root words are most alike with Spanish and Portuguese, I'd have to say that the reason why people find the connection between Italian and Spanish easier is because the pronunciation is much more similar. I find French in the medium range of understanding, but I find it even more difficult to pronounce. Hopefully someday though, I'll be able to speak it flawlessly. Romanian is definitely a romance language.
I heard someone speaking it once, and I couldn't for the life of me decide if he was speaking Italian, French, or Portuguese! So I had to ask him, and it turned out that he was from Romania. It was so interesting!
2007-08-04 21:37:48 · answer #3 · answered by WiseWisher 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I am from Brazil, and I have studied some Spanish, French and Italian. Indeed, you can put Spanish and Portuguese in a group (ibero-romance), and French and Italian in another (gallo-romance).However, it seems to me that those who speak Portuguese can understand Spanish relatively well, while those who speak Spanish have problems to understand Portuguese. It may be due to the fact that Portuguese has more vowels and diphtongs. Maybe the same happens with French and Italian, since French have more vowels, and Italian's orthography is much clearer than French's.
2007-08-04 19:15:32 · answer #4 · answered by peripatus_5 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Italian is a direct descendant of Latin. Italian's more closer to Portuguese than any language. Although most Spanish words are spelled the same as Latin, some with the same meanings. A person who knows Portuguese would understand someone who speaks Spanish due to word similarities.
French is only related to Latin and no other language.
Romanian retained many words in Latin?
2007-08-04 20:03:51 · answer #5 · answered by bryan_q 7 · 0⤊ 2⤋
My understanding is that Spanish and Portuguese are most closely related; French and Italian are about as far apart from each other as either is from Spanish. The connection between them all is that they all have Latin roots. If you know basic Latin, you can understand Italian, French, Spanish, and Portuguese. The main differences are in their word suffixes, accents and usage of silent letters.
2007-08-04 18:51:29 · answer #6 · answered by FUNdie 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Assuming an Italian person doesn't speak any of the other romantic langauges you mantion, he can more easily understand Spanish, then Portuguese and last French. Actually, an Italian can hardly understand a French talk, while can understand at least half of a Spanish talk.
2007-08-04 21:59:46 · answer #7 · answered by Pinguino 7 · 1⤊ 1⤋
Not going to get into which language is closer to another but Romanian is definitely a 'romance' language. Where do you think the name comes from.
2007-08-04 18:49:59 · answer #8 · answered by RedsForever 3 · 4⤊ 2⤋