Spanish and Italian are much closer than Italian and French

d'ailleurs, ne faisons pas attention aux multiples fautes d'orthographe et de frappe, j'ai tappé un peu trop vite...

Multilingual Capital – London only
In a survey of 850,000 children in London schools the question about first language spoken at home has been used by LEAs in London. See the publication for more details and an analysis with commentary on the London population.

Over 300 different languages are spoken by London schoolchildren. Note that discussion is underway for pupil data on languages spoken to be collected for all LEAs in the annual school census. Piloting is being carried out in 2005 with the possibility of collection to start in January 2007.

The top 40 languages spoken by pupils in London is given below with the approximate total number of pupils for each language:

English 608,500
Bengali & Sylheti 40,400
Panjabi 29,800
Gujarati 28,600
Hindi/Urdu 26,000
Turkish 15,600
Arabic 11,000
English-based Creoles 10,700
Yoruba (Nigeria) 10,400
Somali 8,300
Cantonese 6,900
Greek 6,300
Akan (Ashanti) 6,000
Portuguese 6,000
French 5,600
Spanish 5,500
Tamil (Sri Lanka) 3,700
Farsi (Persian) 3,300
Italian 2,500
Vietnamese 2,400
Igbo (Nigeria) 1,900
French-based Creoles 1,800
Tagalog (Filipino) 1,600
Kurdish 1,400
Polish 1,500
Swahili 1,000
Lingala (Congo) 1,000
Albanian 900
Luganda (Uganda) 800
Ga (Ghana) 800
Tigrinya (Sudan) 800
German 800
Japanese 800
Serbian/Croatian 700
Russian 700
Hebrew 650
Korean 550
Pashto (Afganistan) 450
Amharic (Ethiopia) 450
Sinhala (Sri Lanka) 450

WHY ARE THE LATIN LANGUAGES NOT SO SPOKEN IN LONDON?

Simply because londo isn't a good place to live in, only desperates go there, london sucks, all adict to alchool and drugs

Id like to contribute my personal anecdote to the spanish-italian debate: I am spanish, I spent a week in Italy two summers ago, my first time there. I had never learnt any italian beyond "e una lingua molto facile e divertente" but had no problem to book hotels rooms or anything from day one. By the end of the week I was on the train with a lady and a young guy discussing away berlusconi and italian politics (well I was mostly listening cos it was getting quite nasty). This simply wouldnt be possible for me in France without at least a year of intensive study (I do speak french so I know what I talk about).

For sure italian and spanish are completely separate languages, and MOST words in basic conversation are in fact quite different, but for some reason (that all important similar accent) they can be picked up effortlessly, something that cannot be said with other languages. I think thats what ppl mean when they say spanish and italian are so close.

Hi guest. I enjoyed reading your post. But I think it a generalization when you say that the Italian and Spanish accent is so similar. It all depends on the region of the country a person is from. I am sure there are Speakers from Spain who would be lost trying to comprehend speakers from certain parts of Italy. You must consider also that a person's level of education will greatly facilitate the fluidity of a conversation between himself and a speaker of another romance language. You see, a Portuguese can change his accent and be understood almost perfectly by a Spanish speaker because the vocabulary and sentence structure is almost 90% the same. But a nice, clear Italian accent cannot compensate for significant differences in vocabulary between Italian and Spanish. Again, in Portuguese and Spanish the word for 'want' is 'quero' and 'quiero'. In italian it's 'voglio'. Now you can say 'voglio' as clearly as you want, but if you are trying to make this word understandable to a Spanish or Portuguese speaker in a serious conversation, you are truly stuck - unless of course the Spanish or Portuguese speaker knows what 'voglio' means. There are many other examples I could use, but I think I've made my point. A conversation between a Brazilian and a Colombian, for example, would be far more comprehensible, than a conversation between an Italian and a Colombian. Of this I have no doubt whatsoever. Jorge.

JORge: I couldn't be more agreed with you, you're very correct!!

>>>You see, a Portuguese can change his accent and be understood almost perfectly by a Spanish speaker because the vocabulary and sentence structure is almost 90% the same. But a nice, clear Italian accent cannot compensate for significant differences in vocabulary between Italian and Spanish. Again, in Portuguese and Spanish the word for 'want' is 'quero' and 'quiero'.<<<

RIGHT! Brazilians seem to be speaking the same language, but with a different accent. If they tried to speak with a Spanish accent, probably most Hispanic Americans would understand them 100%.

Hi Jorge i agree with you that portuguese and spanish are almost completely compatible, more than any other european languages. If you compare two close accents (i mean here standard varieties from cultivated speakers) such as south american varities then one can be forgiven to think you are talking about essentially the same language. The closeness btw spanish and portugues might not be such a popular topic because in Europe both languages have traditionally turned their backs on each other, but as latinamerica and esp brasil jumps more onto the international arena it will be more publicised

My point was regarding the relative distance between spanish and italian compared to that of french and italian. And there I have to agree with the original poster in this thread that italian, in spite of fundamental differences, simply makes sense for spanish speakers in a very short period of time, and im sure the same happens in th opposite direction, whilst french needs years of hard study just to get to an intermediate level of proficiency. To take your example, it takes three times that you hear voglio to remember and use it, however it will take you a lot longer to identify 'je veux' in spoken speech, and to be confident enough to use it. Also, learn a few tens of key words and you can already have a go in italian, but in french you will need a good basis just to try a basic conversation.

Hello guest, carloS and Chinese. Thanks for the feedback guys. I essentially agree with all of you. And guest, I think you make some very valid points here. Thanks, first of all, for acknowledging that Spanish and Portuguese are almost 'completely compatible'. And yes, because of the international noteriety of Spanish and Portuguese, the importance of these two languages continues to grow. In some circles, the Portuguese and Spanish languages are already considered to be synonymous with one another. And largely because of the 'Mercosur' initiative in Latin America, for example, Spanish speakers are learning Portguese as a second language of instruction, while the Brazilians are learning Spanish. But for them, this process is very easy, becuause they already have the advantage of knowing almost 90% of the vocabulary of each others langauge. The last thing I want to say, is that French, in my opinion, is the most difficult of the Romance languages to learn - the learning curve for that one is considerably longer. I took French for 8 years in school, and I can read and understand most of it. But speaking French is another matter completely. So yes, in my opinion Italian is much easier to learn for Spanish and Portuguese speakers than French, if only on account of its clearer accent. Thanks guys. Jorge.

Just want to add my agreement with what the recent Guest and Jorge have said about Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and French. As an outsider who knows Spanish best, that's the impression I have.

Portuguese is nmore important than Italian


1.Portuguese is a world language spoken by more than 220 million people in Europe, Africa, Asia, and South America.

2.Portuguese is the 6th language of the world; the 2nd most spoken Romance language after Spanish; one of the official languages of the EU; and the 2nd most spoken language in South America.

3.Portuguese is the 2nd most geographic European language after English. More people speak Portuguese worldwide than French, German, Italian, Japanese, Russian, and Korean.

4.Portuguese is the working language for the following international organizations:

• ACP – Países Africanos, Caraíbas e Pacífico
• Mercosul – Mercado Comum do Sul
• OEI – Organização dos Estados Ibero-americanos
• OUA – Organização de Unidade Africana
• SADC – Comunidade para o Desenvolvimento da África Austral
• UE – União Europeia
• UL – União Latina
• UEMOA – União Económica e Monetária da África Ocidental
5.Portuguese is the language of Brazil (180 million population), a country occupying half of the South American territory. Brazil, the 8th world economy, is a leading Mercosul member and the 2nd industrial power of the Americas.

6.Portuguese is the official language of the African republics of Angola, Cape Verde, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, and St. Thomas and Prince. These Portuguese-speaking countries are an increasing force in the global economy. In Asia, Portuguese is spoken in East Timor, Macau, and Goa.

7.Portuguese is widely spoken in the USA, where over 1.3 million people are of Portuguese Heritage. In Massachusetts, Portuguese is the third most spoken language after English and Spanish. In Rhode Island, Portuguese is the 2nd most spoken language after English. Portuguese is also widely spoken in California, Connecticut, Florida, and New Jersey.

8.Portuguese is widely spoken in many vibrant Portuguese-speaking communities around the world, including Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Bermuda, Canada, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Namibia, Paraguay, Rhodesia, South Africa, Sweden, United Kingdom, and Venezuela.

9.The Portuguese language is the language of many cultures, each one with its unique History, Literature, Arts and Traditions.

10. Portuguese is close to Spanish and has similarities to French and Italian. Speakers of Spanish and other Romance languages will learn Portuguese fairly easy.

11.There are many more reasons for learning Portuguese. The most obvious reason is that knowing a new language can open up job opportunities. Other important reason for leaning a new language includes cognitive benefits for both the young and the aging.

12.Portuguese speakers can find a variety of career options in education, diplomacy, national security, military, international relations, media, finance, trade, business, tourism, social work, sales, and services

I am from Tuscany, in central Italy. I think that French is easier for me to understand than Spanish. Maybe because I studied French in school and not Spanish. There are more similar words in French than in Spanish so even if prononciation is more difficult in French, I have the word for the concept I am trying to describe. But frankly speaking, I have no trouble speaking to French or Spanish people. Much more difficult or impossible to speak to Germans or Dutch that do not speak english, very few. Also Portogese are difficult to understand for me.

Sorry, but just opera makes Italian more important than portoghese. Not to mention literature and the roman church. Mind you, it is not very important language, but compared to portughese it is more important.

Pronunciation similarity:

Italian and Spanish are very much alike,
French and Portuguese are very much alike.


Vocabulary similarity:

Italian and French are very much alike,
Spanish and Portuguese are very much alike.

CHINESE : pourrais-tu démontrer ce que tu affirmes — ou du moins l'illustrer par des exemples probants ?