Vocabulary comparison

Rodrigo   Mon May 10, 2010 7:26 am GMT
The lexical similarity between Spanish is estimated at 82%.

The lexical similarity with Portuguese is greater at 89%.

Mutual intelligibility between Spanish and French or Romanian is lower (lexical similarity being respectively 75% and 71%

So, when you learn Spanish, you'll be able to speak to Brazilians, Italians, etc, an added bonus of more than 300 million people.

Don't worry about French, being an almost extinct language it's not worth the effort, and they all can mumble Spanish anyway.