What language is easiest for Spanish Speakers to understand?

Sergio   Wed Jul 26, 2006 12:11 am GMT
Hi Juan,

You were too fast with your assumption of LAA's logic and mine to be wrong.

1.- I was answering the question taking for granted that we were talking about standard languages, used in the media. I you want to go to the extreme of considering any dialect and local variation of the languages involved, you will complicate things to an endless discussion.

2.- Spanish has 5 vowels. Italian has 7 vowels. Portuguese has 8 vowels, plus 5 nasal vowels, plus nasal diphthongs, PLUS a certain degree of assimilation, which means, that they don't pronounce all the letters of a word, making it difficult for a Spanish speaker to catch the meaning of the word.

P.S. I am assuming a NORMAL, AVERAGE speed of speaking. Speaking fast and unclearly, can even result in one Spanish speaker not understanding another Spanish speaker!!!!
Sergio   Wed Jul 26, 2006 12:21 am GMT
Ramiro,

I partially agree with you. Nonetheless, you do have to take into account if one is listening or reading a language, to be then able to speak of how understandable it is. I always thought that I would be able to understand perfectly spoken Portuguese, but that just because I had never heared it, just read it!!!...I was really disapointed when I could listened it and I was trying to know what was being said. When I listened Italian for the first time though, I was surprised of how many words I could catch because they sounded so clear to my ears.

Obviously, if you, as Spanish speaker, keep on hearing both languages for a time enough, and get used to the sounds, at a certain point definitely you will understand more in Portuguese as a whole.
LAA   Wed Jul 26, 2006 1:27 am GMT
Yep definitely. I had a conversation with an Italian restraunt owner over lunch the other day. And I understood about 70% of what he said, and likewise for him.

I tried communicating with a Portuguese couple last night, and it just wasn't the same, even though, lexically, Spanish and Portuguese are closer.
Guest   Wed Jul 26, 2006 11:03 am GMT
I Agree,Spanish and Italian have more phonetical similarities in between when compared to Portuguese, even though Portuguese is easier to understand and assimilate when the spanish speaker are aware of the differences between both languages. That's why Portuguese Speakers are more likely to understand a spanish speaker than the other way around, because portuguese its more complicated and have a rich vocabulary
Juan   Wed Jul 26, 2006 3:09 pm GMT
Many of you are placing far too much emphasis on the phonological differences between Portuguese and Spanish, and the phonological similarities between Italian and Spanish. Wrong argument.

What difference does the similar phonology of Italian to Spanish make when you don't know what the word/s mean in any given sentence. For example, what are Spanish and Portuguese speakers who have no background in Italian supposed to understand (even if the accent is crystal clear) when an Italian says:

(Italian)
Voglio vedere un giocco di calcio

You see, this same sentence would be mutually intelligible to Portugese and Spanish speakers both written and spoken:

(Spanish)
Quiero ver un juego de futbol

(Portuguese)
Quero ver um jogo de futebol

I could provide countless other examples. But there is no need to, because reason quickly confirms the truth.

Dialects aside, we should focus on langauge 'standards'. As such, in the example above, the assumption is that all three speakers are educated and speak their respective languages clearly, and enunciate the words well. In any case, in wouldn't change the outcome of this little test one iota, because the Italian speaker in all his clarity and eloquence, would be using totally unfamiliar vocabulary to the Spanish and Portuguese speaker. When the words are different, an Italian can say them with as much clarity and poise as he wants, but it won't make a bit of difference, becuase at the end of the day, the Portuguese and Spanish speakers will be talking about apples while the Italian is talking about oranges. When an Italian speaks to a Portuguese or Spanish speaker, I just don't see how his clear accent can compensate for his markedly different vocabulary. Many linguistics experts out there share this view.

By the way...I frequently hear Spanish speaking soccer players chatting in Spanish with Portuguese radio sports show hosts, and they always understand each other just fine - and we're talking about soccer players. Yet, I have never heard an Italian on the radio or tv for that matter, speak in Italian to a Spanish speaker. Why? Because it wouldn't work.

The evidence overwhelmingly supports the fact that Portuguese and Spanish are the closest romance languages in every way. Like it or not, that's the plain and simple truth here folks.
Sergio   Wed Jul 26, 2006 4:11 pm GMT
>By the way...I frequently hear Spanish speaking soccer players chatting in Spanish with Portuguese radio sports show hosts, and they always understand each other just fine -
No mystery here. Once you learn the few words in the argot of some activity, you are perfectly able to comunicate with the other person. It would work for Italian as well, but it happens that the exposure to Portuguese is bigger, because no Latinamerican country has Italian as official language. It's quite simple.

>Many of you are placing far too much emphasis on the phonological differences
Yes. They are quite important in understanding each other when speaking. Humanity has learn to speak tens of thousands of years ago. There has not been so long time since we started writing though. It IS important.

>I could provide countless other examples.
We could provide countless of counterparts as well.

>the Italian speaker in all his clarity and eloquence, would be using totally unfamiliar vocabulary to the Spanish and Portuguese speaker.
Not quite. Many of the Italian words are intelligible to Spanish speaker, via synonym significance. If you are talking of educated people with a decent vocabulary, they catch the context of the idea even if they don't understand some words. SOMETIMES, it wouldn't work, I know. But we are generally speaking. It does happen that you are unable to catch the context of a whole spoken sentence if you hear it in Portuguese, even if you would understand many of the words when you would read them.

As for the written language, I completely agree with you Juan. There is no question about it.
Juan   Wed Jul 26, 2006 5:54 pm GMT
Sergio, with all due respect, one cannot arrive at conclusions about intelligibilty of languages on the basis of the experiences of only a handful of people. Just because you and a few others in this forum argue that Italian is more intelligible to your ears when it is spoken is not conclusive proof of any thesis. My assertions are based on an abundance of detailed empirical evidence derived from languistic studies conducted by experts in the area of romance languages.

Not that I need to, but for the sake of the discussion were having on this forum, I would gladly conduct my own quantitative and qualitative research on the streets of towns and cities everywhere Portuguese, Spanish and Italian speakers are found. I would have well educated speakers of Italian, Spanish and Portuguese read one good paragraph of anything, to 100 speakers of the other two languages. I know what the results would prove conclusively: the Portuguese and Spanish speakers would understand each other the most hands down. Unfortunately, even if I were to post the results of a test like that, no one here would accept the results as credible. But that's okay, because there is more than enough irrefutable proof out there to substantiate what I'm saying.

I'll ask again: Sergio, let's assume a Portuguese and Spanish speaker have never heard Italian before. Without the help of hand gestures by the Italian, how would they understand what a word like 'mangiare' means, even if it is clearly and beautifully pronounced by the Italian??? Remember, no synonyms can be used, not that there are always synonyms which can be used anyway.

Vocabulary Sergio...a common vocabulary more than compensates for any clarity that is lost on accent. This is not rocket science. For example, immigrants in any country make themselves understood not because they have nice accents (they all speak their new languages with an accent), but because they use the vocabulary of their new language, and that is essentially waht makes communication possible. As such, they make themselves understood. This proves that common vocabulary is the crucial instrument which makes communciation between two people possible. Get the point. You can work around accent, but if you are not using common vocabulary in a conversation with someone, then you are not going to be on the same page as it were.
Juan   Wed Jul 26, 2006 6:06 pm GMT
By the way Sergio, the Spanish speaking soccer players interviewed at the Portuguese stations all play for different European teams. So while your tidbit about Portuguese and Spanish soccer in S. and C. America is true, it has nothing to do with the example I gave. Why don't the Italian radio stations interview Spanish speaking players from different European teams too?? Take a guess.

Oh, the Italian word 'mangiare', is 'Comer' in Spanish and Portuguese. No surprise there.
Sergio   Wed Jul 26, 2006 6:24 pm GMT
Thank you for your last post Juan.
>My assertions are based on an abundance of detailed empirical evidence derived from languistic studies conducted by experts in the area of romance languages.
Mine too, although I am not such a linguist. I read about linguistic as a hobby, and like to have this exchange of ideas with serious people like you and some others on this forum.

And yes, to do such a quantitative and qualitative study would be not an easy task. What would come out of this study, I am not so sure. You know, this subject can become very tricky, and lead us to precipitated conclusions. I based my answer on my own experience after living three years in Europe, where I have a lot of contact with Spaniards, Italians, Brazilians and Portuguese, many of them being people interested in linguistic, interested in comparative Romance grammar, and in a neutral context: we were all the time living in a Germanic language speaking country, which means that we had to confrontate this phenomenon every single day because we happened to be a circle of friends, and didn't want to speak English among us.

>how would they understand what a word like 'mangiare' means,?
Well, you probably know that instinct and subconsciuous play an important role in communication. If you speak Spanish, you probably know the word "manjar", even when this is a substantive, and "mangiare" is a verb. It is really interesting how it really works though!! What I am trying to say here, is that you are automatically deriving the meaning of the Italian word, via some known element in your own language, IN CASE this exists. If not, you don't have many chances to guess it. Example: Italian "burro" vs. Spanish "mantequilla". Then this is, again, not valid for every word of Italian.

This is also true of the Portuguese-Spanish case: "comer vs. comer", but: "la hora de la comida vs a hora da refeição" (you probably don't know the Spanish word "refectorio" which means "comedor", mostly used in monasteries, or at least, it is less probable than knowing the word "manjar"), this last word, if you listend it, will most probably not give any clue of its significance, let alone what you are able to catch of this word if pronounced in a nice and clear standard Portuguese.

I didn't quite understand your last paragraph.
Juan   Wed Jul 26, 2006 6:58 pm GMT
Thanks Sergio. Well, since 'comida' means (food) in Portuguese, a Portuguese person would at least know that 'la hora de la comida' relates to 'it's time to eat'.

Sergio, which paragraph didn't you understand - I'm curious.

I do speak Portuguese and Spanish fluently. You talk about the difficulty of the Portuguese accent, but you haven't mentioned that the Castilian of Spain often sounds quite fast and harsh. We Portuguese speakers get what they say inspite of that, but try asking an Italian unaccustomed to Castilian Spanish to make heads or tails out of what a Spaniard says, and believe me, they'll be stymied. How do I know? Because I've seen this happen time and again in Madrid, Rome, and even here in Toronto.
Enrik   Wed Jul 26, 2006 7:19 pm GMT
I have very limited exposure to both Portuguese and Italian, but the few times I have heard it, Italian is more understandable to me than Portuguese. Portuguese phonology is hard to understand for me because I have a hard time knowing when one word ends and when one begins.

I have a game that comes in 8 different languages. When I played it in Italian, when asking if you want to choose single player mode, it says something that sounded like "Clic aqui pere jogare un jogo de singolo jogatore". I automatically tied the word that sounded like 'Jogare' to the Spanish word 'Jugar', 'Jogo' with 'Juego' and 'Jogatore' with 'Jugador'. That made perfect sense in my mind, although I must say that singolo would not have made sense without my knowledge of the English word "single".

The same thing for another phrase that sounded like "Clic in il pulsante blu pere cambiare jogatore". Perfect sense in my mind, except for the word blu, which also would not have made sense without the previous knowledge of an English word.

With Portuguese it's a little trickier. In Portuguese, the motto for the city you race in becomes something that sounds like "Ey Ozaka, onde tudu temas cor". I identified Onde as Donde. But the rest made little sense, except for tudu which I thought meant todo. I later found out that it was "Em Ozaka, onde tudo tem mas cor". Which in my mind became "In Ozaka, where everything [blank] more [blank]". When I looked it up, I was surprised that cor meant color, and tem meant tiene.

Cor meaning color had never even occured to me. I had always thought, if the word was present in 3 romance languages, and ENGLISH a Non-Romance language, it would be almost guaranteed to be present in all romance languages. However there are many instances where I do understand portuguese rather than italian, especially in small doses, when the words are not just being poured on to me.
Sergio   Wed Jul 26, 2006 7:24 pm GMT
>since 'comida' means (food) in Portuguese, a Portuguese person would at least know that 'la hora de la comida' relates to 'it's time to eat'.
Yeah, but this thread refers specifically to Spanish speakers and his level of understanding Italian and Portuguese. Not the other way round.

>Sergio, which paragraph didn't you understand - I'm curious.
>Vocabulary Sergio...a common vocabulary more than compensates.....
This one. But now I have read it again. You are talking about something different here. You are talking about someone making him/herself understood as a foreigner, but using the local language. We were discussing the position of a pasive Spanish speaker trying to understand spoken Italian/Portuguese: (since the item of written language is clear) First, using his native vocabulary to infere apparently unknown words.
Secondly, assuming that, being this a confrontation, this Spanish speaker is not fluent in any of these languages.

>Get the point. You can work around accent, but if you are not using common vocabulary in a conversation with someone, then you are not going to be on the same page as it were.
And I say, you lost your point here. What is common vocabulary for a Spanish speaker, could exist as well in It/Pt, but not necessarill been considered as common vocabulary in these languages. So, my point here was: use ALL your repertoire passively in order to catch as much as possible of the words you hear. There is a risk here that we have to considere though: false cognates.

By the way, the way it is said in Brazil "tá na hora da refeição" is also valid in Portugal? I mean the construction "está na hora...."?

Yes, Peninsular Spanish is quite harsh sometimes, and their melody do not help them either... BUT, you can't deny that out of these three languages, the most complex phonetics is the Portuguese one, speaking again, of the standard pronountiation.

And Juan, if you are a Portuguese speaker as I understood from your last post, you can't have the same perspective of this matter as I have, regardless of your fluency in Spanish. Think about it.

My mother tongue is Spanish, and I have studied a bit of Italian and Portuguese grammar (because I like both languages) and even after a deeper knowledge of them, I still find the phonetics of Portuguese being an obstacle to understand it, in comparison to the Italian one. But this last comment is just my personal case.
Sergio   Wed Jul 26, 2006 7:39 pm GMT
Well Erik, I think this game sucks, concerning the level of the languages used in it.

The correct spelling for Jugador in Italian would be Gioccattore, not Jogadore.... Giocco and not Jogo.

The correct spelling for the Portuguese one would be ... onde tudo tem mais cor, as you wrote.

But all in all, I think that on the run is easier to understand Portuguese than Italian if your mother tongue is Spanish, when you read it, when you don't have to take care about the phonetics.
Tiffany   Wed Jul 26, 2006 8:17 pm GMT
Be careful of doubling too many consonants Sergio. It's "giocatore" and "gioco" respectively.

I also have hard time believing "in il". This combo is always pronounced "nel" - one word. So I'm not sure how you could have heard two syllables.

Also, it would have been "Clicca qui" should have sounded like "Clic acui" to you, not "Clic aqui". "qu" in Spanish and "qu" in Italian are very different sounds.

"Clicca qui per giocare un gioco di singolo giocatore."
"Clicca nel pulsante blu per cambiare giocatore."
Ramiro   Thu Jul 27, 2006 12:27 am GMT
Italian "burro" vs. Spanish "mantequilla"

Butter
Italian> burro
Spanish> mantequilla
Portuguese> manteiga

Donkey
Italian>asino
Spanish>burro
Portuguese>burro

False friends.