English vs. Frisian Test.

I've always found Spanish and Italian easier to understand than French, but I think that this is because I think the French join so many words together and leave out so many letters that it feels like they are mumbling.

Of course, I've heard English described as "mumbling"too, but for some reason, I'm pretty sure it's not the same kind of mumbling I am talking about.

Written, I think all romance languages are on a pretty equal footing in terms of English speakers understanding them without prior knowledge. I'm bias though since I grew up with Spanish speakers all around me and had Spanish education beginning at six. So I've really never "not" had prior knowledge.

>>Written, I think all romance languages are on a pretty equal footing in terms of English speakers understanding them without prior knowledge. I'm bias though since I grew up with Spanish speakers all around me and had Spanish education beginning at six. So I've really never "not" had prior knowledge.<<
I think the written language of French is much easier to read than written Italian, and I think Spanish is the hardest to read. This is because the French words are usually the same or almost the same as the English derivatives. Compare: information vs informazione vs informacion. French is the hardest to understand the spoken word, because they join everything together, and only pronounce certain letters if the next word begins with a vowel. It's just not as clear sounding as the other Romance languages.

It's still easy to recognize either informatizione or informacion, even though information is the exact spelling. And since most words in the Romance languages differ only by this small degree, it's easy to recognize most of it