Can Spanish and Portuguese speakers understand Italian?

You have not understood anything?

I thought I understood at the beginning:

Hello, how are you doing? My name is Isabel.

Then she talks about the villages of which her father and mother are, who worked in a hospital, (I don't know if I understood very well that her father worked in a northern European country) and spoke her language, those who came They also talked to the house. In December they organize a festival of poets. You will receive a mother with a child who studies at the Lyceum which is in first course and they speak the language everywhere under the door, the child wants to hear her speak and speak and thus she learns.

The tongue is the roots and it is speaking and speaking so that it does not die.

It comes to say that you have to know where you are from and knowing where you come from you can go all over the world.


A little roughly, if I listen to it 10 times more I will understand it even better.

I did not explain myself well. I said that as a Catalan speaker I cannot understand anything, by helping myself with Catalan (i.e. Isabelle's language and Catalan are clearly different), as opposed to what happens to Langedocian, which I mostly understand in a natural and effortless way. But for sure I could understand some things, by putting some effort.
 
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/the-troubadours/italian-and-catalan-troubadours/29DA8977EC14653DF99AF7CE92F3D9D8



https://muse.jhu.edu/article/430167/summary


https://fit-ace-frenchofitaly-medieval.azurewebsites.net/?page_id=181
In italian his name would be Bartolomeo Giorgio



My cousin patrick in Toulouse france can only communicate to me in writing occitan and I reply in venetian .............I can understand 60-70% ..................listening to it , I understand basically zero
his family (ancestors) moved there in 1910........so the linguistic gap is not that long
I do not understand written french from L'Oil group
 
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Anyone who speaks and reads "ITALIAN" can do quite well with written French. We share more vocabulary with French than with any other Latin based language. Pronunciation is different. It's much easier to understand spoken Spanish than spoken French.

This just popped up on my youtube feed. It's from a series where they conduct a simple conversation in X language and provide subtitles in English to help in language acquisition. I think it's a good idea.

The one that popped up asks French people which language they find the most beautiful. I return the compliment. After Italian I find French the most beautiful/then Portuguese/Spanish.

It's a good way to see how much you can understand of spoken French.

 
She gives her name, Isabelle, and I think the area, which sounds like Mende, in the first sentence. If I'm correct and it's Mende, it's at the edge of the Massif Central, nowhere near Italy.

carte-departement-Lozere.jpg


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mende,_Lozère

It seems there are sub-categories of Occitane: Languedocien, Limousin, Auvergnat, Provencal, Vivaro-Alpine, and Gascon.

Perhaps her sub-"dialect" is closer to Auvergnat? I don't know. We have someone from the Auvergne on this Board; hope he sees this. He might be able to tell us more about it.

IMHO her Occitan sounds heavily influenced by Parisian French, so that's probably why her speech doesn't sound very "Catalan-like".
 

Castellano antiguo. Old Spanish. Thank God that the ç and the f disappeared for the h among other affected sounds. In modern Spanish the v is pronounced the same as the b but my mother still pronounced the v different from the b
 
Anyone who speaks and reads "ITALIAN" can do quite well with written French. We share more vocabulary with French than with any other Latin based language. Pronunciation is different. It's much easier to understand spoken Spanish than spoken French.

This just popped up on my youtube feed. It's from a series where they conduct a simple conversation in X language and provide subtitles in English to help in language acquisition. I think it's a good idea.

The one that popped up asks French people which language they find the most beautiful. I return the compliment. After Italian I find French the most beautiful/then Portuguese/Spanish.

It's a good way to see how much you can understand of spoken French.


In an online poll conducted in 2018, a majority of language learners voted French as the most beautiful language… except the French themselves, who overwhelmingly voted for Italian. I agree. Were it not for my wonderful father who left when I was a kid and deprived me of my grandparents, I'd speak the language. Now I find I'm too lazy to start learning it (a shame). That being said, though Italian sounds more beautiful (more poetic, more romantic and melodic), English remains my favourite language. And French… well of course I love it, since it's my native language. But it can be so complicated and convoluted sometimes. I've read it doesn't sound so good in songs (maybe because we have so many "r" sounds, so it doesn't really flow well in a song).
 
Eu consigo entender 80% do que é dito em italiano.

I can understand 80% of what is said in Italian.
 
It seems that Germany increases the preference for Spanish. The Spanish is halfway there with the French and it is already perceived what the drift will be for the future for obvious reasons.

 
English might not be the most beautiful language, but it doesn't have many sounds that I deem unlovely, like guttural Rs and throaty CHs. I also tend to deprecate an abundance of shibilants (sh-sounds). I would say maybe Italian or Greek, Spanish perhaps, without the Castilian lisp, I also like Finnish, well, the sound, just not the long words.
 
In an online poll conducted in 2018, a majority of language learners voted French as the most beautiful language… except the French themselves, who overwhelmingly voted for Italian. I agree. Were it not for my wonderful father who left when I was a kid and deprived me of my grandparents, I'd speak the language. Now I find I'm too lazy to start learning it (a shame). That being said, though Italian sounds more beautiful (more poetic, more romantic and melodic), English remains my favourite language. And French… well of course I love it, since it's my native language. But it can be so complicated and convoluted sometimes. I've read it doesn't sound so good in songs (maybe because we have so many "r" sounds, so it doesn't really flow well in a song).

Open vowels are much easier to sing (when doing scales singers will typically use "AH", or think of the Do Re Mi song. :)) and create a more euphonic sound, and most Italian words end in open vowels. There are few Italian words with long strings of consonants. Also, the stress patterns are pretty regular and there's fewer diphthongs, which are harder to sing.

I too really like the English language, and I like French very much as well, but I am passionately in love with standard Italian, if one can say that about a language.:)

I'm obviously biased, so take the following for what it's worth, but I believe it. :)

I think Italian is beautiful not just because of the things I mentioned above, or maybe it is the way I described it in terms of singing because it's a language that didn't develop organically; it's a literary language created by poets and novelists like Dante, Petrarca, Bembo, and Manzoni and only adopted broadly after unification in the 1800s.

Bello/bella is one of the most used Italian words. Aesthetics is important, that something be beautiful is important, and so these poets and novelists created a beautiful and elevated language.

Bembo, a poet from Venice and a lover of the Tuscan dialect, in his book "Discussions on the Vernacular" discussed how and why he chose the 14th century language of Petrarca as his model. One the reasons was specifically about sound, and the balance between light and heavy sounds.

In a poem like the following, a very simple one by our Ligurian Nobel Prize Winner for Literature Eugenio Montale, I don't think you need to even understand the words to appreciate its beauty. Here it's interpreted by Luca Zingaretti, whom I think is a great actor.
I went down a million stairs, at least, arm in arm with you.
And now that you are not here, I feel emptiness at each step.
Our long journey was brief, though.
Mine still lasts, but I don't need
any more connections, reservations,

traps, humiliation of those who think reality
is what we are used to see.


I went down a millions of stairs, at least, arm in arm with you,
and not because with four eyes we see better that with two.
With you I went downstairs because I knew, among the two of us,
the only real eyes, although very blurred,
belonged to you.


Or, La Pioggia nel Pineto, Rain in the Pine Woods, by Gabriele D'Annunzio, who whatever his flaws, was a good poet. You could get drunk on the sounds alone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeW692JV8pk&list=PLUWcYR7pq-A0IUoTqAbqAjvXoyiDDwq_T
Be silent. At the edge
of the woods I do not hear
the human words you say;
I hear new words
spoken by droplets and leaves
far away.
Listen. It rains
from the scattered clouds.
It rains on the briny, burned
tamarisk,
it rains on the pine trees
scaly and rough,
it rains on the divine
myrtle,
on the bright ginestra flowers
gathered together,
on the junipers full of
fragrant berries,
it rains on our sylvan
faces,
it rains on our
bare hands
on our light
clothes,
on the fresh thoughts
that our soul, renewed,
liberates,
on the beautiful fable
that beguiled you
yesterday, that beguiles me today,
oh Hermione.


Can you hear? The rain falls
on the solitary
vegetation
with a crackling noise that lasts
and varies in the air
according to the thicker,
less thick foliage.
Listen. With their singing, the cicadas
are answering this weeping,
this southern wind weeping
that does not frighten them,
and nor does the grey sky.
And the pine tree
has a sound, the myrtle
another one, the juniper
yet another, different
instruments
under countless fingers.
And we are immersed
in the sylvan spirit,
living the same
sylvan life;
and your inebriated face
is soft from the rain,
like a leaf,
and your hair is
is fragrant like the light
ginestra flowers,
oh terrestrial creature
called Hermione.


Listen, listen. The song
of the flying cicadas
becomes fainter
and fainter
as the weeping
grows stronger;
but a rougher song
rises from afar,
and flows in
from the humid remote shadow.
Softer and softer
gets weaker, fades away.
One lonely note
still trembles, fades away.
No one can hear the voice of the sea.
Now you can hear the silver rain
pouring in
on the foliage,
rain that purifies,
its roar that varies
according to the thicker,
less thick foliage.
Listen.
The child of the air
is silent; but the child
of the miry swamp, the frog,
far away,
sings in the deepest of shadows
who knows where, who knows where!
And it rains on your lashes,
Hermione.


It rains on your black lashes
as if you were weeping,
weeping from joy; not white
but almost green,
you seem to come out of the bark.
And life is in us fresh
and fragrant,
the heart in our chests is like a peach
untouched
under the eyelids our eyes
are like springs in the grass
and the teeth in our mouths
green almonds.
And we go from thicket to thicket,
at a time together, at a time apart
(the vegetation, thick and vigorous,
entwines our ankles
entangles our knees)
who knows where, who knows where!
And it rains on our sylvan
faces,
it rains on our
bare hands
on our light
clothes,
on the fresh thoughts
that our soul, renewed,
liberates,
on the beautiful fable
that beguiled me
yesterday, that beguiles you today,
oh Hermione.



Be silent. At the edge
of the woods I do not hear
the human words you say;
I hear new words
spoken by droplets and leaves
far away.
Listen. It rains
from the scattered clouds.
It rains on the briny, burned
tamarisk,
it rains on the pine trees
scaly and rough,
it rains on the divine
myrtle,
on the bright ginestra flowers
gathered together,
on the junipers full of
fragrant berries,
it rains on our sylvan
faces,
it rains on our
bare hands
on our light
clothes,
on the fresh thoughts
that our soul, renewed,
liberates,
on the beautiful fable
that beguiled you
yesterday, that beguiles me today,
oh Hermione.

 
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I'm curious to know what you guys think about Portuguese vis à vis Spanish, Italian and French. Do your ears perceive it as sounding really similar to its first cousin Spanish/Castillian, or would you say it sounds like some strange conflation of Spanish, French and Russian (yes, I've heard such a weird description more than once) or something else more "unique"?

For those who want to give it another listening before voicing an opinion, this is European Portuguese:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zyxM48Qd7w

And this is Brazilian Portuguese accent, mostly from São Paulo (highly distinctive sound in my opinion compared to other Brazilian accents):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lX0EH-hdRBs
 
I'm curious to know what you guys think about Portuguese vis à vis Spanish, Italian and French. Do your ears perceive it as sounding really similar to its first cousin Spanish/Castillian, or would you say it sounds like some strange conflation of Spanish, French and Russian (yes, I've heard such a weird description more than once) or something else more "unique"?


I have practically understood the entire Portuguese poem in French or Italian, I might not have understood it even a quarter.

It reminds me more of Russian in loudness. In my Spanish I was born until 7 years old, the S did not exist so I find it an effort for me apart that if I could communicate by telepathy, I am terribly lazy to speak and this type of languages requires a lot of effort and Spanish can speak it Almost without opening his mouth and linear without accents, he is lazy to talk so much.
 
I'm curious to know what you guys think about Portuguese vis à vis Spanish, Italian and French. Do your ears perceive it as sounding really similar to its first cousin Spanish/Castillian, or would you say it sounds like some strange conflation of Spanish, French and Russian (yes, I've heard such a weird description more than once) or something else more "unique"?

For those who want to give it another listening before voicing an opinion, this is European Portuguese:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zyxM48Qd7w

And this is Brazilian Portuguese accent, mostly from São Paulo (highly distinctive sound in my opinion compared to other Brazilian accents):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lX0EH-hdRBs

Anyone who knows even a bit of Spanish would know this is a sister language, I think. I don't know where people get Russian from unless it's because of the sh sound. That sound is also in some Ligurian words, so I guess "Russian" didn't occur to me.

No offense, but the man from Sao Paulo sounds like an Italian speaking Portuguese to me: accent, cadence, rhythm, everything. I think I sound like that speaking Portuguese. :)
 
Anyone who knows even a bit of Spanish would know this is a sister language, I think. I don't know where people get Russian from unless it's because of the sh sound. That sound is also in some Ligurian words, so I guess "Russian" didn't occur to me.

No offense, but the man from Sao Paulo sounds like an Italian speaking Portuguese to me: accent, cadence, rhythm, everything. I think I sound like that speaking Portuguese. :)

I also think so, but I guess those comments come from people who barely know Spanish and notice it's "kind of like Spanish but with a different sound" (Portuguese phonology is really very deviant from Spanish phonology, many more phonemes, different patterns of stress and cadence, a much "stronger", more forcefully articulated prosody - I'd say it's closer to Italian than to Spanish in that respect -, etc.).

No offense taken! Don't worry, I'm from a place 2,000 km away from São Paulo, and in fact I must say: you nailed it in your comment. The accents of São Paulo (both the state and, in particular, the city) were heavily influenced by Italian immigration from the 1870s to the 1930s (the majority of them - and they were many, more than 1.5 million - went to São Paulo and multiplied rapidly there). Even many Brazilians joke that they can sound like an Italian trying to speak Portuguese (and sometimes failing at that, lol - just joking, guys... well, not so much, lol). There is also other typical accent in the state, probably the "original" one, which is the "caipira" accent mainly found in the interior of the state. I'd say most modern Paulistas speak some dialectal form that is somewhere between that "Italianized" Portuguese and the core "caipira" dialect.

As for my own dialect, I'm from the northeasternmost part of Northeastern Brazil, which also has its own very distinctive dialect (believe me, we have even a few dictionaries with words and expressions that are only or mostly used here, but unknown in other parts of Brazil). I'm not sure foreigners can readily notice how different the accent, cadence, rhythm, prosody is in comparison to São Paulo Portuguese, but my own accent is pretty much similar to the accent of this young popular poet from a city close to where I was born and where I lived till I was 10 years old:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AsDq7q1qfM
 
In a poem like the following, a very simple one by our Ligurian Nobel Prize Winner for Literature Eugenio Montale, I don't think you need to even understand the words to appreciate its beauty. Here it's interpreted by Luca Zingaretti, whom I think is a great actor.
I went down a million stairs, at least, arm in arm with you.
And now that you are not here, I feel emptiness at each step.
Our long journey was brief, though.
Mine still lasts, but I don't need
any more connections, reservations,

traps, humiliation of those who think reality
is what we are used to see.


I went down a millions of stairs, at least, arm in arm with you,
and not because with four eyes we see better that with two.
With you I went downstairs because I knew, among the two of us,
the only real eyes, although very blurred,
belonged to you.


Or, La Pioggia nel Pineto, Rain in the Pine Woods, by Gabriele D'Annunzio, who whatever his flaws, was a good poet. You could get drunk on the sounds alone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeW692JV8pk&list=PLUWcYR7pq-A0IUoTqAbqAjvXoyiDDwq_T


Absolutely gorgeous and enchanting. What a divine language! It really appeals to higher emotions, I think (even for those who don't understand the language).

I was looking for a French song that I like (I'm not a fan of French pop music), here's one with a lot of "r" sounds. How does it sound to you non-French speakers? I think it's lovely. The "r's" are not too pronounced/harsh. The video clip was partly shot in the Mercantour National Park.


The Madonna of the North
And the lake appears
Brave and strong


Where nothing breathes


Body against body
Sky against eyelashes
The forest twists
The horizon sighs


To love you on the banks of the lake
Your heart on my body that breathes
As long as the men watch us
In love with the shadows and with the worst


To love you on the banks of the lake
Your heart on my body that breathes
As long as the men watch us
In love with the shadows and with the worst


I will come back strong
And surprise the peak
The river and the gold
Are taking root


I cheated death
The slope is easy
Hold me again
My angels are shaky


If tomorrow you regret
The scratched mirror
That the lake reflects to you
Promise me to forget
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AsDq7q1qfM

Those vocational professors who instilled in children hobbies such as poetry are wonderful and in this case a good teaching work has in some way achieved a new poet's birth.

This accent would be better for me


Vayse meu corachón de mib¿Ya Rab, sise me tornarad?¡Tan mal meu doler li-l-habib!enfermo yed ¿cuándo sanarad?

This is a Mozarabic jar that Mozarabic is a term invented by historians since they called themselves Latinos. Here some Arabic words are used but before that influence it has that thing of corashon like the old Castilian or the Portuguese and yet as a whole taking away the Arabic words and some affectation almost has sounded to me to modern Spanish more than the old Castilian itself.
 
Absolutely gorgeous and enchanting. What a divine language! It really appeals to higher emotions, I think (even for those who don't understand the language).

I was looking for a French song that I like (I'm not a fan of French pop music), here's one with a lot of "r" sounds. How does it sound to you non-French speakers? I think it's lovely. The "r's" are not too pronounced/harsh. The video clip was partly shot in the Mercantour National Park.


The Madonna of the North
And the lake appears
Brave and strong


Where nothing breathes


Body against body
Sky against eyelashes
The forest twists
The horizon sighs


To love you on the banks of the lake
Your heart on my body that breathes
As long as the men watch us
In love with the shadows and with the worst


To love you on the banks of the lake
Your heart on my body that breathes
As long as the men watch us
In love with the shadows and with the worst


I will come back strong
And surprise the peak
The river and the gold
Are taking root


I cheated death
The slope is easy
Hold me again
My angels are shaky


If tomorrow you regret
The scratched mirror
That the lake reflects to you
Promise me to forget

I do like it; I think we're on the same wavelength.:) I also don't think it's harsh sounding at all. Even "classic" French songs very sharply enunciated, like an Edith Piaf song, are not harsh to the ear the way German is, for example.

There's a lot of current Italian music I don't like. No doubt I'll sound like an old fogey, but I really don't like rap, and so many of the current hits in Italy are "rap" songs. From my perspective they've adopted the worst of the American music scene without being discriminating at all. It's not music at all as far as I'm concerned, never mind that it's so often filthy. I personally listen to pop, country, old rock, and Latin music as well as classical music.

Luckily, the Italian love affair with the ballad form, even if they tinker with it, continues. I liked this year's winner of the San Remo festival who chose to take his song to Eurovision. He's created a really beautiful song imo: lyrics and music and voice. In fact, although I liked it right away, I've been playing it a lot, learning it, and the more I play it the more I like it. I think most of the Eurovision songs are garbage, so I don't really care what the judges or the young viewers think. I just hope his song, and he himself, get more exposure.


Having said all of that about "urban" music, I thought our winner last year was a good song and well performed, not as grungy and ugly as so many of them are imo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEwvUu1dBTs

Getting back to Spanish songs, I really like this singer too for happy summer music, and yes, I find it perfectly understandable.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNHwNreDp3A

I think it's fair to say that Italians really like Latin American music, especially in the summer, and Latin Americans really like Italian music. Quite a few of our singers have a big following in Latin America, sometimes bigger than in Italy itself. So big, that they just sing Spanish versions of their Italian songs. It's really easy to do between Italian and Spanish, whereas it would be very hard to do an Italian song in English. You'd have to change all the words and inevitably the meaning would usually change to a certain degree.

Laura Pausini in Spanish.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3JoAPJu7ho&list=PL884FF678A170BC35&index=3

Italian song reworked for English speakers. The original song is Grande, Grande, Grande by Mina. Shirley Bassey had English lyrics written for the music. It's beautiful, and does convey the essence of the original song, but all the words had to be changed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsooGR166Gk
 
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I also think so, but I guess those comments come from people who barely know Spanish and notice it's "kind of like Spanish but with a different sound" (Portuguese phonology is really very deviant from Spanish phonology, many more phonemes, different patterns of stress and cadence, a much "stronger", more forcefully articulated prosody - I'd say it's closer to Italian than to Spanish in that respect -, etc.).

No offense taken! Don't worry, I'm from a place 2,000 km away from São Paulo, and in fact I must say: you nailed it in your comment. The accents of São Paulo (both the state and, in particular, the city) were heavily influenced by Italian immigration from the 1870s to the 1930s (the majority of them - and they were many, more than 1.5 million - went to São Paulo and multiplied rapidly there). Even many Brazilians joke that they can sound like an Italian trying to speak Portuguese (and sometimes failing at that, lol - just joking, guys... well, not so much, lol). There is also other typical accent in the state, probably the "original" one, which is the "caipira" accent mainly found in the interior of the state. I'd say most modern Paulistas speak some dialectal form that is somewhere between that "Italianized" Portuguese and the core "caipira" dialect.

As for my own dialect, I'm from the northeasternmost part of Northeastern Brazil, which also has its own very distinctive dialect (believe me, we have even a few dictionaries with words and expressions that are only or mostly used here, but unknown in other parts of Brazil). I'm not sure foreigners can readily notice how different the accent, cadence, rhythm, prosody is in comparison to São Paulo Portuguese, but my own accent is pretty much similar to the accent of this young popular poet from a city close to where I was born and where I lived till I was 10 years old:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AsDq7q1qfM

Hello Ygorcs.
The Cearense's poet Bráulio Bessa is wonderful. His appearances in the program "Encontro", by Fátima Bernardes, declaiming his wonderful poetry and his sympathetic and charismatic figure, whose trademarks are the northeastern accent and the inseparable hat, enchant all of Brazil. I ask your permission to introduce my accent to the readers of this thread through the Belo Horizonte Pop/Rock Group, "Skank", posting a video clip. We are of the same town (all of them was born and live in Belo Horizonte, like me) and speak Portuguese as I speak, loaded in the guttural "R" (GRRRRR, LOL) and with a little hiss in the "S" (SH) whenever this consonant appears preceded by the vowel "e" and it is immediately followed by the consonants "d" or "t". This is the song "Algo Parecido". They, as you know, are part of the Belo Horizonte music scene that began to emerge in Brazil in the late 60s and 70s, whose precursors were Milton Nascimento, Beto Guedes, Fernando Brandt, Flávio Venturini, Lô Borges, among others. Greetings.
 
Anyone who knows even a bit of Spanish would know this is a sister language, I think. I don't know where people get Russian from unless it's because of the sh sound. That sound is also in some Ligurian words, so I guess "Russian" didn't occur to me.

No offense, but the man from Sao Paulo sounds like an Italian speaking Portuguese to me: accent, cadence, rhythm, everything. I think I sound like that speaking Portuguese. :)

The Portuguese accent spoken in Rio de Janeiro is more reminiscent of the Portuguese accent.
 
10 accents of portuguese language around the world. Subtitles in English. If the subtitles do not appear automatically, you can select this option in the video settings. Comparisons with Brazilian Portuguese. Enjoy ;)

 
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