French and Romanians: when visiting Portugal, Spain or Italy, which language do you use?

[Tooting Carmen]

Within the Romance family, while Portuguese, Spanish and to a lesser extent Italian are all quite similar to each other, French and Romanian (for different reasons) are a lot more distinct. So, when French and Romanians visit other Romance language countries, do you:

(1) Use the language of the country in question.
(2) Use English as a 'neutral' language.
(3) Use your own language, but spoken slower than usual.

N.B. Re (3), of course knowledge of French is rather more widespread in said countries than knowledge of Romanian, but still I am not sure if it would be widespread enough to use it that regularly.

[Cybele]

When I’ve visited Italy for a few days, I’ve used English language in interactions with the locals. I understand enough Italian, but cannot speak it because I’ve never practiced it. If I would put my mind to it and expose myself to the language, I’d probably become fluent in Italian fairly easily, because I also like a lot how it sounds.
I’ve never tried to speak in Romanian to Italians. If I would've used it, I don’t know how much, they would've been able understand it.

I believe Spanish native speakers won’t understand much Romanian either. My ex-boyfriend was native Spanish speaker and we would 99% of the time talk in English. Just like with Italian, I understand a lot of Spanish words, but cannot express myself. But as weird as it may sound, I get more Spanish than Italian because of the telenovelas lol.
We once did an experiment, where we tried to have a conversation in which, each of us would reply in our own native language. Our conversation didn’t last very long.

[Tooting Carmen]

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[RogueState]

English, even when I went to Italy (which is closer to French than Spanish and Portuguese)

Especially when spoken because people tend to speak fast (of course at their normal pace from their POV), using slang/accent, to swallow words (e.g. a parallel with English I do not know = dunno or to use a French analogy, in informal situation, people will say "chais pas" for Je ne sais pas (I do not know)); even if they are all Romance language, it's not possible to communicate fluently.

Written, you can understand much more - this is also the case for Slavic language

[papa diddy pop]

English

[Nurzat]

re Romance languages: in addition to Romanian I speak French and Italian and I have basic knowledge of Spanish and can understand some Portuguese.

as a tourist you only need quite basic knowledge so with just a bit of effort you can use the local language

[Tooting Carmen]

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[Duarte]

I'm not French or Romanian. I'm Italian

[dviz]

I use English, but I can understand the locals talking in their native language (except the Portuguese).

[Tooting Carmen]

I'm not French or Romanian. I'm Italian

Then this is the thread for you: https://www.theapricity.com/forum/sh...others-nations