"When you learn one Romance language, to a considerable extent you learn them all". Discuss.

[Nurzat]

I speak Romanian, Italian and French (work proficiency for these two, used it for work extensively) and I can understand Spanish to a large extent maybe due to exposure to Spanish language telenovelas (my mom was watching) and through that and with exposure alone, without studying it, I can understand Portuguese as well (at some point I became very interested in Brazil, Brazilian music, was watching vlogs on Brazil etc).

[Aryan Aries]

I have found since studying Spanish that I can make out more French and Italian in their written form, yes. Spoken French still sounds like a blur, though.

If I recall correctly, French is the most progressive and "non-romantic" of all Romance languages. France is the Romance-speaking country with weakest Mediterranid (mostly South).

On the other hand, Modern Greek (a non-Romance language) almost sounds like Spanish phonetically, an both Greece and Spain are heavily Mediterranid.

[Smitty]

If I recall correctly, French is the most progressive and "non-romantic" of all Romance languages. France is the Romance-speaking country with weakest Mediterranid (mostly South).

On the other hand, Modern Greek (a non-Romance language) almost sounds like Spanish phonetically, an both Greece and Spain are heavily Mediterranid.

I wonder how Occitan compares, then. Presumably, it's more like Spanish and/or Italian.

[Aryan Aries]

I guess Occitan is one of those niche Romance languages, it's tightly related to Catalan.

[Etelfrido]

If I recall correctly, French is the most progressive and "non-romantic" of all Romance languages. France is the Romance-speaking country with weakest Mediterranid (mostly South).

On the other hand, Modern Greek (a non-Romance language) almost sounds like Spanish phonetically, an both Greece and Spain are heavily Mediterranid.

In a similar way that English is the most divergent Germanic language and curiously much of it because it was influenced by the most non-Romance of Romance languages.

[Aryan Aries]

In a similar way that English is the most divergent Germanic language and curiously much of it because it was influenced by the most non-Romance of Romance languages.

Good point. Also, England and USA are much more influenced by Atlantid, than say Germany, Netherlands or Sweden.

[Abaddon]

What's interesting about Romance languages is that historically they developed in European regions where Mediterranid or Atlantid race was strong. Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, but also Romanian. So you could say Romance languages are an expression of "the Mediterranid Spirit" - in the same way that Germanic languages are "Nordid (+Faelid) genius", or Slavic languages an "Baltid invention". All these language families go back to Proto-Indo-European which was the Pure Aryan (unaltered Nordid) mentality.

LOL

[Nelju]

Those of us who speak a Romance language have a big advantage over much of the world because most of them are very similar to each other, and the two most spoken, Spanish and Portuguese, are actually the most alike. Personally, I engage with media and culture in the major Romance languages: Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Italian, which along with English, are the ones that generally offer the most culture and content worldwide. It's like having a backstage pass to the lives of over two billion people and a bunch of countries worldwide

[Brás Garcia de Mascarenhas]

This sound atlas allows you to hear the same version of the same poem in almost all the languages and dialects of France, Portugal, Spain and Italy.

Atlas sonore des langues régionales de France: https://atlas.limsi.fr/?tab=Hexagone

Atlas sonoro das línguas da Península Ibérica: https://atlas.limsi.fr/?tab=PI

Atlante sonoro delle lingue e dei dialetti d'Italia: https://atlas.limsi.fr/?tab=IT

[Sarmale]

Wow that is a very cool site. Super useful resource, especially for dying languages and dialects! Hope they expand it to cover all of Europe eventually.

Listening to some of the Occitan, I'll bet some of the speakers were influenced by mainstream French pronunciation, and it wasn't always that French sounding, particularly regarding rhotacism.