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

[Damião de Góis]

Regardless, sometimes 2 words can sound similar and have nothing to do with each other, leading to confusing or funny situations:

That was just a case of the spanish journalist not being able to say a portuguese last name (Coentrão) and instead made up a giberish word.

But what you say is true anyway.

[Etelfrido]

Those two words couldn't sound more different in portuguese and italian. The other two might sound vaguely similar, but definitely not the bolded ones.

I believe it's a wee bit more similar when comparing to Brazilian Portuguese than to the European variety.

[Petalpusher]

Other Romance speakers estimate at about 20-25% what they can understand of French.



Imo the reverse is the same, slightly easier to guess Italian than other languages, the rest is not that different than any other random languages. It's more in a written form but even the words with the same roots, the pronunciation is so different, in the end it doesn't make much difference.

[Aryan Aries]

I think it's worth learning at least French and Spanish from a global perspective. It will grant you language/cultural access to a lot of people from Africa and South+Central America - to a much greater extent than if you "only" speak English.

[Tooting Carmen]

I think it's worth learning at least French and Spanish from a global perspective. It will grant you language/cultural access to a lot of people from Africa and South+Central America - to a much greater extent than if you "only" speak English.

Bingo. Although I should add that Portuguese would open up Brazil and a few other parts of Africa to you too.

[Aryan Aries]

Yep, Brazil in itself is a huge ass mammoth of a country.

Always wanted to take a trip to the Amazon jungle since I'm a big fan of biodiversity (in animals and plants, but not necessarily in human races lol).

[Zohor]

Some grammar rules can be somewhat similar between these, but vocabulary-wise it's misleading as hell.

Same words can have totally different meaning, prominent example burro meaning donkey in Spanish, but at the same time in Italian it means butter

[dviz]

Same words can have totally different meaning, prominent example burro meaning donkey in Spanish, but at the same time in Italian it means butter

True. Also, sometimes Romance languages pick different Latin words for the same concept.

From your example, English butter is burro in Italian and beurre in French. All three words come from Latin būtȳrum. Actually, even the Latin word is an import, from Greek βούτυρον - boútūros, meaning "cow cheese".

In Romanian the word butter is unt, which also has a Latin origin, from unctus/unctura, meaning ointment/cream in English.

Due to the isolation of Romanian from the other Romance language, this process of choosing a different Latin word for the same concept happens often, and may be the reason why Romanian is harder to comprehend by speakers of other Romance languages.

[Aryan Aries]

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.

[Smitty]

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.