How Similar Are French and Italian?

YouTube description:

“How similar are French and Italian?” That's the question I attempt to answer in this video, as I compare and contrast the 2 languages. (replaced embed with updated version, Paul fixed some mistakes and re-uploaded)
oritteroposays...

To me Portuguese initially sounds like Spanish, but I can't understand a single word so I know it's Portuguese instead. Written is a bit easier to guess a few words.

ulysses1904said:

Good stuff. I will have to check if he has a video doing the same comparison between Spanish and Portuguese.

ulysses1904says...

I can understand some Portuguese\Spanish similarities but it's usually on Liveleak when a Brazilian newscaster is narrating video of an "off-duty" cop taking out some thugs. So it helps when there is context and they speak clearly like a newscaster does. And it helps that it's Brazilian Portuguese, the Portugal accent sounds much different to my ear. I was hoping that studying Spanish for years would give me a leg up on Portuguese but I'm kidding myself.

I checked out some of the LangFocus vids on Youtube, thanks to your post.

oritteroposaid:

To me Portuguese initially sounds like Spanish, but I can't understand a single word so I know it's Portuguese instead. Written is a bit easier to guess a few words.

ChaosEnginesays...

That was really interesting.
I can speak some very basic high school level french.

Although I haven't spoken it in many years, when I was in Italy last year, I found I could read almost anything I needed to in Italian (i.e. basic things like signs, menus, descriptions on paintings).

And even though, French and Spanish are less closely related, I found written Spanish was relatively easy to understand too.

Still haven't mastered kiwi yet.

oritteroposays...

I'm sure it would help. Like @ChaosEngine says above about French and Italian, knowing one helps with the other.

I know a native Spanish speaker who has no trouble understanding Portuguese without really studying it (as far as I know)... but it's one step too far for me.

ulysses1904said:

I can understand some Portuguese\Spanish similarities but it's usually on Liveleak when a Brazilian newscaster is narrating video of an "off-duty" cop taking out some thugs. So it helps when there is context and they speak clearly like a newscaster does. And it helps that it's Brazilian Portuguese, the Portugal accent sounds much different to my ear. I was hoping that studying Spanish for years would give me a leg up on Portuguese but I'm kidding myself.

I checked out some of the LangFocus vids on Youtube, thanks to your post.

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