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As a relatively fluent Spanish speaker who can't really understand Portuguese and finds Italian completely unintelligible, I think you're using 'mutually intell
by devishard 10y ago
As a relatively fluent Spanish speaker who can't really understand Portuguese and finds Italian completely unintelligible, I think you're using 'mutually intelligible' pretty loosely here.
- kw71 10y agoI learned some Spanish in latin america by immersion. I can make sense of written Italian and Portugese. However in Spain I can't understand anything spoken.
- BuckRogers 10y agoI'm also relatively fluent and I'm the same way as you. You need to be Cervantes-level fluent, like my wife who was not only native born in a Spanish speaking country but educated in private schools and then college educated there as well. I also think some people may naturally be slightly more in tune with linguistics in general. Spanish speakers are a huge group and many simply don't know their own language. It's like going to Alabama and expecting to find Shakespeare. I'll grant you that mutual intelligibility is difficult to define but I'm using it in the sense that my wife is conversational with folks from Portugal and Italy when we travel there. That's a decent standard.
- mcguire 10y ago...in which we learn that one who fails to be educated in the appropriate schools can be fluent in their own language. And I'm left wondering if some people know what "language" is. But then I am a poor benighted bastard living in Alabama.
- BuckRogers 10y agoI should've used Texas in my example. Apologies to the good people of Alabama.
- mcguire 10y agoPossibly. Of course, I lived in Texas until about 8 years ago, when I moved to AL.
- falsestprophet 10y agoHow do you distinguish between being a "superbly" educated Spanish speaker and speaking a little Italian and Portuguese?