Exactly. I didn't present numbers because those are hard to prove but I agree with your assessment. Anytime you're over 60% (at least 1-way which is what you w

Exactly. I didn't present numbers because those are hard to prove but I agree with your assessment. Anytime you're over 60% (at least 1-way which is what you were describing, your personal comprehension, not the Italian's), you're in great shape. 60-90% (a low estimate because it's one side) is getting into dialect territory. Simple statements and conversations are not a problem and that's definitely mutual intelligibility. Yes it is a bit of a stretch, but everything in one way or another is a stretch. As a general judgment call I think it stands. My point was, as a native English speaker and conversational speaker of Castellano myself- my English enables me to understand exactly zero other languages. Mutual intelligibility is indeed real in the Latin world. There's little to no mutual intelligibility with English, except maybe to Frisian, I've never heard it in person. But there is definitely mutual intelligibility between the former Roman Empire except France and Romania. I do understand some Italian. Absolutely nothing compared to you or my wife. My wife has the roughly 60-90% comprehension ability you do with Italian. On the 'mutual' side of mutual intelligibility, from what I've seen educated Portuguese and Italian speakers understand her even better than she understands them. At least, again, an educated speaker who doesn't get confused with their own language first.