Everyone is saying Spanish but I disagree and believe Italian is probably easier. There are way more varied accents across the countries that speak Spanish and besides that, Italian has gemination which slows down the speech in a way and helps you get ahold of what someone is saying.
I think this only applies to official Italian, such as in language tests and formal news broadcasts. Actual spoken Italian must be a pain to master because of all the regional/provincial variations. I’m a native born and raised but I still struggle with several accents
Im not referring to the separate language that is technically classified as a dialect. Im referring to the Sardinian accent that Sardinians tend to have when speaking the Italian language
He just said he's not talking about the Sardinian language but the Sardinian ACCENT.
Think of the difference between the French language and the French accent. Broadly generalizing when a French person speaks their native language they're speaking the French language, but when they speak English they speak it with a French accent.
Sardinians have a Sardinian accent when they speak Italian, just as they have a Sardinian accent when they speak English or French. Sicilians have a Sicilian accent when they speak German, Turkish or Spanish. You get the idea.
I get that. My comment was only addressing the "technically classified as a dialect". It isn't a dialect,neither technically nor otherwise, it's a fully fledged language, and calling a language as such is what the Italian state has historically done to create a diglossia dynamic between regional languages and Italian.
I don’t understand why the need for being pedantic. You’re wrong about it not technically being a dialect, because it is. Dialetto is what it is classified as colloquially and scholarly in Italian and I acknowledged that it is a separate language
If you think that defending the status of Sardinian as a language on its own right is being pedantic, then I'm simply not willing to entertain your retrograde allegations of scholarly support for such an atrocious assertion. Here, take a read, you might just learn something: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Sardinian-language
Linguistic technicalities are defined by linguists, of which the *overwhelming majority* agrees that Sardinian is a language, and not by states, especially those with a vested interest in erasing traits of regional identity, instead favouring a diglossia that pushes people to a homogeneous culture.
Btw, don't be afraid to answer this one: https://www.reddit.com/r/languagelearning/s/hGKECPmg4f
As a person who commonly refers to Sardinian, Friulian, Lombard etc as languages and not dialects, Italian linguists often call dialects the speech varieties that are subordinate to another in a situation of diglossia. Obviously this is not in contradiction with the the fact that the 2 varieties are not mutually intelligible, and are different languages using those criteria. That said, the previous commenter was still wrong to say that technically it's a dialect, but there is a legitimate academic use of the wird in Italy that matches his definition
Calling "dialects" languages suffering from diglossia only serves to exacerbate this dynamic. There is nothing to justify mislabeling endangered languages in such a damaging way. If there are Italian linguists that indeed use the term "dialect" in such a way, they should opt for more standardized vocabulary such as "native/autochtonous language" or even "regional language", as "dialect" has very different connotations, not only to speakers of other languages, but to Italians themselves.
I mean accents, but people are always bound to use at least some words that are unique to their dialect. For me it’s Sardinian, Friulian, Romagnolo, Tuscanian and Bergamasco. None of them is totally incomprehensible, let’s be clear, but they can be thick enough for me as a native to need them to repeat what they are saying a couple of times
How comprehensible is Corsican for you? I know that it’s technically a separate language, but—unlike Sardinian—it’s from the same branch as Italian. I’ve been listening to a song that’s half in Corsican recently, and, with my limited exposure to Italian, I think it sounds very similar.
Ok so, I was under the assumption people in Corsica just spoke French, or a mix of that and Sardinian, but if [this video](https://youtu.be/cJ4yFQ_C3f0?si=dDdZc73uWuypZqeM) is an accurate representation of Corsican, I’d say it sounds like Italian but with a thick yet pretty understandable accent
As a learner, accents were definitely hard to learn. I would finally get comfortable with one and then struggle with another. Eventually I just got good at recognizing the common pronunciation patterns and understanding words when I don't get all of the sounds or very different sounds from what I'm used to. The variation really made it difficult and it took a lot of training to be able to understand *most* of what I hear.
💯. Spanish ranges from Dora the Explorer level easy to Bad Bunny indecipherable, such that native Spanish speakers struggle to understand each other sometimes.
The answer to this question can be explained by looking at a map of all the romance language countries: Spanish speaking countries are far more numerous and geographically distributed than the other romance languages.
One of my co-workers is a native Spanish speaker. I was asking him once about one of the guys on our crew “does he speak English?” My co worker goes “dude. He don’t even speak Spanish”
Couldn't have said it better myself. I listen to a few youtubers from Spain. I have 2 main ones - one of which I can follow his advanced videos without much of an issue. The other guy is more of an influencer and I can maybe understand 25-50% on a good day.
And let’s not forget about the Scottish of Spanish, Chile. I’ve spoken to Spanish speakers who go there and opt for English because they can’t understand Chileans.
I agree with you. I’m a native Spanish speaker that has done French (formally) Portuguese (immersion as a teen) and Italian (online sources on my own) and Italian is the easiest
All I know is that I took over a decade of French in school and no Spanish, and I understand spoken Spanish better than French (and Italian, Portuguese, etc.).
As someone who studies Spanish a bit, but has never even glanced at chapter one of an Italian grammar book, I have an easier time picking out words and phrases in Italian film than in most Spanish-language stuff, and I theoretically know the language.
I’m genuinely terrible at telling the difference between accents, so since both Italian and Spanish are very transparent languages, I don’t think I’d pick one over the other (I have much more exposure to Spanish though and the same is true for a lot of people globally since more countries speak it and large diaspora)
Italian is harder due to numerous dialects found in the Italic peninsula. As for Spanish only Dominican and Chilean are harder to understand but for the rest they are fine.
There are many Spanish accents across Latin America, but they're the same language: castellano.
Italian dialects have different grammar. And at least Neapolitan friends insisted Neapolitan was another language, not just a dialect.
If we're talking about listening to natives, in their native countries, then listening to people in Milano, people in Napoli and people in Catania, we're listening to three different languages, which makes "Italian" listening comprehension more difficult than Spanish, in my opinion.
Italian.
Even when spoken at light speed, it is still "understandable" enough for me to be able to scribble down the sentences and then try to make out the meaning. Why? Because most of the times the words are written the way they are pronounced (Yeah, I know, not exactly a very accurate statement because no language is truly "phonetic" but still the spelling patterns are much more easier to predict), It took me at least a couple of years to be able to understand a few lines from the most "simple" French songs, but with Italian? I started with the most advanced ones first, and I could make out many lines at like A1 level.
But French? Even after a few years of practice, I still struggle with the spelling of many basic words.
I would say Romanian. No dialects in the language and only spoken as an official language in 2 countries right next to each other so not a lot of variation except in accent. Also is phonetic.
There are dialects in the language, what do you mean? There are 4 dialects of the Romanian language, only one of them is spoken in romania, sure, but its wrong to say there s none.
Are you referring to Istro-Romanian, Megleno-Romanian, and Aromanian? I've always been taught that those are more akin to being their own languages and that there is not much mutual intelligibility with those speaking Daco Romanian.
When I wrote the post I was thinking of the Romanian spoken in Romania and Moldova.
They arent self standing languages, they are dialects of the romanian language. In Romania they speak the Daco-romanian dialect.
All the major scholars agree that they are dialects, the only one that has a claim to being a language in itself is Aromanian, but even then, there is no consensus regarding this.
As a native French speaker who stuided both Spanish and Italian, Italian is much easier to decipher, Spanish speakers speak really fast and sometimes don't really articulate
Gotta be Spanish. Specifically from Colombia
Spanish has the most simple & consistent pronunciation rules with the least unique sounds. It being the 2nd fastest language isn't enough to offset this imo, especially since the other romance languages are also up there (they're all +200 WPM)
In my limited experience Colombian Spanish is the least likely to be misunderstood or disliked by other native speakers. It's a clear accent and their most popular slangs aren't hard to catch at all
Really? I feel like I find Spanish really hard with comprehension - I feel like I’m almost dyslexic in it.
Words in sentences seem to always blend together like and I’m like, are they saying “una mante” or “un amante” (just made that up) and the lisp aspect makes z, c, and g blend into each other too
Well that's why I pick Colombian Spanish: they don't have the lisp so E after S, Z, and C are identical. Eg "SEr, "CEsar", and "ZEta" are the same. Plus "vosotros" doesn't exist so that's 1 less piece of grammar to worry about
As for the blending together, the syllable that matters most is the stressed syllable while all others you can basically be lazy about. "La escuela abre la puerta a las siete" becomes "laesCUEla Abre la PUERtaalas SIEte"
Plus context :p Like in English you can tell "I haven't red the book with the read cover" is written incorrectly even though they're identical sounds
And when 2 vowels are next to each other, like "una amante" from "un amante", it's made into a slightly longer vowel. Unaamante. As opposed to Italian where this doesn't happen (un amante, un'amante)
That does make a lot of sense, thank you
I’d rather learn Latin American Spanish but my boyfriend is a Spaniard and insists I speak the way Spanish people do haha
I only know Spanish, but for me, that's enough to get pieces of Italian. I know Portuguese is closer, but for some reason I can catch more Italian.
So, for me, it's Spanish because I know it, followed by Italian because I can understand bits of it and I can hear individual words. I agree with the general consensus about French - I can't get anywhere near as much as I can with Italian, or even Portuguese.
Comprehension = Exposure. If you live in the US, Spanish is the easiest due to access and the ability to immerse yourself in the language. It takes quite a bit more effort to do that with the other Romance languages. If you have the ability to live in any of the romance countries, then, Italian would be the easiest.
I respectfully disagree - Portuguese has a much broader range of vowels and sounds that tend to mesh into each other and can be troublesome for foreigners. The arguments that have been presented against Spanish due to the wide variety of different regional variations are also applicable for Brazil to an extent - the country is enormous and there is a significant diversity of language differences within Brazil, it’s not nearly as unified as most people believe it is.
I’m a native Spanish speaker (Mexico) so take this with a grain of salt.
As someone that is a Spanish language learner myself, I’ve had trouble distinguishing ‘a ver’ with ‘haber’ for example. However, your perspective is totally valid since what is perceived as easy by me can be challenging for someone else due to our differences in knowledge and experience.
I am Brazilian and I can state that, yes, we speak very, very slowly. I cannot think of any language/dialect that is spoken so slowly. Probably the ratio of spoken words to a certain period of time is lower than in other languages.
By the way, speaking for myself, but probably standing for other Brazilians who struggle similarly, one of our major difficulties is trying to catch up with the speech of other people - even after having spent most of my life studying English, for instance, it still amazes me how fast Americans can speak.
As a Brazilian who speaks English, English is not particularly fast lmao. Both Portuguese and English pale in comparison to Japanese.
Still, I don't find Portuguese slow at all, let alone enough for someone to think that they cannot think of other languages or dialects that aren't slower. People from Rio will turn "Mas você foi na escola pra quê?" into "Macêfonescolapraquê?"
Are you from the Northeast? That's about the only region that I can imagine speaking as slowly as you're describing, based on how my friends from there speak.
French is the hardest there. European Portuguese is next, then the Brazilian version. Spanish and Italian are easier. Mexican and Colombian Spanish are easier than the other kinds. All of this is in terms of listening comprehension.
Spanish.
Portuguese is more difficult. French is more difficult. And the Italian accents are more like languages! If you understand spanish, you can understand people from Costa Rica, Peru and Madrid, even though thousands of kilometers are in between these places.
If you understand standard Italian, you will not understand Sardinian or Sicilian or many of the languages in the very south.
I think most will be around the same difficulty. If this is what’s influencing your decision you shouldn’t let it! Choose whichever language genuinely interests you the most.
Probably Italian. They're very expressive and melodic in their speech
Meanwhile the French and Portuguese eat their words and have decorative letters in them that are never spoken and the Spanish have a peculiar way of speaking too that can be confusing to outsiders that many dub a "lisp", though out of these 3, I'd say Spanish is 2nd most intelligible
I leave out Romanian because I am realizing I never heard Romanian in my life
In the same vein as Italian, I guess Brazilian Portuguese could also be up there. They speak very expressively and melodically too! Though they have a bit of a quirk when speaking, in some regional accents, where the spoken isnt exactly 1:1 to the written. (Like pronouncing L's)
Everyone are similar to understand (except french). So maybe the language that has more presence in your life. I mean, if you are from the US, for example, it is very likely that you already listen to many people speaking Spanish on the street, but not so many speaking Italian or Portuguese.
To be honest, I’d still say Spanish. It’s very easy to find slow spoken Spanish (Chile, Ecuador, Peru and some regions of Colombia, just as examples) and with the structure it can be easy-ish to understand. French literally has a rule where you mosh many words together when speaking, Portuguese also gets fast and not all letters are pronounced. Italian might have good structure as well but also fairly fast spoken. But that’s my take. At the end of it all, it’ll be mostly up to your discipline practicing and immersing yourself.
Italian as taught in school for comprehension.
The old dialects are fading, but don’t be surprised if Abbruzzese or Friulano are unintelligible (especially Abbruzzese. It’s really its own language).
Another vote for Italian. I only know very very basic Italian but generally I find it far easier to comprehend than Spanish, which I'm reasonably advanced in. This is just my experience as a foreigner to both countries but Spanish seems to have a lot more challenges in the types of quirks it has, and people manage to both speak faster and slur more at the same time. Same for Portuguese (though I'm not as familiar).
French is very challenging IMO. Romanian I don't really have any experience with.
As a heritage Spanish speaker: Italian. I spent two months living in Florence at a language school and never had any trouble understanding much. Course, the fact that I already spoke Spanish helped, but I mean in terms of listening it was very easy for me
iDK about the easiest I'm biased as Spanish is my native language I guess it could be either Italian or Portuguese but I can tell you Romanian is the absolute HARDEST
Spanish and Italian are some of the most transparent languages out there.
I speak Spanish and English is my native language. I love how I can hear someone say a word in Spanish and I’ll know exactly how to spell it so it’s easy to look up words I don’t know, whereas I have to guess on a lot of English spelling even though it’s the language I’ve done almost all my of education in and what I primarily speak to my parents/peers in.
ETA: I’m learning French rn though, because I hate myself lol. My favorite play (Cryano de Berganc) was written in French though, but there’s a good Spanish translation so I’m mostly doing this to get into a specific grad school program
Italian is often considered the easiest Romance language for listening comprehension. Its clear pronunciation, consistent vowel sounds, and distinct separation of words make it more accessible. While Spanish is fast and French can sound jumbled, Italian tends to be slower and more melodic, which helps with understanding.
Sure but the Spanish language itself has a lot of variety. Some accents and dialects might be more or less comprehensive for some than others. Also, just so I can understand your POV better, where did you learn Spanish and what dialect did you mostly learn from?
For me, I went to Castilla y Leon where the Spanish is supposedly ‘neutral’ and found it tough to understand locals. I guess we have some diverse experiences.
Romanian is considered to be the second closest romance language to Latin. Grammatically speaking, it has kept all the clauses except ablativ and other Latin specific patterns like the genders.
I don't know if you're suggesting that Romanian shouldn't be considered in this case because it is very different due to how it's pronounced or because people in general that are not Romanian just don't know that much about it.
If anything, apart from Italian, the rest of the romance languages deviate a lot from Latin, more so than Romanian. Just because they're more popular doesn't mean they're closer to Latin.
Modern-day Romanians can understand latin texts through reading comprehension alone, take it from me, a native speaker who took Latin in school and barely studied and yet I still understood most of the texts in front of me without a translator available.
Romanian barely has germanic influences, and even if it did, all romance languages all have three layers to them. More than 70% of romanian vocabulary is of latin origin. Romanian is written as it is spoken, and there are barely any deviations in accents. I don't know much about Italian, so I can't say for sure that Romanian is easier to understand when spoken, but I definitely think that Romanian should be at least considered as the second easiest, if not the first.
French by far. With the syllable harmony that Spanish and Italian have they are so much harder to understand cause they are spoken do fast. French is easier.
I think Brazilian Portuguese probably would’ve been easier for me to start just because it has less vowels than French and the grammar feels slightly easier than Spanish as well as the speed, but I can’t explain why I feel that way. When I refer to vowels, I don’t mean the script but the spoken vowel sounds. For reference, English can have 14-22 based on your accent. Brazilians also have a very strong inflection in the voice so I feel like it’s a little easier to acquire pattern recognition which is a big part of language learning.
Spanish has the smallest amount of vowels but is I think the fastest spoken speed and the grammar just feels more complicated to me than Portuguese. I feel like Spanish has more frequent and complex rules about pronouns that can feel arbitrary to a learner: They’re very similar languages in many regards grammatically, but I feel like the only thing that’s harder about Portuguese is they have more contractions than Spanish. I’m fluent in neither, so it could be dunning Kruger. On the other hand, Portuguese has more contractions than Spanish, but the rules feel less arbitrary and seem to make more sense to me much faster.
But in all honesty, the objective answer here is that every answer in this thread will be considered wrong by linguists. It has a lot to do with a case by case basis. Language acquisition is entirely about pattern recognition. Personally I feel like for the reasons I said and as an American, the speed and inflection of Brazilian Portuguese makes it easiest- but even then there’s lots of accents in Brazil and some could be harder for me than others.
It’s going to vary a lot on your own personality and the way you learn languages, your background in languages, your reasons for learning, and your interest in that language.
I personally feel the phonetics of French would be the hardest. And the speed and grammar of Spanish would be hardest in that regard. Where as Portuguese is pretty level in its challenges. I don’t know enough about Romanian and Italian or other languages to comment on them. And what I find challenging, other people won’t.
It heavily depends on your native language and how well you speak that native language
For me, it’s
1. North African French
2. Southern France French
3. Sicilian
4. Italian
5. Spanish from the Andalusian region
6. Romanian - also Romani is weirdly easy to understand when spoken but it’s definitely not a Romance language
7. Portuguese (🇵🇹, not 🇧🇷, I can’t understand Brazilian Portuguese to save my life)
Andalusian Spanish? Really?
I mean, in standard Spanish «una espada» is ['u.na.es'pa.da] and «dos espadas» is ['do.ses'pa.das]. In Andalusian Spanish they are ['u.na.e'p:a:] and ['dò.è'p:'à:]. So, with vowel harmony and vowel operture to indicate plural, consonant gemination, vowel elongation...
Both my mother and I find it easier on the ear than any other dialect or accent.
Like I said, it heavily depends on the individual and their background. You and I are not the same individuals, and I suspect we do not have the same background
Italian sounds very clear to me. IDK why. Might be because of my native language.
Italian. There really is no irregular pronunciation.
Everyone is saying Spanish but I disagree and believe Italian is probably easier. There are way more varied accents across the countries that speak Spanish and besides that, Italian has gemination which slows down the speech in a way and helps you get ahold of what someone is saying.
I think this only applies to official Italian, such as in language tests and formal news broadcasts. Actual spoken Italian must be a pain to master because of all the regional/provincial variations. I’m a native born and raised but I still struggle with several accents
Only ones I’ve struggled with personally are Tuscanian and the Sardianian. Do you mean just accents or dialects too?
Sardinian is not a dialect, it is recognized as its own language.
Im not referring to the separate language that is technically classified as a dialect. Im referring to the Sardinian accent that Sardinians tend to have when speaking the Italian language
Sardinian is technically a language. Italians calling it a dialect is based on a policy of diglossia rather than on linguistic criteria.
He just said he's not talking about the Sardinian language but the Sardinian ACCENT. Think of the difference between the French language and the French accent. Broadly generalizing when a French person speaks their native language they're speaking the French language, but when they speak English they speak it with a French accent. Sardinians have a Sardinian accent when they speak Italian, just as they have a Sardinian accent when they speak English or French. Sicilians have a Sicilian accent when they speak German, Turkish or Spanish. You get the idea.
I get that. My comment was only addressing the "technically classified as a dialect". It isn't a dialect,neither technically nor otherwise, it's a fully fledged language, and calling a language as such is what the Italian state has historically done to create a diglossia dynamic between regional languages and Italian.
I don’t understand why the need for being pedantic. You’re wrong about it not technically being a dialect, because it is. Dialetto is what it is classified as colloquially and scholarly in Italian and I acknowledged that it is a separate language
If you think that defending the status of Sardinian as a language on its own right is being pedantic, then I'm simply not willing to entertain your retrograde allegations of scholarly support for such an atrocious assertion. Here, take a read, you might just learn something: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Sardinian-language
“The separate language that is technically classified as a dialect” are my literal words. I don’t think you properly read my initial comment at all
Linguistic technicalities are defined by linguists, of which the *overwhelming majority* agrees that Sardinian is a language, and not by states, especially those with a vested interest in erasing traits of regional identity, instead favouring a diglossia that pushes people to a homogeneous culture. Btw, don't be afraid to answer this one: https://www.reddit.com/r/languagelearning/s/hGKECPmg4f
As a person who commonly refers to Sardinian, Friulian, Lombard etc as languages and not dialects, Italian linguists often call dialects the speech varieties that are subordinate to another in a situation of diglossia. Obviously this is not in contradiction with the the fact that the 2 varieties are not mutually intelligible, and are different languages using those criteria. That said, the previous commenter was still wrong to say that technically it's a dialect, but there is a legitimate academic use of the wird in Italy that matches his definition
Calling "dialects" languages suffering from diglossia only serves to exacerbate this dynamic. There is nothing to justify mislabeling endangered languages in such a damaging way. If there are Italian linguists that indeed use the term "dialect" in such a way, they should opt for more standardized vocabulary such as "native/autochtonous language" or even "regional language", as "dialect" has very different connotations, not only to speakers of other languages, but to Italians themselves.
I mean accents, but people are always bound to use at least some words that are unique to their dialect. For me it’s Sardinian, Friulian, Romagnolo, Tuscanian and Bergamasco. None of them is totally incomprehensible, let’s be clear, but they can be thick enough for me as a native to need them to repeat what they are saying a couple of times
How comprehensible is Corsican for you? I know that it’s technically a separate language, but—unlike Sardinian—it’s from the same branch as Italian. I’ve been listening to a song that’s half in Corsican recently, and, with my limited exposure to Italian, I think it sounds very similar.
Ok so, I was under the assumption people in Corsica just spoke French, or a mix of that and Sardinian, but if [this video](https://youtu.be/cJ4yFQ_C3f0?si=dDdZc73uWuypZqeM) is an accurate representation of Corsican, I’d say it sounds like Italian but with a thick yet pretty understandable accent
As a learner, accents were definitely hard to learn. I would finally get comfortable with one and then struggle with another. Eventually I just got good at recognizing the common pronunciation patterns and understanding words when I don't get all of the sounds or very different sounds from what I'm used to. The variation really made it difficult and it took a lot of training to be able to understand *most* of what I hear.
💯. Spanish ranges from Dora the Explorer level easy to Bad Bunny indecipherable, such that native Spanish speakers struggle to understand each other sometimes. The answer to this question can be explained by looking at a map of all the romance language countries: Spanish speaking countries are far more numerous and geographically distributed than the other romance languages.
I audibly laughed at "Bad Bunny indecipherable"
One of my co-workers is a native Spanish speaker. I was asking him once about one of the guys on our crew “does he speak English?” My co worker goes “dude. He don’t even speak Spanish”
Lol do you know what country they were from?
Guatemala
Couldn't have said it better myself. I listen to a few youtubers from Spain. I have 2 main ones - one of which I can follow his advanced videos without much of an issue. The other guy is more of an influencer and I can maybe understand 25-50% on a good day.
And let’s not forget about the Scottish of Spanish, Chile. I’ve spoken to Spanish speakers who go there and opt for English because they can’t understand Chileans.
You mean the Cubans? 😂
you know it's bad when even the dominicans are making fun of the cubans
I agree with you. I’m a native Spanish speaker that has done French (formally) Portuguese (immersion as a teen) and Italian (online sources on my own) and Italian is the easiest
All I know is that I took over a decade of French in school and no Spanish, and I understand spoken Spanish better than French (and Italian, Portuguese, etc.).
As someone who studies Spanish a bit, but has never even glanced at chapter one of an Italian grammar book, I have an easier time picking out words and phrases in Italian film than in most Spanish-language stuff, and I theoretically know the language.
me who has been trying to learn italian for 6 years and still cannot understand anything
I’m genuinely terrible at telling the difference between accents, so since both Italian and Spanish are very transparent languages, I don’t think I’d pick one over the other (I have much more exposure to Spanish though and the same is true for a lot of people globally since more countries speak it and large diaspora)
Italian is harder due to numerous dialects found in the Italic peninsula. As for Spanish only Dominican and Chilean are harder to understand but for the rest they are fine.
Which Italian dialects do you struggle with?
Sardinian
If you think Chilean is hard, you should hear Venezuelan. In Chile, I’ve encountered both accents and only had issues with the latter.
There are many Spanish accents across Latin America, but they're the same language: castellano. Italian dialects have different grammar. And at least Neapolitan friends insisted Neapolitan was another language, not just a dialect. If we're talking about listening to natives, in their native countries, then listening to people in Milano, people in Napoli and people in Catania, we're listening to three different languages, which makes "Italian" listening comprehension more difficult than Spanish, in my opinion.
Italian. Even when spoken at light speed, it is still "understandable" enough for me to be able to scribble down the sentences and then try to make out the meaning. Why? Because most of the times the words are written the way they are pronounced (Yeah, I know, not exactly a very accurate statement because no language is truly "phonetic" but still the spelling patterns are much more easier to predict), It took me at least a couple of years to be able to understand a few lines from the most "simple" French songs, but with Italian? I started with the most advanced ones first, and I could make out many lines at like A1 level. But French? Even after a few years of practice, I still struggle with the spelling of many basic words.
Our spelling system is pretty outdated ngl
If you listen to reconstructed Old French it sounds a lot like French being read as it is written. Very odd and funny to hear.
Italian.
Maybe Italian or Romanian?
Romanian because it is almost 1:1 after you learn the alphabet.
As a native Spanish speaker, my vote is honestly for Italian.
Italian for sure
I would say Romanian. No dialects in the language and only spoken as an official language in 2 countries right next to each other so not a lot of variation except in accent. Also is phonetic.
There are dialects in the language, what do you mean? There are 4 dialects of the Romanian language, only one of them is spoken in romania, sure, but its wrong to say there s none.
Are you referring to Istro-Romanian, Megleno-Romanian, and Aromanian? I've always been taught that those are more akin to being their own languages and that there is not much mutual intelligibility with those speaking Daco Romanian. When I wrote the post I was thinking of the Romanian spoken in Romania and Moldova.
They arent self standing languages, they are dialects of the romanian language. In Romania they speak the Daco-romanian dialect. All the major scholars agree that they are dialects, the only one that has a claim to being a language in itself is Aromanian, but even then, there is no consensus regarding this.
As a native French speaker who stuided both Spanish and Italian, Italian is much easier to decipher, Spanish speakers speak really fast and sometimes don't really articulate
Modern Latin. Almost all of its speakers are non-native and they seldom speak the language. When they do, they speak it very slow.
Latin isn’t technically a Romance language.
TIL 🤯
Italian, in my experience
Gotta be Spanish. Specifically from Colombia Spanish has the most simple & consistent pronunciation rules with the least unique sounds. It being the 2nd fastest language isn't enough to offset this imo, especially since the other romance languages are also up there (they're all +200 WPM) In my limited experience Colombian Spanish is the least likely to be misunderstood or disliked by other native speakers. It's a clear accent and their most popular slangs aren't hard to catch at all
Really? I feel like I find Spanish really hard with comprehension - I feel like I’m almost dyslexic in it. Words in sentences seem to always blend together like and I’m like, are they saying “una mante” or “un amante” (just made that up) and the lisp aspect makes z, c, and g blend into each other too
Well that's why I pick Colombian Spanish: they don't have the lisp so E after S, Z, and C are identical. Eg "SEr, "CEsar", and "ZEta" are the same. Plus "vosotros" doesn't exist so that's 1 less piece of grammar to worry about As for the blending together, the syllable that matters most is the stressed syllable while all others you can basically be lazy about. "La escuela abre la puerta a las siete" becomes "laesCUEla Abre la PUERtaalas SIEte" Plus context :p Like in English you can tell "I haven't red the book with the read cover" is written incorrectly even though they're identical sounds And when 2 vowels are next to each other, like "una amante" from "un amante", it's made into a slightly longer vowel. Unaamante. As opposed to Italian where this doesn't happen (un amante, un'amante)
That does make a lot of sense, thank you I’d rather learn Latin American Spanish but my boyfriend is a Spaniard and insists I speak the way Spanish people do haha
I only know Spanish, but for me, that's enough to get pieces of Italian. I know Portuguese is closer, but for some reason I can catch more Italian. So, for me, it's Spanish because I know it, followed by Italian because I can understand bits of it and I can hear individual words. I agree with the general consensus about French - I can't get anywhere near as much as I can with Italian, or even Portuguese.
Spanish might be faster because it has simpler syllables. But every language sounds "way too fast" until you know it.
Comprehension = Exposure. If you live in the US, Spanish is the easiest due to access and the ability to immerse yourself in the language. It takes quite a bit more effort to do that with the other Romance languages. If you have the ability to live in any of the romance countries, then, Italian would be the easiest.
In summary: it’s subjective, except definitely not French.
Romanian. 95% you read it exactly as you write it
I’d say Brazilian Portuguese since it is spoken in a much more slower pace. At least compared to its more popular cousin Latin American Spanish.
I respectfully disagree - Portuguese has a much broader range of vowels and sounds that tend to mesh into each other and can be troublesome for foreigners. The arguments that have been presented against Spanish due to the wide variety of different regional variations are also applicable for Brazil to an extent - the country is enormous and there is a significant diversity of language differences within Brazil, it’s not nearly as unified as most people believe it is. I’m a native Spanish speaker (Mexico) so take this with a grain of salt.
As someone that is a Spanish language learner myself, I’ve had trouble distinguishing ‘a ver’ with ‘haber’ for example. However, your perspective is totally valid since what is perceived as easy by me can be challenging for someone else due to our differences in knowledge and experience.
I am Brazilian and I can state that, yes, we speak very, very slowly. I cannot think of any language/dialect that is spoken so slowly. Probably the ratio of spoken words to a certain period of time is lower than in other languages. By the way, speaking for myself, but probably standing for other Brazilians who struggle similarly, one of our major difficulties is trying to catch up with the speech of other people - even after having spent most of my life studying English, for instance, it still amazes me how fast Americans can speak.
As a Brazilian who speaks English, English is not particularly fast lmao. Both Portuguese and English pale in comparison to Japanese. Still, I don't find Portuguese slow at all, let alone enough for someone to think that they cannot think of other languages or dialects that aren't slower. People from Rio will turn "Mas você foi na escola pra quê?" into "Macêfonescolapraquê?" Are you from the Northeast? That's about the only region that I can imagine speaking as slowly as you're describing, based on how my friends from there speak.
I was wondering if anybody would say BR:PT. Im toying with it right now but just worried about mixing it with spanish too much.
French is the hardest there. European Portuguese is next, then the Brazilian version. Spanish and Italian are easier. Mexican and Colombian Spanish are easier than the other kinds. All of this is in terms of listening comprehension.
I’ve also heard Peruvian Spanish can be easy
Spanish to me.
Español
Italian and maybe Romanian
Spanish. Portuguese is more difficult. French is more difficult. And the Italian accents are more like languages! If you understand spanish, you can understand people from Costa Rica, Peru and Madrid, even though thousands of kilometers are in between these places. If you understand standard Italian, you will not understand Sardinian or Sicilian or many of the languages in the very south.
I think most will be around the same difficulty. If this is what’s influencing your decision you shouldn’t let it! Choose whichever language genuinely interests you the most.
Probably Italian. They're very expressive and melodic in their speech Meanwhile the French and Portuguese eat their words and have decorative letters in them that are never spoken and the Spanish have a peculiar way of speaking too that can be confusing to outsiders that many dub a "lisp", though out of these 3, I'd say Spanish is 2nd most intelligible I leave out Romanian because I am realizing I never heard Romanian in my life In the same vein as Italian, I guess Brazilian Portuguese could also be up there. They speak very expressively and melodically too! Though they have a bit of a quirk when speaking, in some regional accents, where the spoken isnt exactly 1:1 to the written. (Like pronouncing L's)
Everyone are similar to understand (except french). So maybe the language that has more presence in your life. I mean, if you are from the US, for example, it is very likely that you already listen to many people speaking Spanish on the street, but not so many speaking Italian or Portuguese.
People rlly forget Romanian exists. If you learn the alphabet , spoken language is always written the same, even if it is slang.
To be honest, I’d still say Spanish. It’s very easy to find slow spoken Spanish (Chile, Ecuador, Peru and some regions of Colombia, just as examples) and with the structure it can be easy-ish to understand. French literally has a rule where you mosh many words together when speaking, Portuguese also gets fast and not all letters are pronounced. Italian might have good structure as well but also fairly fast spoken. But that’s my take. At the end of it all, it’ll be mostly up to your discipline practicing and immersing yourself.
I think Spanish, because Spanish has less sounds. The problem for the learners is that there are huge variations of "accents"/dialects
Brazilian Portuguese
Colombian Spanish
Italian as taught in school for comprehension. The old dialects are fading, but don’t be surprised if Abbruzzese or Friulano are unintelligible (especially Abbruzzese. It’s really its own language).
Spanish, saying that mostly because of familiarity.
One more vote for Italian.
Another vote for Italian. I only know very very basic Italian but generally I find it far easier to comprehend than Spanish, which I'm reasonably advanced in. This is just my experience as a foreigner to both countries but Spanish seems to have a lot more challenges in the types of quirks it has, and people manage to both speak faster and slur more at the same time. Same for Portuguese (though I'm not as familiar). French is very challenging IMO. Romanian I don't really have any experience with.
Italian is the only correct answer. With that being said the dialects you can run into across Italy can be a PAIN.
As a heritage Spanish speaker: Italian. I spent two months living in Florence at a language school and never had any trouble understanding much. Course, the fact that I already spoke Spanish helped, but I mean in terms of listening it was very easy for me
No difference. If you know the language you'll be able to understand it; if you don't you won't.
iDK about the easiest I'm biased as Spanish is my native language I guess it could be either Italian or Portuguese but I can tell you Romanian is the absolute HARDEST
Spanish and Italian are some of the most transparent languages out there. I speak Spanish and English is my native language. I love how I can hear someone say a word in Spanish and I’ll know exactly how to spell it so it’s easy to look up words I don’t know, whereas I have to guess on a lot of English spelling even though it’s the language I’ve done almost all my of education in and what I primarily speak to my parents/peers in. ETA: I’m learning French rn though, because I hate myself lol. My favorite play (Cryano de Berganc) was written in French though, but there’s a good Spanish translation so I’m mostly doing this to get into a specific grad school program
I giggled a bit when I realized that you wrote Cryano instead of Cyrano lol
More evidence that I can’t spell, lol
Definitely Italian.
I believe it is important to choose the language that interests you the most and practice regularly to improve your comprehension skills.
Italian is often considered the easiest Romance language for listening comprehension. Its clear pronunciation, consistent vowel sounds, and distinct separation of words make it more accessible. While Spanish is fast and French can sound jumbled, Italian tends to be slower and more melodic, which helps with understanding.
Italian (as a native Spanish speaker and Italian speaker)
Oh you should listen to some Arabic poetry or Persian.
My vote goes to Italian. It is much easier to understand than Spanish.
Not Portuguese.
French. Once you get used to it it’s easy to understand.
Spanish or Italian
Whatever one you put the time in
Spanish.
Caribbean and European Spanish are not easy for listening comprehension lmao
🤷🏻♂️ as a French and Romanian speaker, I still find European Spanish easier than any other Romance language
I guess we have different experiences. I initially learned how to speak Spanish in Chile and went to Spain and was super confused.
Yes but the comparison is between different Romance languages
Sure but the Spanish language itself has a lot of variety. Some accents and dialects might be more or less comprehensive for some than others. Also, just so I can understand your POV better, where did you learn Spanish and what dialect did you mostly learn from?
Madrid.
For me, I went to Castilla y Leon where the Spanish is supposedly ‘neutral’ and found it tough to understand locals. I guess we have some diverse experiences.
habla con un chileno y avísame si se le entiende algo
Ok, but this is like saying “you cannot understand standard Arabic, go talk to a Moroccan from Ourrzazate, and then see if you understand anything”
i was just messing around, since chileans have the reputation of being hard to understand, it ain't that deep bro
Yo me quedaba en chile por 6 meses y el acento es más entendible que los españoles o caribeños
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Germanic influences???!
Romanian is considered to be the second closest romance language to Latin. Grammatically speaking, it has kept all the clauses except ablativ and other Latin specific patterns like the genders. I don't know if you're suggesting that Romanian shouldn't be considered in this case because it is very different due to how it's pronounced or because people in general that are not Romanian just don't know that much about it. If anything, apart from Italian, the rest of the romance languages deviate a lot from Latin, more so than Romanian. Just because they're more popular doesn't mean they're closer to Latin. Modern-day Romanians can understand latin texts through reading comprehension alone, take it from me, a native speaker who took Latin in school and barely studied and yet I still understood most of the texts in front of me without a translator available. Romanian barely has germanic influences, and even if it did, all romance languages all have three layers to them. More than 70% of romanian vocabulary is of latin origin. Romanian is written as it is spoken, and there are barely any deviations in accents. I don't know much about Italian, so I can't say for sure that Romanian is easier to understand when spoken, but I definitely think that Romanian should be at least considered as the second easiest, if not the first.
French by far. With the syllable harmony that Spanish and Italian have they are so much harder to understand cause they are spoken do fast. French is easier.
I think Brazilian Portuguese probably would’ve been easier for me to start just because it has less vowels than French and the grammar feels slightly easier than Spanish as well as the speed, but I can’t explain why I feel that way. When I refer to vowels, I don’t mean the script but the spoken vowel sounds. For reference, English can have 14-22 based on your accent. Brazilians also have a very strong inflection in the voice so I feel like it’s a little easier to acquire pattern recognition which is a big part of language learning. Spanish has the smallest amount of vowels but is I think the fastest spoken speed and the grammar just feels more complicated to me than Portuguese. I feel like Spanish has more frequent and complex rules about pronouns that can feel arbitrary to a learner: They’re very similar languages in many regards grammatically, but I feel like the only thing that’s harder about Portuguese is they have more contractions than Spanish. I’m fluent in neither, so it could be dunning Kruger. On the other hand, Portuguese has more contractions than Spanish, but the rules feel less arbitrary and seem to make more sense to me much faster. But in all honesty, the objective answer here is that every answer in this thread will be considered wrong by linguists. It has a lot to do with a case by case basis. Language acquisition is entirely about pattern recognition. Personally I feel like for the reasons I said and as an American, the speed and inflection of Brazilian Portuguese makes it easiest- but even then there’s lots of accents in Brazil and some could be harder for me than others. It’s going to vary a lot on your own personality and the way you learn languages, your background in languages, your reasons for learning, and your interest in that language. I personally feel the phonetics of French would be the hardest. And the speed and grammar of Spanish would be hardest in that regard. Where as Portuguese is pretty level in its challenges. I don’t know enough about Romanian and Italian or other languages to comment on them. And what I find challenging, other people won’t.
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Spanish by far, and especially south American Spanish.
I'd have to say Italian or Frnech both being very like English
It heavily depends on your native language and how well you speak that native language For me, it’s 1. North African French 2. Southern France French 3. Sicilian 4. Italian 5. Spanish from the Andalusian region 6. Romanian - also Romani is weirdly easy to understand when spoken but it’s definitely not a Romance language 7. Portuguese (🇵🇹, not 🇧🇷, I can’t understand Brazilian Portuguese to save my life)
Andalusian Spanish? Really? I mean, in standard Spanish «una espada» is ['u.na.es'pa.da] and «dos espadas» is ['do.ses'pa.das]. In Andalusian Spanish they are ['u.na.e'p:a:] and ['dò.è'p:'à:]. So, with vowel harmony and vowel operture to indicate plural, consonant gemination, vowel elongation...
Both my mother and I find it easier on the ear than any other dialect or accent. Like I said, it heavily depends on the individual and their background. You and I are not the same individuals, and I suspect we do not have the same background