First, are Spanish and Italian mutually intelligible when an Italian talk to a Spaniard ? ?

Question

Second, what about the mutual intelligibility between Spanish and Portuguese ?

Third, would the mutual intelligibility between Spanish and Portuguese be probably much more than that between Spanish and Italian to a large extent ?

Finally, which language (of these 3) might be mostly worth learning ? I mean that, If somebody learned one of them, this language must have the largest mutual intelligibility with either of the other 2.

Answer 1

1- It works the other way round much better. An italian is much more likely to atleast get a grasp of spanish speech, than a spaniard trying to understand a italian speaker. Just a few words would be understood.

#2- I would say it's the same case for portuguese. A portuguese  speaker is mcuh more likely to undestand a spanish speaker than viceversa.

Don't know why. But that's the way it is.

The real question here is; what happens when an italian and a portuguese try to engage in a conversation??? hehe, no idea.

Answer 2

First answer, Spanish and Italian can't really be understood by speakers of the other language, because they are actually quite different. Having said that, though, it would be easier for a Spanish person to learn Italian than for an English-speaking person to learn Italian. All languages in West Europe (apart from German) i.e. French, English, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian and actually Romanian have heavy roots in the Latin language so are quite easily learnt when the learning process is compared to that between other non-related languages.

Spanish would probably be the best language to learn, because it is spoken in so many places by so many people. Of course, that's unless you're wanting to live in Italy or have an Italian partner etc. If you can put French into the equation, it is definitely worth learning French. Just a personal recommendation from a Frenchman (Y):D

Good luck with your language learning.  

Answer 3

Obviously I can only speak out to personal experience.

I'm fluent in Spanish and whenever I go to Italy I speak Spanish (slowly) and have no problem making myself understood. It is equally easy to understand them.

Portuguese is another matter, when you consider the language spoken in Portugal. It is more difficult to understand and make yourself understood in Spanish. One reason is that the Portuguese sometimes prefer to pretend they do not understand Spanish. The Portuguese language spoken in Brazil is much closer to Spanish and I have found that what I said about Italian above, goes for Brazilian Portuguese as well.

So, I recommend you to learn Spanish and you are pretty much covered.

Answer 4

Spanish and Portuguese are much more similar than Spanish and Italian. Learning any of them would be equally easy if you know English since they are all Latin based languages.  

Answer 5

Hi! I'm an italian girl who studies Spanish (and English of course!) therefore I can assure you a few things.

First of all both in the case of Spanish-Italian and Spanish-Portuguese people manage to understand each other BUT this means understanding at an elementary level.

ex. if i speak in Spanish about my family, talking slowly and trying to make people understand, then Italian people will understand the general topic (they surely won't understand some words since there are plenty of false friend!) but if I speak of (let's say) chemistry (or any other specific topic) people won't understand me.

Another thing to take into consideration is the fact that Spanish-speakers use a huge number of idiomatic of fixed expressions, which are impossible to understand if you don't know them!

As for Portuguese, it's more or less the same. Apparently they're more similar than Italian and Spanish and a friend of mine (who lives in Barcelona) confirmed that telling me that he's not able to understand a person talking in Portuguese, but if this person slows down and speaks about a basic topic then he can understand it.

(the same it's not true for Italian-Portuguese. It is really hard for an Italian-speaker to understand a Portuguese-speaker)

So people have a mutual understanding if they WANT to be understood!

I don't know if it's clear....

The third question is though! as other users told you Spanish is the most wide-spread of the three and all of them are languages which have Latin as a base...

Italian is not so useful (I'm afraid it's like that!) since it's spoken only in Italy (but it's a wonderful language! :-) maybe I'm not talking on equal terms!)

Portuguese could be an option since it would be a "different"language (think about it: everyone learns spanish but how many people speak portuguese?) and it has only a few differences with the portuguese which is spoken in Brasil...

Let me make a silly comment: do NOT chose a language just because it's useful! try to chose the one which you think suits you better, the one you like most, since when you do something you like it is easyer and satisfying

Answer 6

I'm Spanish and understand most things Italians say, and since I'm Galician I also understand Portuguese people. Italian has fewer words in common with Spanish than Portuguese has, although most people in Spain understand Italian better because it sounds much clearer to us (the accent is more similar).