Le Baron wrote:reineke wrote:“A Europe of polyglots is not a Europe of people who speak many languages fluently, but, in the best case scenario, of people who can communicate, each speaking his own language and understanding that of the other. People who, while not being able to speak it fluently, by understanding it, even with difficulty, would understand the “spirit”, the cultural universe that every one expresses when speaking the language of his ancestors and of his own tradition.”
Umberto Eco
Also re: “I understand everything, but I can’t speak”
Probably true, though it clashes with the EU's stated aims of multilingualism. It also clashes with their rather romanced version of reality.
I'm ambivalent about mutual intelligibility. I know it obviously exists in differing capacities between related languages, though that depends on the person. I know a Spaniard who talks to the man who sells 'Broodje Carlo' in Utrecht and he's Italian. I can tell the Italian in this case can understand Spanish better than vice-versa. Before Christmas I renewed contact with an old friend, who was the first 'friend' (as in not colleague or contact) I met when I came to NL. She's Italian and said she could understand Spanish and French, but could neither understand me nor reply to me in French. In many cases it's a weird sort of pride thing the Romance language natives have, where they widely claim to be sons and daughters of Latin all together. Then in secret the Spaniards say: 'But French is unpronounceable, and I'm hopeless at it!'
To be fair, Eco meant that Europeans should make an effort to actually learn something. He didn't expect people to become functional polyglots or to just understand stuff because the languages are related. Portuguese speakers understand Spanish better than the other way around and (some) Latin Americans sound better in Italian than Spaniards. People vary in their ability to take advantage of cognates. Yeah, I read a study about that and I spied what native speakers say about each other's languages. Generally speaking they may get overconfident after a little exposure. Teaching Latin Americans Italian was fun and demanding. They were getting it real fast.