Understanding ALL the romance languages?

[nexus]

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[Serpent]

There are several. I've found The Seven Sieves useful. I've also read a Russian textbook for the students of Romance philology.

[kanewai]

If you're just looking at passive understanding I think you'd be able to make some of the other Romance languages based on those seven, but would miss a lot of others beyond just Romanian. Look at how the languages are grouped:



I'd guess that you would be able to understand the other languages that are clustered between Spanish, French, Portuguese, Catalan, and Italian, but that it would be increasingly difficult to understand the ones that are further from this cluster. Tuscan, Sicilian, Corsican, Neapolitan, and Sardinian would all be challenging, while Venetian and Romansh should be relatively easier to grasp.

[vonPeterhof]

I'd guess that you would be able to understand the other languages that are clustered between Spanish, French, Portuguese, Catalan, and Italian, but that it would be increasingly difficult to understand the ones that are further from this cluster. Tuscan, Sicilian, Corsican, Neapolitan, and Sardinian would all be challenging, while Venetian and Romansh should be relatively easier to grasp.

The chart doesn't mention it explicitly, but standard Italian is in the Italo-Romance group and not the Gallo-Italian cluster - it's meant to be subsumed under the "Tuscan" bubble, since it's essentially a formalized register of an older version of that "sublanguage". So apparently it's only the Balkan and Island Romance clusters that are out of range.

[kanewai]

I knew that Italian was based on Tuscan, but wasn't sure if they were considered the same language.

Or rather, I know that people in Florence told me they were separate languages, but I don't know what actual linguists say!

I don't know if this will clarify or confuse the question, but here's a comparative list I found online:

She always closes the window before dining.

Latin (Illa) Claudit semper fenestram antequam cenet.
Bergamasque (Eastern Lombard) (Lé) La sèra sèmper sö la finèstra prima de senà.
Milanese (Western Lombard) (Lee) la sara semper su la finestra primma de zena.
Piacentino (Emilian) Le la sära sëimpar sö/sü la finestra (fnestra) prima da disnä
Bolognese (Emilian) (Lî) la sèra sänper la fnèstra prémma ed dsnèr.
Fanese (Romagnol dialect of Marche) Lì a chìud sèmper la fnestra prima d' c'nè.
Piedmontese (Chila) a sara sempe la fnestra dnans ëd fé sin-a.
Canavese (Piedmontese) (Chilà) a sera sémper la fnestra doant ëd far sèina.
Carrarese (Emilian) Lê al sèr(e)/chiode sènpre la fnestra(paravento) prima de cena.
Ligurian Lê a særa sénpre o barcón primma de çenâ.
Tabarchino (Ligurian dialect of Sardigna) Lé a sère fissu u barcun primma de çenò.
Romansh Ella clauda/serra adina la fanestra avant ch'ella tschainia. (Rhaeto-Romance)
Nones (Ela) la sera semper la fenestra inant zenar. (Rhaeto-Romance)
Solander La sèra sempro (sèmper) la fenèstra prima (danànt) da cenàr. (Rhaeto-Romance)
Friulan Jê e siere simpri il barcon prin di cenâ. (Rhaeto-Romance)
Ladin (Gherdëina) Ëila stluj for l vier dan cené. (Rhaeto-Romance)
Venetian Ła sàra/sèra senpre el balcón vanti senàr/dixnàr.
Trentinian Èla la sèra sèmper giò/zo la fenèstra prima de zenà.
Istriot (Rovignese) Gila insiera senpro el balcon preîma da senà.
Italian (Ella) chiude sempre la finestra prima di cenare.
Tuscan (Florentine) Lei la 'hiude sempre la finestra prima di cenà.
Sardinian Issa tancat semper sa ventana in antis de si esser chenada.
Corsican Ella chjudi sempri a finestra primma di cenà.
Salentino Quiddhra chiude sèmpre a fenéscia prìma cu mancia te sira.
Sicilian Idda chiudi sèmpri la finéstra prìma di manciari a la sira.
French Elle ferme toujours la fenêtre avant de dîner.
Romanian (Ea) închide totdeauna fereastra înainte de a cina.

I know a fair amount of French, Italian, and Spanish, and had high school Latin. And yet, of this list, I'd probably only understand the Tuscan, and could guess at the Lombard and perhaps the Sicilian, but that's probably from watching lots of Montalbano. The rest would be challenging.

[vonPeterhof]

I knew that Italian was based on Tuscan, but wasn't sure if they were considered the same language.

Or rather, I know that people in Florence told me they were separate languages, but I don't know what actual linguists say!

Oops, sorry, I thought that you were mistakenly including standard Italian in the Gallo-Italian category.

Since I've never tried learning Italian I guess I'm not in a better position to judge than you are about the distance between standard Italian and Tuscan. The map here has been making me curious for a long time though - is it that more than 80% of the people living in the traditional range of the Tuscan dialect (i.e. the modern region of Tuscany minus the traditionally Emiliano-Romangolo-speaking areas) had switched completely to standard Italian by 1984, or is it that Tuscan wasn't really seen as something separate from Italian to begin with? The Italian Wikipedia isn't helping either:

Popolarmente il toscano non veniva considerato un dialetto italiano data la grande somiglianza con l'italiano colto di cui, peraltro, è la fonte (sia pure modificatasi nel tempo rispetto al toscano del Trecento), ma veniva considerato invece una semplice variante o "vernacolo" dell'italiano; nella letteratura linguistica si è comunque sempre parlato di dialetto toscano anche se oggi si preferisce considerare i parlari toscani un insieme di dialetti romanzi parlati in Italia, al pari di tutti gli altri, piuttosto che un dialetto della lingua italiana.

So it's basically saying that popularly it Tuscan has been viewed as a spoken variant of Italian, whereas linguists view all vernacular varieties, including Tuscan, separately from the standard language? That seems to contradict your evidence, unless your interlocutors in Florence were all linguists

Great, now I'm interested in Italian, the one Romance language I had no intention of dabbling in whatsoever

[kanewai]

Oops, sorry, I thought that you were mistakenly including standard Italian in the Gallo-Italian category.

Actually, I didn't even know there was such a thing as "Gallo-Italian" until I saw the chart.

So it's basically saying that popularly it Tuscan has been viewed as a spoken variant of Italian, whereas linguists view all vernacular varieties, including Tuscan, separately from the standard language? That seems to contradict your evidence, unless your interlocutors in Florence were all linguists

All I have is anecdotal evidence ...

Dante, Boccaccio, and Petrarch all wrote in Tuscan. In the 19th century Italian romantics promoted Tuscan is the language of the new Italian renaissance.

At the time of unification only 2.5% of people in Italy spoke "Italian." Cavour, one of the early political players, mostly spoke French and thought that the Sicilians were speaking Arabic. The first king, Victor Emanuel II, spoke French and Piedmontese, and couldn't barely speak the national language. This ties in with what you were saying; Piedmontese would be one of the Gallo-Italic languages (dialects), and Tuscan/Italian Italo-Romantic.

Venetian nationalists say that "Venetian" is its own language, and is not a dialect of Italian. It's possible this is just a political position.

In the south people I met differentiated between Sicilian, Neapolitan, and Italian. I noticed this even as a tourist in Naples for a week - it's that obvious of a difference. People would address me in dialect, I'd give them a blank stare, and they'd switch to Italian.

Also, Naples is awesome.

I never noticed this in Tuscany - though Tuscany is a lot more touristed, and people were more likely to start off with English with me. They could have been speaking dialect and I would never have noticed. There was a restaurant I went to a couple times, Icche c'è c'è, and the chef told me that the name was in 'our Tuscan language.' So he was a chef, not a linguist - but he definitely thought of it as a separate language.

Great, now I'm interested in Italian, the one Romance language I had no intention of dabbling in whatsoever

Careful. All I did was flirt with Italian a few years ago, and now it's become my second main foreign language. She'll do that to you.

For the OP's question, I would guess that Sicilian would be a good addition, as it would bridge the gap between standard Italian/Tuscan and all the southern dialects.

[Sergiu]

I think it would be enough to understand a few Romance languages. The main ones are French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and Romanian.
That being said it's not very likely to learn them as quickly as you think. I have had a hard time learning Italian, even after understanding Latin and speaking Romanian and French decently in the past.