"Ruud Harmsen" <"ar-aitch-ay" at rudhar.com> wrote:

> The fact that I can read quite some Italian, without ever having
> learnt it, on the basis of poor French, poor Spanish, and gradually
> improving but still leaving much to be desired Portuguese, further
> illustrates that point.

There are enough similarities to pick up a few words of -any- Latin-based
language on the basis of having studied other Latin-based languages. It's
also very easy to see obscure "similarities" when a phrase is translated for
you (as in my earlier examples, in which only one word in the Italian was
actually similar to the Portuguese). That's a far cry from being able to
"read/understand" a language. The reason that "Italians" and "Portuguese"
seem to understand each other at international conferences, is because the
typical educated European (such as would attend such conferences) is
multi-lingual.

Butter is "burro" in Italian, somewhat similar to "beurre" in French. If you
know that the two have the same meaning, it is easy to see the "similarity".
If you did not already know this, I doubt you would derive the meaning of
one from the other. "Burro" is quite different than "manteiga" in Portuguese
(although "manteiga" is somewhat similar to "mantequilla" in Spanish). It's
always amusing to see an Italian tourist in Spain or Portugal requesting
"burro" in a restaurant.