This is a very random question and I'm not implying anything by it; I just want to know if what I heard was correct.

I heard the Spanish and Italians greatly dislike each other. True?

Not true. We italians have a small thing going on with our French neighbors and "cousins". It's like a little family squabble, not a real fight. Havbing a quite similar attitude towards some things and a completley different one towards others, we always quarrell over who has the best wines, cheeses etc. Occasionally this has gone a bit too far, like in the early 1980's during the "wine war" (that time I am sorry to say that the French were basically right). At the same time, Italians perceive the French like the rich relatives, while probably the French perceive us like the cousins who live in the countryside: unrefined and sometimes embarassing when in public, but still family.
Southern Europeans, like the Spanish or the Greeks are commonly perceived like "odd Italians". There is a saying about the Greeks (actually an old Fascist slogan, but this time one that didn't go off mark): Italiani e greci, una faccia una razza (Italians and Greeks, same face same race) that may apply to Spanish as well, as far as we are concerned. Different, but not really different. Just a little bit.

3 of my husband's friends here in Siena married women from Spain. All 3 went to do a year of university in Salamanca and met their now wives. Around these parts, Spain is the destination within Europe, Cuba etc., outside of Europe. Oh and also, around here they LOVE (I should say we love) Zapatero, the leader of Spain.

What I've noticed among my Italian and Spanish friends is that the Italians say how similiar they are to the Spanish much more than the Spanish say how much they are like the Italians. I personally find that while there are similarities, both nationalities are quite different in certain aspects. This is also true within the Anglo family.

My area has many people who've returned after emigrating to France in the 60's, or have relatives who are still living there. Many of the relatives return to Italy every August. I don't know if other regions are like this. Our region has close ties to France and everyone seems pretty happy about the two countries' relationship.

Spain- the only connection here is the Spanish influence on Venice. Many of my neighbors are summer refugees from Venezia, prefering the cool mountain air. Venetian dialetto words are reportedly similar to Spanish. My neighbors try (succeed) to confuse me with such Venetian phrases as Ga' Ga' Ga' Ga' which has something to do with a cat crossing a street. Anyway, they seem pretty cool with Spain.

Thanks for the replies everyone. Somehow I knew it wasn't true!

BTW I lived in southern France for a long time, and the French love Italians! They consider Italian the language of love and they all say (the southerners anyway) that the French southern accent is influenced by Italian and that's why it sounds so much more beautiful than northern French.

What's the deal with Italian being the language of love? I've always heard how pleasant Italian was to the ear, but frankly I don't find it so. Actually, I find it somewhat erratating to the ear, especially these screachy women on tv who seem to always be yelling. French seems a much more pleasant language to listen to.

In general while I don't know much about a love or hate or love hate relationship between the Spanish and Italians I do most always get the sense that Italy and Italians are pretty much not thought of very highly by the rest of Europe. Italians are mostly made fun of, even if Italy is a nice place to vacation, good beaches and all.

And what about the Autostrada being bought out by the Spanish, there's an interesting concept the major means of transport and physical communication being owned by another country.

Naturally the French can't hear the sound of their own language. So take French out of the equation and look around the rest of Europe; IMO Italian is the next most beautiful language. Besides, the French don't want to have 'the language of romance' because they believe French to be 'the language of intellect'. The first time a Frenchman told me that I burst out laughing. He didn't think it was funny.

haha. funny story.

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I've always heard how pleasant Italian was to the ear, but frankly I don't find it so.

I have talked to many people about the "sound" of different languages and surprizingly it really does vary and is quite subjective on what one person finds pleasant to what another may.Typical of life ,eh?

I actually do find Italian very pretty to the ear, but I also like French sounds and Spanish.They all sound nice to me.I do not find the more "gutteral " sounding languages like German,Dutch or Russian as pleasant to the ear. I can imagine that if I did not speak English ,I would not find it melodious and pleasant sounding like Italian,French or Spanish.

Yet I have known people who really disliked the sounds that I like and liked the sounds that I did not.I find that interesting.I am also not fond of the sound of the Asian languages which are very tonal.

I am not sure about the language of love, I find that more in the tone and eyes,so think that could come across nicely in any language.Last night we saw "Stomp" and I thought it was such great creativity,humour and communication,yet not one word was spoken in any language.Gave me a little food for thought and hope for me for areas where I don't speak the language.

Good thinking. When the Carabinieri stop you and ask for your documenti, stomp their toes with your size 14 hiking boots and rocket away in your motorhome while they're doubled up beside the road.

On the theme of Spanish/Italian feelings - I just talked to some Mexican American friends of friends who are visiting Rome as tourists. They said that they have tried speaking Spanish in shops etc since it is very similar to Italian and often people who speak Italian can understand Spanish and vice versa. Anyway, several shopkeepers etc have been incredibly rude to them when they spoke Spanish. So, they decided to stick to English even though this makes communication more difficult. My friends concluded that there must be a lot of discrimination against Spanish speakers here.

I assume the discrimination is more against Latin Americans than Spanish people but, from what my frieds said, it doesn't sound like the Italians have a very positive image of Spanish language speakers...

RE the beauty of languages - my favorites are the Slavic languages (especially Russian and Ukrainian), Brazilian Portugese and Chinese. No idea why. I would love to study Chinese but at my age I don't think I could cope with the difficulty of the language. I am especially fascinated by Chinese because of the tones and also the beautiful characters - and the incredible richness of Chinese culture fascinates me too (luckily for me I live in a Chinese immigrant neighbourhood in Rome ).

Anyway just shows it's a matter of taste. I don't especially like Italian (or the other romanace languages like French) and have no idea what people mean by "the language of love" (to me it sounds like an especially cheezy Julio Iglesias lyric! ) but now that I live here I have to speak italian so I do.

Several shopkeepers out of 50-60 million people- that's the evidence for your conclusion?

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Originally posted by rtpm:
On the theme of Spanish/Italian feelings - I just talked to some Mexican American friends of friends who are visiting Rome as tourists. They said that they have tried speaking Spanish in shops etc since it is very similar to Italian and often people who speak Italian can understand Spanish and vice versa. Anyway, several shopkeepers etc have been incredibly rude to them when they spoke Spanish.

I'm not suprised. It reminds me of the tourist who think if they shout loud enough they will be understood.

Spanish may sound like Italian but Spanish is different. I went to school with a couple of Spanish girls [outside of Barcelona IIRC] I could sort of understand what they meant. My friend from Moroco was a little harder but not much. I have trouble understanding a word for most people from the Americas. If they go slow enough I might catch a word. We would all go for lunch. They would start talking in Spanish. I'd get 1/2 the conversation but not a bit of the other half. They understood each other fine. But they would say the same thing in different ways.

quote:

Originally posted by mani doro:
Several shopkeepers out of 50-60 million people- that's the evidence for your conclusion?

Oh sorry - didn't realize that jtucci was asking for statistical evidence only in answer to his query. Next time I'll spend a few years conducting a thorough door to door survey throughout Italy.

rptm Chinese is not that difficult give it a try. It's only hard if you want to read or write, illiteracy is the way to go.

I would say the oposite about Chinese. Essentially, Chinese is an almost fully ideogrammatic (sp?) language, so the signs used are readable in all languages (the signs do not, usually, descrine sounds as well as concepts, and the concept of "house" is the same however you pronounce it) and the phrase construction is quite simple, lacking lots of the grammatical difficulties of Italian or even English. As a matter of fact, I used to know this italian guy who worked with Chinese industries a lot, and he could pretty much read Chinese, and write it too, but could not pronounce it at all. To validate the conept I should reming you that China (and here I am talking in particular of continental China) has one single written langauge, but the spoken languages are many: and they are all written in the same way (well, more or less, Kong Kong, and other Chinese countries use an older and more elaborate writing than the Republic of China)!

Hey - thanks for the info. Maybe I should give Chinese a go then?

Actually I studied Chinese for two hours a day for six months, but it was 30 years or so ago, we focused on the spoken language, never got to the written, but yes I am aware that the symbols are somewhat universal, also I believe in Japanese as well. They do have a system of teaching using western letters to make it easier.

Mexicans who shop in Italy and speak Spanish expecting to be understood are comparable to Germans expecting to be understood in German while shopping in the US or the UK. Spanish and Italian are very different languages despite their Latin backbones. Also, to claim that a certain language is the language of love and another is the language of logic strikes me as rather superficial and naive.

Japanese is slightly different. Written ideaographic Japanese is derived from Chinese, although the calligraphy styles are different. So the basic signs are the same. But Japanese also has a syllabic system to supplement the ideographich, which is getting more and more importnat with time: a few dacades back everything was written in ideograms, currently only traditionalists and soome poets use ideograms for some things while young people, mangas and contemporary novels (especially the commercial ones) have lots of this sillabic writing. The result is that a Japanese can understand 80 or 90% of what's written in Chinese, as long as it's not philosophy or any other too complicate subject, while for CHinese people it's very hard to read a Japanese simple text due to the sillabic characters that have no relation to Chinese.

(I know neither langauge, but we have been typesetting Chinese and Japanese for some time, with a translator's assistance.)

I think its quite common for Spanish speakers in Italy or Italian speakers in Spain or other Spanish speaking areas to try some communication in thier native tongue ( or be it second language) hoping to find some common ground and understanding.

Spanish to Italian or Italian to Spanish is easier to communicate than English to Italian or English to Spanish.

So it seems logical that a Mexican-American who speaks both Spanish and English (but not Italian) would rather try to communicate in Spanish in hoping a little would at least be understood.

Definately different languages and different sounds,but I think closer than German is to English and certainly closer than English is to Italian.

I have found my limited Spanish has helped me not only with communication with Italians,but also with some Portugese and French.I think when you have 2 people who need to communicate who do not speak the same language,one has to try whatever means necessary.

I know a little Madarin Chinese,and was surprized it was easy to learn,tho I have heard it really gets difficult as one gets more advanced because its hard for our ears to hear the subtle differences in tone.Language learning also really varies in adults as some have more of a ear for it than others.

When you live around a lot of Spanish language peoples you soon learn they all speak a different Spanish. I have heard that Peruvians are the closest to Castellano, which is like our standard Italian. It wouldn't surprise me to find that Mexicans or Hondurans or Bolivians didn't get a lightbulb.
For that matter, however, the local people here know much more French than Spanish, whereas their dialect is French-Greek sounding.Clattery with the R in the back of the throat.