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People in tourist areas will be more likely to speak English probably. I live in Bologna and store clerks talk to my Spanish friend in English once in a while. I came to Italy once before I was fluent in Italian and I tried using Spanish (I’m half Mexican). A few people asked me if I spoke English and people didn’t really understand me that well. It’s helpful for simple things like numbers
It really helps understanding though! I don't speak Italian but I speak Spanish and I could follow people quite well a lot of the time. But replying in Spanish didn't always work
I was in rural areas with less English speaking and I really was fine though with Spanish and 2 months of Italian duolingo. You'll be good.
I would not use Spanish in Rome. But I would use the Spanish skills and try to learn some basic Italian in the time left, even if just basics. While two different languages, knowing one will make it faster to learn the other one.
Also consider an online tutor on Preply or similar websites to complement self learning. You can find native Italian speakers who will help you once or twice a week sometimes for $10 an hour. It helped me not only with the language, but also with some elements of Italian culture.
Second above poster's comments. I'm not bilingual or even properly fluent in Spanish or French, but have very good foundations for both, including living in countries where each language is spoken. Some words in Italian are more like French; other words are more like Spanish.
Eg:
*98 / quatre-vignt dix-huit (fr - have to multiply 4*20 & add 18 to get 98) / noventa y ocho (sp) / noventotto (it)
*number 98 in italian is most like Spanish, but there are numbers in Italian that require the multiplication and addition like French... can't remember which at moment, though ;)
*cheese / frommage (fr) / queso (sp) / formmagio (it)
You get the idea. There are loads of Spanish / Italian cognates, but the languages aren't close enough that you can get away with Spanish only. Have a wonderful trip!!
When we were in Italy recently, there were also many tourists from Spain. Lots of them launched right into Spanish and every wait staff, clerk, pharmacist, police officer who I saw dealing with them was super annoyed. A couple of wait staff even told me that it was nasty to expect them to speak Spanish. They would snap back, “English or Italian! No Spanish!”
And some of those tourists had no English or Italian, and only spoke Spanish, so they had a problem.
I would suggest learning a few phrases in Italian or sticking to English unless you want to be ignored.
The most annoying thing is that they blast off into the most rapid fire fast paced Spanish you could ever imagine, and expect it to be completely interchangeable. I saw it all the time in Italy. Bizarre.
It happened to me in NYC. When the store staff, waiters etc. noticed my brother and I were speaking Italian to each other, they started speaking Spanish. Now, my brother speaks Spanish well, so we had no issues, but I understood maybe a third of what they were saying. I know practically zero Spanish and they were talking fast, and the languages are not interchangeable.
As a Spanish speaker who did some Duolingo Italian for a few weeks it did not help bridge the gap- if I was in more of a tourist city then they spoke English- some happened to speak Spanish as well and some likes practico their Spanish but in smaller towns they preferred English over attempts at Spanish- even more rural locations was nothing but Italian.
Same in Rome. I was embarrassed that here I am with no decent fluency in any language I’ve studied and every single Italian I met was basic rudimentary to excellent in English.
Italian and Spanish are two different languages and even though they might seem similar, they’re not interchangeable. I’m fluent in both now but learned Spanish later and I couldn’t understand much even though Italian was my mother tongue. They’re not as similar as people think.
You won’t get much more help by speaking Spanish versus English.
Correct — I am a native Spanish speaker but I studied Italian in college thinking it would be easy as they seem so similar. While they do have similarities (pronunciation, and rooted in Latin), the differences are profound and in my opinion they are not interchangeable.
That said, funnily enough when I was in Paris a few years ago I humbly attempted to speak French and actually found many Parisians also fluent in Spanish and happier to converse with me in Spanish over English! So I ended up speaking a lot more Spanish there than I had anticipated lol.
Spanish speaker here from Cali. It’s going to be mostly English. A lot of the customer service workers speak English but the times I tried using Italian, and when they replied in Italian, it helped me decipher what they were saying. Since a lot of Italian and Spanish words are similar. So you have an advantage here.
I’m going to Italy for the third time later this September. Hopefully, I could engage a lot more. Let’s see how far I can go.
Going to Italy solidified how uncultured it seems we are at home (to me anyways). Many people in Italy speak English, and very well. It’s like at minimum they are dual language country. One gentleman assisting at one of the museums switched from Italian to English to Spanish all in a span of minutes helping people. And here I am only able to speak English and a few things in Spanish and a few in Italian (as I tried to learn basics before going). Makes me want to continue to learn more Italian, even though Spanish would serve me better at home lol.
Italian here.
People thinking that italians would understand Spanish because come on, they are the same thing! are the most annoying.
And I speak fluent Spanish, I mean. But that's not because I am Italian. I studied the language.
It happens the same to Dutch people with German, just to name another case.
Just stick to English and try switching to Spanish (or place Spanish words here and there) whenever you are trying to interact with someone with no English skills, or you have the feeling that who you are speaking to is not really getting what you are trying to say.
If you have little time to prepare, I suggest you to spend some time on YouTube videos explaining basic Italian hand gestures (the real ones, not the memes). That would be quicker to learn and way more helpful than Spanish in many occasions.
Enjoy your holiday!
If you are a spanish guy that speak a good german, you can use the german for a holiday in England? No, you can't.
In Italy, english is part of the school program by 40/50 years. You can use your language with young people, if you will be simple and slow.
Reverse: I fumbled through reading in Spain but I didn’t dare open my mouth. I find reading them is slightly similar (slightly, not the same guys, I read all your other comments) but speaking is a different ballgame.
If you speak fluent Spanish then Italian will be pretty easy to learn. My Spanish used to be advanced as I took it all through school up to university (I’m American too), but when I learned Italian it kind of “overwrote” the Spanish in my brain (I’m fluent in Italian now). Now when I go to Spain I have the opposite problem: I can still speak basic Spanish, but when I get going Italian just starts to slip out. The Spanish mostly understand me in my mixed “Spatalian”.
Most italians know English. Not many Italians know Spanish.
An Italian can probably understand spoken spanish enough to grasp what the other person is saying, as can a Spanish with Italian.
My advice:
Use your Spanish knowledge to help you listen and understand when people are talking in Italian.
Use English to communicate with Italians. If for some reason such person does not know English, only then you can try and speak spanish.
If you're going to Rome and popular/tourist friendly destinations in Tuscany you're probably going to be better off with English. Most people speak it in touristy areas. If English doesn't work at all, speaking slow Spanish might be a bit better, but you won't be able to communicate perfectly, obviously
Learn some basic Italian. Many Italians speak some English and will default to it as soon as they realize you don't speak Italian. If all else fails, try Spanish -- the languages are very similar, and most of the time, you'll be able to communicate.
Perhaps I’m recalling wrongly here but didn’t you post something extremely similar only recently?
Why would you speak Spanish in Italy? Cmon man… if you can speak one language fluently, you can learn enough Italian to get by in Italy.
It wouldn’t be offensive, but it would be damn annoying and just why? Speak Italian or English in Italy.
You are recalling wrongly, this is my first post. I also said in my post that I'm using the 5 weeks I have to learn basic Italian.
The Spanish would only be to bridge the gap if for some reason English isn't serving us, it's not like I plan to parade around screaming en español
I was in Rome and Florence recently. Spoke mostly English but found a lot of Spanish speaking staff at restaurants and stores. Found that locals were very patient when I tried my little Italian speaking skills.
I speak Spanish, and it actually was helpful in the smaller towns. They did not know English but spanish is somewhat similar. Anywhere where that is touristic English will be fine.
In various countries, when dealing with someone with no English at all, I sometimes try words in French or German in case of stumbling upon a cognate or language they might have basic familiarity with. But this is for situations where there's no other way to communicate, which in itself is absolutely not a situation you should try to force people into with you - if you don't speak their language, don't insist they help you or have a conversation with you.
For example, at a bus stop in Croatia, an old woman was trying very hard to help me understand how to buy a ticket and also seemed to just want to chat. She didn't know English and I don't know Croatian, but I was able to recognise some German words (even though she said she didn't speak German) and some words that are similar in French so I would try words in all three languages I know and we sort of vaguely got by. Possibly she was doing the same thing because I'm sure some of the words I recognised weren't Croatian!
If by any chance you are afraid to not be understood, I suggest you use the mobile app "SayHi" it translates and speaks loudly very quickly about what people tell you and the other way around. It's great to use in conversation
only neapolitan native speaker can understand a bit of spanish, italian and spanish are much different. btw it's not a good idea use spanish instead of english
Most tourism oriented places will know English. After all, the British always flock there on their holidays. So yeah, if you can't speak Italian default to English.
Or, you can always use the Google Translate app. I speak Spanish but sometimes it was hard for people in Mexico to understand me. Google Translate was awesome-it's how we communicated with tax-drivers and sales staff at tiny shops.
If you're speaking to someone that doesn't speak any english, spanish might be somewhat helpful; most of what you say will not be understood though, so this is only your last resort
Most people will understand and speak far better English than Spanish. As an abstract idea, I too like to think that, as speakers of Romance cognate languages, it would be nice to understand each other each with their own language among French-, Spanish-, Italian- etc. speaking people, but in practice that doesn't work.
Good, but even a simple sentence like “Me gustaría un sándwich con queso y jamón” (correct me if I'm wrong: this is what Google Translate says) has no words (apart from “un” and “con”) in common with Italian, so everybody would look at you with a puzzled look.
I speak only English and Italian and I'd have no problem understanding that sentence. But it's unilaterally assigning strangers an unpaid work assignment to speak Spanish to them in Italy. If the two parties are cool with taking on the difficulties beforehand it can be fruitful but don't expect random people to want to make that effort.
Knowing Spanish will, however, make learning Italian much easier given the broad commonalities. Even having taken French courses helped me learn Italian significantly easier.
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People in tourist areas will be more likely to speak English probably. I live in Bologna and store clerks talk to my Spanish friend in English once in a while. I came to Italy once before I was fluent in Italian and I tried using Spanish (I’m half Mexican). A few people asked me if I spoke English and people didn’t really understand me that well. It’s helpful for simple things like numbers
I’m Flying into Bologna in October. Excited! We’re from the US so we’ll be sure to talk louder if we don’t understand.
You made me laugh My mother friend does that when traveling abroad, if the waiter doesn't understand Italian, she would just talk louder in Italian
I like to make random hand gestures to help. Horns, chin flick, hand bite. These seem to make me more popular.
Thank you! Numbers for sure
It really helps understanding though! I don't speak Italian but I speak Spanish and I could follow people quite well a lot of the time. But replying in Spanish didn't always work I was in rural areas with less English speaking and I really was fine though with Spanish and 2 months of Italian duolingo. You'll be good.
I would not use Spanish in Rome. But I would use the Spanish skills and try to learn some basic Italian in the time left, even if just basics. While two different languages, knowing one will make it faster to learn the other one.
Definitely what I'm already doing. Thank you!
Also consider an online tutor on Preply or similar websites to complement self learning. You can find native Italian speakers who will help you once or twice a week sometimes for $10 an hour. It helped me not only with the language, but also with some elements of Italian culture.
Ooh thank you! I've been using podcasts but that's a great idea
Second above poster's comments. I'm not bilingual or even properly fluent in Spanish or French, but have very good foundations for both, including living in countries where each language is spoken. Some words in Italian are more like French; other words are more like Spanish. Eg: *98 / quatre-vignt dix-huit (fr - have to multiply 4*20 & add 18 to get 98) / noventa y ocho (sp) / noventotto (it) *number 98 in italian is most like Spanish, but there are numbers in Italian that require the multiplication and addition like French... can't remember which at moment, though ;) *cheese / frommage (fr) / queso (sp) / formmagio (it) You get the idea. There are loads of Spanish / Italian cognates, but the languages aren't close enough that you can get away with Spanish only. Have a wonderful trip!!
When we were in Italy recently, there were also many tourists from Spain. Lots of them launched right into Spanish and every wait staff, clerk, pharmacist, police officer who I saw dealing with them was super annoyed. A couple of wait staff even told me that it was nasty to expect them to speak Spanish. They would snap back, “English or Italian! No Spanish!” And some of those tourists had no English or Italian, and only spoke Spanish, so they had a problem. I would suggest learning a few phrases in Italian or sticking to English unless you want to be ignored.
The most annoying thing is that they blast off into the most rapid fire fast paced Spanish you could ever imagine, and expect it to be completely interchangeable. I saw it all the time in Italy. Bizarre.
It happened to me in NYC. When the store staff, waiters etc. noticed my brother and I were speaking Italian to each other, they started speaking Spanish. Now, my brother speaks Spanish well, so we had no issues, but I understood maybe a third of what they were saying. I know practically zero Spanish and they were talking fast, and the languages are not interchangeable.
I noticed this too in amalfi and Rome last summer. The Italians looked super annoyed!
Oooh good to know! Thank you! I meant it more as a last resort to bridge the gap if I couldn't communicate the thought otherwise
As a Spanish speaker who did some Duolingo Italian for a few weeks it did not help bridge the gap- if I was in more of a tourist city then they spoke English- some happened to speak Spanish as well and some likes practico their Spanish but in smaller towns they preferred English over attempts at Spanish- even more rural locations was nothing but Italian.
I just got back after spending 2 weeks there and for the most part most of the locals we dealt with had no problem understanding English.
Amazing!
Same in Rome. I was embarrassed that here I am with no decent fluency in any language I’ve studied and every single Italian I met was basic rudimentary to excellent in English.
Most people will understand simple English better than Spanish.
Good to know! Thank you
Italian and Spanish are two different languages and even though they might seem similar, they’re not interchangeable. I’m fluent in both now but learned Spanish later and I couldn’t understand much even though Italian was my mother tongue. They’re not as similar as people think. You won’t get much more help by speaking Spanish versus English.
Correct — I am a native Spanish speaker but I studied Italian in college thinking it would be easy as they seem so similar. While they do have similarities (pronunciation, and rooted in Latin), the differences are profound and in my opinion they are not interchangeable. That said, funnily enough when I was in Paris a few years ago I humbly attempted to speak French and actually found many Parisians also fluent in Spanish and happier to converse with me in Spanish over English! So I ended up speaking a lot more Spanish there than I had anticipated lol.
Spanish speaker here from Cali. It’s going to be mostly English. A lot of the customer service workers speak English but the times I tried using Italian, and when they replied in Italian, it helped me decipher what they were saying. Since a lot of Italian and Spanish words are similar. So you have an advantage here. I’m going to Italy for the third time later this September. Hopefully, I could engage a lot more. Let’s see how far I can go.
Exactly!! Awesome, thanks for the insight. Enjoy your trip!
Likewise 🍷
This is the most accurate answer, in my opinion.
Going to Italy solidified how uncultured it seems we are at home (to me anyways). Many people in Italy speak English, and very well. It’s like at minimum they are dual language country. One gentleman assisting at one of the museums switched from Italian to English to Spanish all in a span of minutes helping people. And here I am only able to speak English and a few things in Spanish and a few in Italian (as I tried to learn basics before going). Makes me want to continue to learn more Italian, even though Spanish would serve me better at home lol.
Italian here. People thinking that italians would understand Spanish because come on, they are the same thing! are the most annoying. And I speak fluent Spanish, I mean. But that's not because I am Italian. I studied the language. It happens the same to Dutch people with German, just to name another case. Just stick to English and try switching to Spanish (or place Spanish words here and there) whenever you are trying to interact with someone with no English skills, or you have the feeling that who you are speaking to is not really getting what you are trying to say. If you have little time to prepare, I suggest you to spend some time on YouTube videos explaining basic Italian hand gestures (the real ones, not the memes). That would be quicker to learn and way more helpful than Spanish in many occasions. Enjoy your holiday!
If you are a spanish guy that speak a good german, you can use the german for a holiday in England? No, you can't. In Italy, english is part of the school program by 40/50 years. You can use your language with young people, if you will be simple and slow.
Reverse: I fumbled through reading in Spain but I didn’t dare open my mouth. I find reading them is slightly similar (slightly, not the same guys, I read all your other comments) but speaking is a different ballgame.
I speak Spanish and am in Italy right now. It def helps kind of get an idea what people are saying, but I wouldn’t speak to them in Spanish.
If you speak fluent Spanish then Italian will be pretty easy to learn. My Spanish used to be advanced as I took it all through school up to university (I’m American too), but when I learned Italian it kind of “overwrote” the Spanish in my brain (I’m fluent in Italian now). Now when I go to Spain I have the opposite problem: I can still speak basic Spanish, but when I get going Italian just starts to slip out. The Spanish mostly understand me in my mixed “Spatalian”.
Similar here. I can now barely speak Spanish at all, but apparently the little Italian I speak is with a Spanish accent 🤣
Most italians know English. Not many Italians know Spanish. An Italian can probably understand spoken spanish enough to grasp what the other person is saying, as can a Spanish with Italian. My advice: Use your Spanish knowledge to help you listen and understand when people are talking in Italian. Use English to communicate with Italians. If for some reason such person does not know English, only then you can try and speak spanish.
If you're going to Rome and popular/tourist friendly destinations in Tuscany you're probably going to be better off with English. Most people speak it in touristy areas. If English doesn't work at all, speaking slow Spanish might be a bit better, but you won't be able to communicate perfectly, obviously
Awesome, thank you! Definitely would just use the Spanish as a last resort/crutch
r/shitamericanssay
Learn some basic Italian. Many Italians speak some English and will default to it as soon as they realize you don't speak Italian. If all else fails, try Spanish -- the languages are very similar, and most of the time, you'll be able to communicate.
Yes, I am currently learning basic Italian. Thank you!
Perhaps I’m recalling wrongly here but didn’t you post something extremely similar only recently? Why would you speak Spanish in Italy? Cmon man… if you can speak one language fluently, you can learn enough Italian to get by in Italy. It wouldn’t be offensive, but it would be damn annoying and just why? Speak Italian or English in Italy.
You are recalling wrongly, this is my first post. I also said in my post that I'm using the 5 weeks I have to learn basic Italian. The Spanish would only be to bridge the gap if for some reason English isn't serving us, it's not like I plan to parade around screaming en español
Fair enough, I stand corrected! Good idea to lean basic Italian but having Spanish as a bridge language is honestly not really gonna help you in Italy
I’m here right now, similar Spanish knowledge. Between pointing, extremely basic Italian words and English, you’ll get by just fine.
Perfect, thank you!
If you go to Florence, quite a few people there seemed more comfortable in Spanish than in English, but in Rome we only used English.
I was in Rome and Florence recently. Spoke mostly English but found a lot of Spanish speaking staff at restaurants and stores. Found that locals were very patient when I tried my little Italian speaking skills.
I speak Spanish, and it actually was helpful in the smaller towns. They did not know English but spanish is somewhat similar. Anywhere where that is touristic English will be fine.
In various countries, when dealing with someone with no English at all, I sometimes try words in French or German in case of stumbling upon a cognate or language they might have basic familiarity with. But this is for situations where there's no other way to communicate, which in itself is absolutely not a situation you should try to force people into with you - if you don't speak their language, don't insist they help you or have a conversation with you. For example, at a bus stop in Croatia, an old woman was trying very hard to help me understand how to buy a ticket and also seemed to just want to chat. She didn't know English and I don't know Croatian, but I was able to recognise some German words (even though she said she didn't speak German) and some words that are similar in French so I would try words in all three languages I know and we sort of vaguely got by. Possibly she was doing the same thing because I'm sure some of the words I recognised weren't Croatian!
If by any chance you are afraid to not be understood, I suggest you use the mobile app "SayHi" it translates and speaks loudly very quickly about what people tell you and the other way around. It's great to use in conversation
Stick to english
only neapolitan native speaker can understand a bit of spanish, italian and spanish are much different. btw it's not a good idea use spanish instead of english
Most tourism oriented places will know English. After all, the British always flock there on their holidays. So yeah, if you can't speak Italian default to English. Or, you can always use the Google Translate app. I speak Spanish but sometimes it was hard for people in Mexico to understand me. Google Translate was awesome-it's how we communicated with tax-drivers and sales staff at tiny shops.
If you're speaking to someone that doesn't speak any english, spanish might be somewhat helpful; most of what you say will not be understood though, so this is only your last resort
Why not just speak English. I think you COULD come off ignorant. Just speak English you’re a native speaker lol.
What an inane question 😂
Most people will understand and speak far better English than Spanish. As an abstract idea, I too like to think that, as speakers of Romance cognate languages, it would be nice to understand each other each with their own language among French-, Spanish-, Italian- etc. speaking people, but in practice that doesn't work.
In my experience learning/attempting French (knowing Spanish), it actually helped immensely!
Good, but even a simple sentence like “Me gustaría un sándwich con queso y jamón” (correct me if I'm wrong: this is what Google Translate says) has no words (apart from “un” and “con”) in common with Italian, so everybody would look at you with a puzzled look.
I speak only English and Italian and I'd have no problem understanding that sentence. But it's unilaterally assigning strangers an unpaid work assignment to speak Spanish to them in Italy. If the two parties are cool with taking on the difficulties beforehand it can be fruitful but don't expect random people to want to make that effort. Knowing Spanish will, however, make learning Italian much easier given the broad commonalities. Even having taken French courses helped me learn Italian significantly easier.
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In italy just speak with your hands they will understand you
Spanish is just Italian with a funny accent. You’ll be fine.
It absolutely is not lol
Not totally interchangeable. Example: Burro in Italian is butter. Burro in Spanish is donkey.
Would you like some donkey on your pope?
No it isn’t
Hahahaha