# So, a Romanian lady is sharing my office space this week...

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-a-romanian-lady-is-sharing-my-office-space-this-week/705501>\
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\
**Created:** [November 24, 2014, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-a-romanian-lady-is-sharing-my-office-space-this-week/705501 "2014-11-24T18:15:24Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 3

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**Author:** ![Dan\_ch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a4c791/32.png) [@Dan\_ch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dan_ch)\
**Post date:** [November 27, 2014, 1:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-a-romanian-lady-is-sharing-my-office-space-this-week/705501/41 "2014-11-27T13:28:53Z")

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> [@even\_sven](#):
>
> Just want to confirm this is totally true. I’ve known a lot of Brazilians, and it used to baffle me that every Brazilian I meet seems to have a bunch of Romanian friends.

That’s not quite right; might be true for written Portuguese/Romanian , but the Portuguese have a very particular pronunciation, which makes it non-intelligible for a Romanian (at least not without some practice, maybe a month or two). I would say that for Romanian speakers without any previous knowledge of other Latin languages, Italian is the most intelligible, followed by Spanish, Portuguese and French.

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**Author:** ![eclectic\_wench](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ac91a4/32.png) [@eclectic\_wench](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eclectic_wench)\
**Post date:** [November 27, 2014, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-a-romanian-lady-is-sharing-my-office-space-this-week/705501/42 "2014-11-27T15:05:39Z")

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> [@Dan\_ch](#):
>
> I would say that for Romanian speakers without any previous knowledge of other Latin languages, Italian is the most intelligible, followed by Spanish, Portuguese and French.

For an Italian speaker, listening to Romanian is very weird. It sounds like it \*should \*be intelligible, but it isn’t quite.

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**Author:** ![Dan\_ch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a4c791/32.png) [@Dan\_ch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dan_ch)\
**Post date:** [November 27, 2014, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-a-romanian-lady-is-sharing-my-office-space-this-week/705501/43 "2014-11-27T15:27:00Z")

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> [@eclectic\_wench](#):
>
> For an Italian speaker, listening to Romanian is very weird. It sounds like it \*should \*be intelligible, but it isn’t quite.

```
  Yeah, I know, that's why I avoided saying that Romanian and Italian are *mutually* intelligible. Then again, I bet Italians have the same feeling about some of the local dialects spoken in Italy. :) 

  Recently I went to an Italian movie ("Una via a Palermo") which had Dutch subtitles (me speak no Dutch), but I thought "yeah, Italian movie, I'll understand everything just fine". Well, most of the characters were Sicilian (as hinted by the movie title :cool:) and about half of the lines were spoken in the local dialect, which for me sounded exactly as you said: "Man, this sounds so familiar...but it makes no sense!". One of the characters in the movie was from northern Italy and was equally puzzled when the dialogue was in Sicilian (which I think went unnoticed by the Dutch moviegoers around me).

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