what's so hard about learning a language?

Moodrets
Fri, 17 Oct 2008 20:43:16 +0000

^^^ Haha, yes! The two languages are indeed very similar; like you said, when I was in Italy the language barrier was greatly diminished because I knew a good bit of Spanish.

Same goes for Portuguese and Spanish, probably Portuguese and Italian as well (although I can’t really comment on the latter).

Likewise for the Slavic languages – I can listen to a Ukrainian television or radio programs, for example, and understand most of what is said (ditto for Belarusian (according to family) seeing as I’ve never actually heard it spoken aloud and so can’t be entirely sure).