Spanish sounds like Italian, Portugués, French...

Question

Have you ever heard languages like, portugués, French, or even Italian? Do they sound similar to Spanish? They sure do. Many words and phases are similar to Spanish but why do all these language have similar words???

Answer 1

Think of it this way: they are all Latin. The Roman Empire controlled such a vast territory and 'Romanized' so many different peoples that Latin spoken at one end of the empire (more accurately, the western half of the empire), say, Italy, began to sound different than Latin at the other end of the Western Empire, say, Portugal or Spain. Eventually, these peoples, each influenced by local dialect shifts and even contact with other languages, could not really understand one another; so it made little sense to talk about the language they were speaking as the same language. This is how the romance languages came to be, albeit a simplified account.

Answer 2

SALVE!

Very interesting observation you made. These languages sound similar and have common words or cognates because they descend from a common ancestor. They are formally called Romance Languages because they are the daughters of Mother Latin or LINGVA LATINA, the language of the western Roman civilization (753 BCE-476 CE). Latin is the official language of the Roman Catholic Church headquartered in Vatican City (Holy See). By learning Latin, students, amongst other things, develop a strong foundation and competency in grammar and syntax. Said foundation and competency can be easily transferred into learning the Romance Languages. Some former astute Latin students claim to have learned them in 12 months or less. I recommend watching the YouTube video (link below), "Italian Language---Can Spanish and Portuguese speakers understand?", by Ecolinguist to gain more insight into the profound and amazing beauty of the Romance Languages, and be amazed as to how native speakers can understand one another with only dialogue.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCtg1upDmWs