Spanish & Italian... Mutual Intelligibility...
Mid-2014 before I began my Spanish journey, if I had looked at Spanish and/or Italian written down on a page, I could almost certainly have told you they were Spanish... or Italian. But I probably wouldn't have been sure of which (although, to be sure I would've known they weren't German, Dutch, Polish, Russian or Chinese (not so sure about Chinese - Joke ¡!)).
Now that I've been on my Spanish journey for a few months (just about cleared the lighthouse on the way out to sea - yeah, it's going that well ¡!), I would hope I could tell you if it's Spanish & might even be able to translate some of it (heck, if I were feeling brave, I might even feel able to try & tell Italian & Portuguese apart (but not Chinese))...
That said, spoken Spanish & Italian sometimes still confuse me (mainly because I still can't understand either when spoken... unless r-e-a-l-l-y---s-l-o-w-l-y).
I just looked at some written Italian again, & it does looks rather weird when compared with Spanish (albeit obviously there are close similarities).
I realise I'm making light of this, & perhaps slightly dumbing myself down (actually, since starting learning Spanish, & taking my French on board too, I can actually understand written Italian a little better).
But in truth I wonder how close the similarity is...
It's often said to an extent Spanish & Italian are mutually intelligible. I wonder how true this is. I mean, English & Dutch are very similar in many respects & an educated Brit could probably make a good guess at a story in a Dutch newspaper, but when those Dutch guys open their mouths, woah ¡! Time for the universal translator ¡!
Is it easier for a Spanish-speaker to understand an Italian or vice versa (is that Italian ?). Does it depend on region. I understand many Italians emigrated to Argentina, for example. Does that make a difference ?
I had an Italian client in my office the other day, who seemed quite well educated (for example, he speaks English fluently). He seemed to become bored with what I was telling him (this often happens) so began looking around my room for things to amuse him whereupon his glance happened to fall upon a Spanish poster. I could see his eyes fall on it & his brows furrow as if attempting to translate it, then cue the slow dawning of realisation as he did. Then he started speaking to me in Spanish. It was weird...
7 Answers
Here are three of my favorite people here talking about my favorite thing - linguistics! So I have to get in on this. I consider myself fluent only in English and at about the same level of proficiency in Spanish and French. I have often felt that I could easily learn Italian because of knowing the other two.
There was a time when one of my coworkers who spoke fluent Italian did some small talking in Italian and I was convinced that I understood it all. I also know that before the unification of Italy there was no standard Italian spoken by inhabitants of the peninsula. All of the dialects of Italian are direct descendants of Latin and the most true to the mother tongue of Romance languages. There were also many dialects until recent times various patois in France and in medieval times two true French languages: Langue d'Oil and Langue d'Oc (au bal din lo pradu lo doux ougelloux - or something like that), both literary.
Have any of you ever looked at medieval music manuscripts from France and Spain? There are numerous songs and it is interesting to look at the lyrics (the Cantigas of Alfonso el Sabio for example) and try to figure out what is being communicated. In fact just hop on You Tube and type in Cantiga 10 to listen to one, Rosas das rosas.
Besides Portuguese and Romanian another official Romance language is Romansch spoken in Switzerland and of course Catalan and Corsican. Maybe even Maltese is a bit Roman, too. It would be so fun to get you people around a table at a coffee house!
Let me tell you that I have always been fascinated by how Italian people can understand really well Spanish if one speaks slowly.
Not the other way around. I'll tell you that much.
Hey, maybe I am really stupid! 
I wonder to read a lot of people saying that, for the Spanish speakers, it is easy to understand Italian. TOTALLY NO. European people also think so but the truth it is that the Italian sounds "similar" than Spanish but there are lot of "false friends". You should not forget that in each region in Italy they have their own dialect, so this causes that there are a lot of different accents (North and South Italian language and accent is really different)
Besides if the Italian speaker speaks in a slow way maybe we can understand him/her in broad strokes.
Portuguese is different, it is sound like a mix between Galician language and old Spanish, but it is more "understandable" for us. But there are also a lot of false friends. My favorite is presunto. In Spanish means "suspected/presumed" but in portuguese means "pig".
I use to go to Portugal many times each year and I can affirm that most of the Spanish people do not understand Portuguese language
This is my experience.
As a Spanish speaker, I find Italian very easy for me to understand. One time, when I living in El Centro, close to the Mexican border as I was doing something around the house, I also had a Mexican TV station going. They were playing a movie and I was sort of listening with one ear, following the dialog, when all of a sudden I had a sudden realization that they were NOT speaking Spanish but rather Italian. To me it was that similar. It was in the Tuscano dialect which is the easiest for Spanish speakers to understand. Don't ever try to understand Siciliano. I have read that Italy has some 60 different dialects of Italian.
As to French, Spanish speakers would have the easiest time in the Southern region of France. Their dialect there is called Méridionale. The melody and pronunciation is so much like Italian that it was very easy for me to understand several college friends I had that were from Grenoble. The southern French sounds enough like Canadian that I felt quite at home with these folks. For those who don't know, my mom is Canadian, and French was my first language, but as I was living in Spain, and had a Spanish dad, the Spanish came right away.
Little kids take quite easily to bilingualism, even though at times they are not quite sure what language they are speaking at the time. A lot of Mexican-American kids and Border kids experience this.
What an interesting thread! Two Mexican buddies of mine just about convinced me the other night to learn Portuguese. I had started it but when my learning partner got waylaid with cancer we kind of put Portuguese to the side. I understand it better the Italian, but Italian sure is a beautiful language!
Before Spanish encompassed my soul I could get by quite well in Italian ,Melbourne
has a great Italian population going back many generations , I therefore thought
that Spanish would come easily to me , but I was wrong .In the beginning I found
that my knowledge of Italian to be a drawback because I would automatically
translate into Italian first then Spanish , I remember the happy day when this did
not happen , in fact today in the supermarket I heard a lady speaking in a strong
Italian dialect from Naples , she needed help , but it took me ages to dredge up
my Italian and push aside Spanish . I have found that there are many ways that
knowing a "Romance language" can help , for me initially it was annoying but
overall I feel I am lucky to have ,albeit only a smattering of French and Italian .
I will tell you what I have heard, this is all based on hearsay, so could be completely wrong.
I think there is no controversy in that Romanian and French have enough non-Latin influence to be somewhat difficult for other Romance speakers that haven't studied the languages, although clearly there are similarities that make them easier than less related languages. But then English and Spanish have similarities that make my attempt to learn Spanish much easier than other languages I might have chosen.
I have heard from Spaniards that (once one puts a little effort into understanding the common shifts) Portuguese is easier to read than Italian, but that Italian is easier orally, due to the sound shifts that Portuguese has. I have heard with a little practice with common shifts, 70% of Italian can be understood. I have also heard that Spaniards with a fair amount of exposure to Portuguese can learn to understand it pretty well- and that it may not cross easily between Brazil and Portugal. I have heard that Portuguese often can understand Spanish fairly readily. I have heard nothing regarding the understanding of Italians of anyone. Clearly one of the people who posts here from time to time was a Brazilian trying to learn Spanish, so clearly some learning is needed, although that may be more to produce it than receive it.
I found a Biology textbook audiobook to be one of the best starting listening comprehension things I tried, because of the huge amount of cognates in the field between Spanish and English- even though I could not always predict what the Spanish word would be (but often I could get close based on general principles). But since it was read slowly and clearly with a very neutral accent, and a huge number of cognates, it was not hard to follow at all, once I had enough of the basic words learned.
Anyway, this is all hearsay, and I would defer to anyone with more knowledge, and would not try to defend anything I said.
