Multilingual Fun

Alright, so on Phrasebase.com, they have these little "Cafés" they've opened up for language families. I skipped the Slavic Café for obvious reasons, but I peeked around in the Romance and Germanic ones.

It makes it very obvious how close the Romance languages are, especially in contrast to the Germanic. Although Spanish is my distant second language next to my English, and Italian is like my fifth, I was able to follow the conversation in the Romance Café quite easily. I suppose my Latin also helped, but I was still pleasantly surprised.

In the Germanic Café, on the other hand, I quickly learned to content myself just to guess the language. Even with my native language included, and even with two years of German and a pathetic but functional sort of Norwegian at my command, I was often lost.

Anyhow, it's interesting.

http://www.phrasebase.com/forum/read.php?TID=18310
http://www.phrasebase.com/forum/read.php?TID=18645