Italian and Spanish: Language Similarities and Differences
Italian and Spanish are both languages which evolved from Latin. The family of languages which evolved from Latin is called the Romance languages.
Spanish is the most widely spoken Romance language with many native Spanish speakers in Latin America, in addition to those in Spain. Italian is the 4th most spoken Romance language. In addition to being spoken in Italy it is also one of the four official languages of Switzerland (the other three being French, German and Romansh).
In the list of most spoken Romance languages, between Spanish and Italian there are Portuguese and French.
Italian and Spanish vocabulary comparison
A large part of the vocabulary words in Italian and Spanish come from Latin, which explains why there are many similar vocabulary words between these two languages. Here are some examples:
- “yes” is « sí » in Spanish and « sì » in Italian.
- “life” is « vida » in Spanish and « vita » in Italian.
- “happy” is « feliz » in Spanish and « felice » in Italian.
- “love” is « amor » in Spanish and « amore » in Italian.
- “water” is « agua » in Spanish and « acqua » in Italian.
- “world” is « mundo » in Spanish and « mondo » in Italian.
- “heart” is « corazón » in Spanish and « cuore » in Italian.
- “truth” is « verdad » in Spanish and « verità » in Italian.
- “week” is « semana » in Spanish and « settimana » in Italian.
- “party” is « fiesta » in Spanish and « festa » in Italian.
- “month” is « mes » in Spanish and « mese » in Italian.
- “friend” is « amigo » in Spanish and « amico » in Italian.
- “how much” is « cuanto » in Spanish and « quanto » in Italian.
Here are some more examples of similar vocabulary words between Italian and Spanish:
| Spanish | Italian | English |
|---|---|---|
| vivir | vivere | to live |
| ayudar | aiutare | to help |
| abrir | aprire | to open |
| cuando | quando | when |
| padre | padre | father |
| mano | mano | hand |
| evitar | evitare | to avoid |
| verde | verde | green |
| perder | perdere | to lose |
| sentir | sentire | to feel |
| casa | casa | house |
| correr | correre | to run |
| mar | mare | sea |
| cual | quale | which |
Since Spanish and Italian are different languages, not all of their vocabulary words are similar. Here are some examples of vocabulary words which differ significantly between Spanish and Italian:
| English | Spanish | Italian |
|---|---|---|
| day | día | giorno |
| to work | trabajar | lavorare |
| to search | buscar | cercare |
| money | dinero | soldi |
| boy | chico | ragazzo |
| to want | querer | volere |
| rain | lluvia | pioggia |
| old | antiguo | vecchio |
| to call | llamar | chiamare |
Italian and Spanish vocabulary false friends
In the context of language learning, the term “false friend” refers to a pair of vocabulary words from different languages which look alike and yet have completely different meanings.
Here are some examples of Spanish-Italian vocabulary “false friends”:
- In Italian, the verb « sposàre » means “to marry”. But in Spanish the verb « esposar » means “to handcuff”.
- In Italian, the word « caldo » means “warm” or “hot”, whereas in Spanish the word « caldo » refers to a clear soup.
- The Italian word « vaso » means “a vase” or “a jar”. But in Spanish the word « vaso » means “a drinking glass”
- The Spanish verb « guardar » means “to keep” or “to save”, whereas the Italian verb « guardàre » means “to look at”.
- The Spanish word « bruto » means “brutish” or “stupid”, whereas the Italian word « brutto » means “ugly”.
- The Spanish word « aceite » resembles the Italian word « aceto », but the former means “oil” and the latter means “vinegar”.
- The Spanish verb « subir » means “to go up” or “to upload”, whereas the Italian verb « subire » means “to endure”, “to suffer”.
- In Spanish the word « burro » means “donkey” whereas in Italian that word means “butter”.
- The Italian word « azienda » means “a company” or “a business”. The similar looking Spanish word « hacienda » means “a ranch” or “a farm”.
- The word « estero » means “estuary” in Spanish, whereas in Italian it means “foreign” when used as an adjective, and “foreign countries” when used as a noun.
- The Spanish verb « salir » means “to go out” or “to leave”. The Similar looking Italian verb « salire » means “to go up” or “to mount”.
- The word « seta » has completely different meanings in Italian and Spanish. In Italian it means “silk” whereas in Spanish it means “mushroom”.
- In Spanish the word « timo » means “a swindle” or “a scam”, whereas in Italian that word means “thyme”.
- The word « loro » means “parrot” in Spanish, whereas in Italian that word is the pronoun “they”.
- The word « carta » can mean “paper” in Italian. In Spanish that word can mean “a letter” (the Spanish word for “paper” is “papel”).
- In Italian the word « gamba » means “a leg”, whereas in Spanish that word means “a shrimp”.
More Similarities and differences between Italian and Spanish
Italian and Spanish are pro-drop languages
Italian and Spanish are both what linguists refer to as pro-drop languages. This means that in Italian and Spanish, pronouns can be omitted (dropped) when they can be inferred from the context.
For example, the phrase “I love you” translates to “ti amo” in Italian and “te quiero” in Spanish. Note the absence of the subject pronouns (“yo” in Spanish and “io” in Italian) which can be inferred from the form of the conjugated verb.
In this respect Italian and Spanish differ from languages such as English or French where omitting the subject pronoun would generally lead to a grammatically incorrect sentence.
Italian pronunciation differs from Spanish pronunciation
In Spanish, the letters ‘b’ and ‘v’ are pronounced the same. Linguists refer to this phenomenon as betacism. In contrast to Spanish, standard Italian pronounces the letters ‘b’ and ‘v’ differently.
Italian and Spanish have both formal and informal pronouns
When addressing a person in English the pronoun “you” is used in both casual and formal situations. In contrast, Italian and Spanish are languages in which different pronouns are used depending on the level of formality.
The Spanish pronoun “tú” and the Italian pronoun “tu” are used when addressing a person informally. In formal language, the Spanish pronoun “usted” and the Italian pronoun “lei” are used instead.
Since the Italian word “lei” also corresponds to the third person feminine singular (she), it is oftentimes capitalized when used as a formal pronoun, to distinguish it from its other usage.
The Lexical similarity between Italian and Spanish
Lexical similarity is a number which linguists calculate to see how similar two languages are in terms of their vocabulary.
The lexical similarity between Italian and Spanish is 0.82 (the range of possible values for lexical similarity is from 0 to 1, with zero meaning no similarity, and one meaning complete similarity)
As a means of comparison, the English-German lexical similarity is 0.60. Also the Italian-French lexical similarity is 0.89, which means that Italian vocabulary is slightly closer to French than it is to Spanish.
To continue exploring the vocabulary similarities between Italian and Spanish, see these lists of the 1000 most common Italian words and the 1000 most common Spanish words.
