I don´t know if French speakers understand Spanish or Italian speakers, but we sure don´t understand them!Not really well. Italian is much closer.
I confirm that Spanish is the main 2nd foreign language you learn in France, with English being pretty much mandatory. You can choose a 1st language that's not English (I chose German for example) but then you must take English as your 2nd language
Speaking off... Would be funny if French was to be the lingua franca. Bound to be the most spoken language by 2050, thanks to the African demographics![]()
It´s not easy if you do it out of nothing but if one just knows some of basic regular differences in pronunciation(that more or less have rules behind them) I bet it gets easier. Of course false cognates are bound to confuse you.At the risk of derailing the topic, this makes me wonder how easily French-speakers can understand Spanish, especially basic Spanish, off the bat now.