Good morning.
Three weeks ago I was in Italy, in the city of Pordenone, in a Open Design conference. There was a lot of talks about free software applications in different areas (specially in engineering and architecture), and most of the talk were given in Italian.
People might think that Spanish and Italian are similar languages, and that it's true. However isn't so simple to understand Italian just being Spanish and without having some notions of the language. During the talks I could understand some words that were exactly the same in Spanish, but I was unable to follow the talks because I couldn't understand most of the things they said just listening. Some speakers projected a presentation with text and that way I could understand easily the content of their talks.
I have never studied Italian, but my conclusion is that, by the similarities with Spanish, reading Italian is easier to understand than listening. During the day I spoke with people in English, and, surprisingly, also in Spanish, because some people there spoke it very well.
It wasn't difficult to orient myself in Italy, following signs and posters, because words are similiar to my language. But it is clear that, without knowing at least English, it's difficult to travel around the world. Maybe you can find someone who speaks your language (in my case Spanish), but in restaurants, shops or hotels don't usually speak my language. English gets you out of a trouble.
