>> My Spanish has even helped me be able to guess at Italian and Portuguese during travels, where I otherwise would’ve been somewhat lost.
I've witnessed my friend's grandmothers, one who only speaks Italian and the other only Spanish, have full on conversations in their native tongues. I wonder if having conversations in different languages is common in other language families (e.g. indu-aryan languages)?
We've worked with talking in different languages altogether. They understand German but speak it badly, for me it's the same with French. So I speak German at them and they speak French at me. It works pretty well interestingly.
Apparently Slavic languages can be mutually intelligible. My friend who is Russian had a Serbian boyfriend -- both spoke their native languages to each other and were able to more or less understand.
I've witnessed my friend's grandmothers, one who only speaks Italian and the other only Spanish, have full on conversations in their native tongues. I wonder if having conversations in different languages is common in other language families (e.g. indu-aryan languages)?