Spanish in Comparison

As I'm learning Spanish I'm finding myself comparing the cultures that speak and influence the language to other cultures, especially those where I know a little about the language.

For example, I know "ein bisschen" German. They tend to have a much more similar sentence structure, from what I can tell. Their words also tend to be a little closer (aside from Spanish cognate or borrowed words) although they don't mind squishing a bunch of words together to make one really long word that basically just means the same thing.

On the other hand, knowing "un po'" Italian, I can say that Spanish (or at least the dialects that we are studying) are a bit closer to English. Of course, Italian and Spanish are much closer than English and Spanish, having a common origin in Latin, but I think... at least so far... that Spanish is a little less complicated.

Culturally, I can definitely see similarities though. Both seem like very warm and polite cultures (though, at least in the case of Italians, they can also be brutally honest). Both seem to have a strong sense of respect for their elders that is carried through even to the way they speak. They both value beauty pretty highly (not that English speakers don't), as you can see since the words for beauty and "good" are the same.

Anyway, there are a lot of similarities there but the small differences in the language make it tough sometimes. I definitely find myself wanting to put Italian words in when I don't know the Spanish words, which is no good since, even if the words are similar, the spelling and pronunciation are different enough and I'm sure there are plenty of words that don't mean the same thing, just like there differences even amongst Spanish-speaking countries (which points out another difference -- there really aren't multiple Italian-speaking countries so, while the dialects change from region to region, the diversity within Spanish is certainly going to be far greater).

That diversity is part of why I want to learn Spanish. Especially living in the part of the world we do, Spanish is a very useful tool for a person in virtually any career and many non-job-related situations as well.