I believe that Dante more or less defined modern Italian--there's vocabulary added since, of course, and some odd shifts, but it'd put you closer than you think.
What everyday exposure in adulthood is good for, in my experience, is maintaining a language. This is, I think, why I still have useful Spanish, and don't have useful Greek. But I haven't picked up Mandarin or Cantonese, or Haitian Creole, or Russian, or any of the other languages that are common around here. Of course, this is New York, where the Spanish is interlarded with English and Yiddish (and the Yiddish, for all I know, is picking up bits of Spanish, though the Yiddish-speaking community is more insular than some).
I have to think a bit more about the language exposure thing .. and figure out what questions to ask my polyglot European friends to test my vague hypotheses.
(no subject)
What everyday exposure in adulthood is good for, in my experience, is maintaining a language. This is, I think, why I still have useful Spanish, and don't have useful Greek. But I haven't picked up Mandarin or Cantonese, or Haitian Creole, or Russian, or any of the other languages that are common around here. Of course, this is New York, where the Spanish is interlarded with English and Yiddish (and the Yiddish, for all I know, is picking up bits of Spanish, though the Yiddish-speaking community is more insular than some).
(no subject)
I have to think a bit more about the language exposure thing .. and figure out what questions to ask my polyglot European friends to test my vague hypotheses.