This isn’t a dumb question. What she’s asking about is known as Mutual Intelligibility or Linguistic Distance, depending on how you read it.
Languages in the same family tend to score well, such as the three Romance languages she listed. Estimates of French <-> Italian are often in the 80% range. That doesn’t mean you can speak the other language, but in a bind an average Italian may be able to catch about 80% of what a French person is trying to convey.
This isn’t a dumb question. What she’s asking about is known as Mutual Intelligibility or Linguistic Distance, depending on how you read it.
Languages in the same family tend to score well, such as the three Romance languages she listed. Estimates of French <-> Italian are often in the 80% range. That doesn’t mean you can speak the other language, but in a bind an average Italian may be able to catch about 80% of what a French person is trying to convey.