I can't remember whether she told me why she could speak Spanish. Anyway, romance languages are similar enough that if you're proficient in Portuguese, Italian and French you can probably learn decent Spanish in a matter of weeks.
True; in fact, I would expect her to be able to read it pretty well without any study whatsoever, once she had those three surrounding languages down. Actual study then becomes very cost-effective, and might even be done on one's own in one's spare time, once one has decided to do it.
r/Fitness does a weekly "Moronic Monday", a judgment-free thread where people can ask questions that they would ordinarily feel embarrassed for not knowing the answer to. I thought this seemed like a useful thing to have here - after all, the concepts discussed on LessWrong are probably at least a little harder to grasp than those of weightlifting. Plus, I have a few stupid questions of my own, so it doesn't seem unreasonable that other people might as well.