What do we mean by 'to speak a language'?

Or in other words, if you say 'I speak a little French' how little is enough for you to qualify?

We were once on a ferry going from Croatia to Venice, for the first time. Caroline and I started to gather together any Italian that we knew, in the way that one gathers together loose change when slightly short of the price of a drink.

Bella! Ciao! Illuminati! Espresso! Si! we went on like this for quite some time, pulling words we had seen on menus, heard in Mafia films, noticed in songs. It was surprising how much two never-learners of Italian had managed to squirrel away.

The lack of any grammatical knowledge was more critical. Once you have got past "una X per favor" (or is it por favor) there is not much that you can do without the glue of structure to hold things together. And then one realises that having all those nouns and occasional adjectives won't get you far without the basic (and no doubt, highly irregular) common verbs to hold it together.

I think we got together about 60-80 words eventually and plucked up the courage to order two ice-creams in 'Italian-lite'. The handsome Venetian vendor smiled and answered in perfect English.

I think I would consider 60-80 words to be a little short of 'a smattering' and well short of 'a bit'. But maybe it was enough to kick-start one's acquisition of the language. And you have to admit that when you learn your second word in a new language you have increased your vocabulary size by 50%!