French is very close to other Romance languages such as Spanish, Portuguese and especially Italian. If you know one of these four languages, you can learn the other one in 6 months of intensive study (I did it).

All Romance languages share a very similar vocabulary derived from Latin and a similar conjugation system. There are many cosmetic differences in vocabulary and pronunciation but those languages are almost mutually intelligible.

People who studied latin will have a field day learning French, whose grammar is much simpler than latin grammar.

Table of languages significantly similar to French

	Similarity			Statistics
	Vocabulary	Grammar		Speakers	Countries	GDP
French	100%	–		213 M	17	$2,223 bn
Italian	85%			58 M	2	$1,490 bn
Spanish	80%			376 M	25	$3,198 bn
Portuguese	80%			203 M	6	$666 bn
Romanian	65%			28 M	3	$60 bn
Latin	50%			–	1	–
Russian	10%			167 M	8	$548 bn
Total				1,045 M	62	$8185 bn

EXPLANATION

Similarity
VOCABULARY: Percentage of vocabulary that isvery similar in both languages.
GRAMMATICAL: Cactuses () indicate the relative difficulty of learning this language if you already speak French. The fewer cactuses/cacti, the easier.

Speakers
NUMBER: total number of native speakers of each language.
SHARE: number of speakers times % similar vocabulary (see above). This gives you an indication of the number of people you can reach indirectly by learning French.

Countries
NUMBER: Total number of countries where the language is an official language or widely spoken.
SHARE: The number of countries times % similar vocabulary (see above). This gives you an indication of the number of countries you can reach indirectly by learning French.

GDP
NUMBER: Combined total nominal GDP in US dollars for each language.
SHARE: Combined GDP times % similar vocabulary (see above). This gives you an indication of the economic importance of the language group you enter by learning French.

The purpose of this table is to list the most important languages similar to French and see how closely related they are. It helps you select the language you want to learn by appraising you on what significant other languages you could learn more easily on the basis of your future knowledge of French.

If you feel the figures listed in this table are not correct and you have learned one of the languages listed above, please feel free to contact me and let me know how this should be improved and why.