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Similarities romance languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Sir Nigel Senior Member United States Joined 7104 days ago 1126 posts - 1102 votes  2 sounds | Message 9 of 32 28 June 2006 at 5:49pm | IP Logged | |||||
French was harder at first due to its pronunciation, but later it was easier to progress than Spanish. There're a few articles on the debate as to which one is easier, however, the difference in the long-run it small. Spanish is easier to start with yet its slightly more complicated grammar and lesser vocabulary link to English can make it harder to progress after the basics. French is quite difficult at first, specifically with pronunciation, but you can build up your vocabulary a quicker because of the vast amount of French words in English. Of course this would apply mostly to spoken language as you still have to contend with French's strange orthography for the rest of your days. Edited by Sir Nigel on 28 June 2006 at 5:51pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Journeyer Triglot Senior Member United States tristan85.blogspot.c Joined 6868 days ago 946 posts - 1110 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, German Studies: Sign Language | Message 10 of 32 28 June 2006 at 5:59pm | IP Logged | |||||
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In my experience, French is the easier language, but I'm biased: I was always more motivated to learn French because I have an aunt who speaks it and introduced me to the French culture (at least a little bit of it) at an early age. Spanish I never really cared about until I learned it in Mexico.
I never learned French all that well, ironically. I studied it for 2 years in high school, and really ended up hating the class (not the language!!) and my love for foreign language classes in general has not changed since. Despite the fact that I speak Spanish now, I still say that it is a "hard" language. I agree with Sir Nigel that the grammar is more complicated than French. While it is not very complicated in some areas such as noun cases (absent from the language, really), it is still inbedded with numerous verb conjugations in terms of number, mood, and tense...actually I think the verb here is perhaps the most complicated part of the language, unless you want to get down to the cultural parts of it, like "albures" in the Mexican dialect... The verb probably won't present a problem to speakers of other Romance languages, but to a beginner they can feel daunting. That, and I have to say prepositions are numerous and another aspect of the language I don't know nearly as well as I should. These are naturally aspects of most languages and have to be learned accordingly, but I guess that I bring them up because I think they are perhaps among the two most complicated parts of the language. In comparison to other languages in the world, Spanish is surely not the most difficult, but I think it's tougher than many people give it credit for. EDIT: I should add though that I cannot say much about French because I never learned it to high enough level to have much of an opinion of the difficulty of the grammar, or so on. Edited by Journeyer on 28 June 2006 at 6:02pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Frisco Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6856 days ago 380 posts - 398 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Italian, Turkish, Mandarin | Message 11 of 32 28 June 2006 at 7:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
I totally agree. The ones who yap about how extremely easy Spanish is are usually people who got good grades in it in high school, but in all likelihood can't understand a news broadcast and wouldn't know how to keep a conversation alive for more than 2 minutes. I consider Italian much easier for the English speaker--at least orally. There are no sounds in Italian that aren't also found in English and words are vowel-heavy and drawn out so the learner has more time for comprehension. Spanish is much shorter and quicker. The grammar also shouldn't pose much of a problem. At least one advantage of Italian grammar is that the present perfect basically takes the place of the preterite. French and Italian are very similar grammatically and lexically, but French still wins in the lexical category from an English speaker's perspective because of the direct influence that French had on English. When taking all Romance languages into consideration, I think the only area in which Spanish wins for simplicity is spelling. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| patuco Diglot Moderator Gibraltar Joined 7015 days ago 3795 posts - 4268 votes Speaks: Spanish, English* Personal Language Map | Message 12 of 32 29 June 2006 at 11:15am | IP Logged | |||||
According to his post, Ardaschir recommends: French Spanish Latin Italian Catalan Portuguese Occitan Romanian in that order (and he gives the reasons below the list). I find it interesting that he would advise learning Portuguese after Catalan. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sinfonia Senior Member Wales Joined 6744 days ago 255 posts - 261 votes Speaks: English* | Message 13 of 32 29 June 2006 at 3:24pm | IP Logged | |||||
What an interesting -- as in somewhat bizarre -- thread! Ardaschir has some strange things to say about certain languages and language learning! Occitan not really a spoken language?! Couldn't find any speakers in the whole of the south of France?! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Eriol Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6866 days ago 118 posts - 130 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Portuguese | Message 14 of 32 29 June 2006 at 3:35pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I'll take the chance and ask a quite hypothetical question:
Let's say that a person with no previous knowledge of any romance language wants to achieve basic reading skills in all of the major languages in the group. Where should they start? To me it seems quite obvious that you should begin with one language, learn it really well and then move on from there. But which one to pick? What is the "in the middle language" out of the big four? (Romanian, Latin and any of the smaller "dialects" are disqualified due to lack of good learning material and usefulness.) Is French the biggest problem with its strange orthography and does that mean that you should start with it or leave it until later? Is there any advantage in learning Italian first since it's supposedly closer to Latin? Or doesn't it matter much and you could just choose whatever strikes your fancy? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Journeyer Triglot Senior Member United States tristan85.blogspot.c Joined 6868 days ago 946 posts - 1110 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, German Studies: Sign Language | Message 15 of 32 29 June 2006 at 3:39pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Well, with Spanish I am able to follow a fair amount of written French, Italian, and Portuguese. At least I think I am, due to what I've seen.
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| Sir Nigel Senior Member United States Joined 7104 days ago 1126 posts - 1102 votes 2 sounds | Message 16 of 32 29 June 2006 at 5:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I would chose the first language based on need as the "big four" Romance language have relative difficulty.
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