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Which romance language next? | ||
Tags: Romance Languages | French | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Bunni Triglot Newbie United States Joined 6554 days ago 13 posts - 13 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese, Mandarin Studies: Cantonese, French, Spanish, Arabic (Written), Portuguese, Korean, Hindi, Indonesian, Swahili, Twi | Message 9 of 17 16 December 2006 at 6:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
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My suggestion us to study French first and then Portuguese. Portuguese actually tends to be a bit more difficult than French from my experience, so if you learn French first, it may make your Portuguese learning less difficult. Portuguese pronunciation and grammar, I feel, is more difficult than French pronunciation and grammar.
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| Timbaland Newbie United States Joined 6568 days ago 36 posts - 41 votes Speaks: English* | Message 10 of 17 16 December 2006 at 8:43pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I wouldn't say French grammar is any more difficult than that of any other Romance language for an English speaker. In truth, it's about the same - just slightly different. I agree you should study that which interests you most.
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| Cypher Tetraglot Newbie United States Joined 6928 days ago 29 posts - 29 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Korean | Message 11 of 17 17 December 2006 at 11:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I'd go as far as to say that French is probably easier because so much English vocabulary has come directly from old French.
I went in the opposite direction, starting with French and then starting with Spanish, and I hadn't even learned that much French yet at the time (2 years of high school French). I found that because French and Spanish prononciation were so different, that I didn't really have that much trouble with confusing them when I spoke, even though I was studying both at the same time. The grammar and vocabulary similarities between the two, however, only made things easier. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| *Aquarius* Triglot Newbie Poland Joined 6603 days ago 39 posts - 40 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, German Studies: Spanish, French | Message 12 of 17 18 December 2006 at 9:58am | IP Logged | |||||
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Well, I don't know if my advice is helpful, but I'm learning Spanish too; and I want to begin French as soon as possible and then Italian. I'm not thinking about any other Romance language yet, but I'd advise to learn:
1. French 2. Italian 3. Portuguese 4. Romanian Edited by *Aquarius* on 18 December 2006 at 9:59am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Andy_Liu Triglot Senior Member Hong Kong leibby.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6787 days ago 255 posts - 257 votes  Speaks: Mandarin, Cantonese*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 13 of 17 18 December 2006 at 10:01am | IP Logged | |||||
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If I take French first, what next, in order of difficulty?
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| Raincrowlee Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 6703 days ago 621 posts - 808 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Indonesian, Japanese | Message 14 of 17 18 December 2006 at 9:21pm | IP Logged | |||||
Hahaha. If that's the case, then I'd suggest studying some non-Indo-European language for six months, like Arabic or Japanese. After you get comfortable with the basics of something as different as those languages, you will realize that French is like an old friend and all those things you're afraid of will seem like nothing in comparison. French isn't as bad as you make it sound. You've already become familiar with the harder parts of the language, namely gender, agreement and the more complex verb conjugations, because those features are already present in Spanish. You also have a lot of the voacbulary because it shares so much with both English and Spanish. The orthography isn't so bad once you get used to it. I would say start with French. First off, if you don't like it and get bogged down, you can stop and start learning either Portuguese or Italian and come back to it later. Second, if it really is the hardest of the three, it would be good to get an early start. Third, you might find that it's not as difficult as you feared, and you might even enjoy the challenge. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Marc Frisch Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6666 days ago 1001 posts - 1169 votes Speaks: German*, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Persian, Tamil | Message 15 of 17 19 December 2006 at 5:41am | IP Logged | |||||
Italy is the country with the largest number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites in the world, more than all Portuguese-speaking countries combined. It's one of the best places to travel to a) because it's one of the most beautiful countries in the world b) because there is a fairly large tourist industry so you don't have to worry about finding a hotel or restaurant etc. In Brazil (which is already much less interesting from a historical/cultural point of view), the distances are so enormous that you shouldn't even dream about seeing the whole country, while in Italy it's possible to visit Venise, Naples, Rome, and Milan in one or two weeks. To sum up, I think that Italian beats Portuguese when it comes to travel value. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6583 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 16 of 17 19 December 2006 at 6:56am | IP Logged | |||||
To be honest, French's reputation for having an impossible orthography is largely overrated (apart from some specifik words, which are so funny that you'll learn them straight away, anyway, like "oeufs", pronounced (sort of) like the English word "a"). I think it comes from the people who started learning French, but never really got anywhere, due to lack of tenacity or for other reasons. Once you get "into" it, it's really not that hard at all (and of course it's a piece of cake compared to English). During dictation, I realized that I could spell most of the words upon hearing them, even though I'd never heard or seen them before. The liasons, however, are horrible. I'm still hesitating, mainly because the French don't follow their own rules. The really difficult part is the listening comprehension. That'll take a whole lot of movie watching to get through. But then again, movie watching is hardly the most boring part of language study, and French movies are some of the best in the world (that never ceases to amaze me. Apart from "Les Visiteurs", I've never in my life seen a bad French movie!). 1 person has voted this message useful |
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