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Can a Spanish speaker understand French? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| nicozerpa Triglot Senior Member Argentina Joined 4330 days ago 182 posts - 315 votes  Speaks: Spanish*, Portuguese, English Studies: Italian, German | Message 9 of 31 18 April 2013 at 10:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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I agree with Mad Max. Spoken French is almost impossible to understand for us, but
written French is easier. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| alang Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 7225 days ago 563 posts - 757 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish | Message 10 of 31 18 April 2013 at 11:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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Only when I hear certain cognates, then I understand those words. Otherwise it is a struggle. It also depends on the individual if they make an attempt to pay attention on what is being said. I did a test with Latin on the phrase "What is truth?" for two Spanish speakers. The brother was adamant he did not comprehend the phrase and the sister immediately translated to Spanish when asked. The brother realized the similarities after his sister gave the answer. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Tsopivo Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4475 days ago 258 posts - 411 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Esperanto | Message 11 of 31 19 April 2013 at 8:37am | IP Logged | ||
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On the HTLAL website, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian are all in the "yellow spot" (80% of transparent words) while French is in the orange one (50% transparent words) so it seems normal than Spanish, Portuguese and Italian are mutually intelligible to some extent while French is not.
4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| zerrubabbel Senior Member United States Joined 4604 days ago 232 posts - 287 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Mandarin | Message 12 of 31 19 April 2013 at 12:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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What about for Spanish/Italian as a second language speakers? Can anyone say if they experience the same
transparency of native romance language speakers? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Majka Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic kofoholici.wordpress Joined 4661 days ago 307 posts - 755 votes Speaks: Czech*, German, English Studies: French Studies: Russian | Message 13 of 31 19 April 2013 at 12:37pm | IP Logged | ||
I am answering from different perspective. I learned French in the high school. At the same time, I had command of German, English and Russian, no idea how these played into it. I could understand spoken Italian pretty well without ever having learned it (I was able to follow normal conversation, even explanations of technical problems, I had even translated for friends when on holidays). I was responding in English or German. I was able to decode Spanish with problems when I tried to read it and with yet bigger problem when listening to it - almost to point where it wasn't possible, or possible without long time "listening-in", tuning my ear to it. I would be probably able to survive (follow very basic instructions) in Spanish but it would leave me exhausted. With time, I have forgotten all of French and last year re-started it. I am pretty good in passive and still pretty shaky in active skills (huge gap). Recently, I have started to learn Italian and Spanish at the same time /really at the same day with roughly same materials/. Italian comes much easier to me than Spanish, to the point where I can read books and listen to audiobooks in Italian but cannot do the same in Spanish. I have discovered comparative grammar of French / Spanish / Italian and I am working through it. It helps me to bridge the gap between Italian and Spanish. But Spanish takes much more effort on my part - about 2x as much - when studying, when decoding the spoken or written word, when learning grammar - then Italian. My study progress show this as well, almost exactly - if I need to repeat the Italian lesson 2x, I need to repeat the Spanish one 4x - 5x. For every finished Spanish lesson, I have finished 2 Italian lessons... 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| schoenewaelder Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5564 days ago 759 posts - 1197 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 14 of 31 19 April 2013 at 2:30pm | IP Logged | ||
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It probably works easier the other way round. I know I could catch a few words of Spanish just from knowing French. French is famously difficult to understand. Spanish is relatively more straightforward. Edited by schoenewaelder on 19 April 2013 at 2:31pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6601 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 15 of 31 20 April 2013 at 1:02am | IP Logged | ||
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Yeah it's far more "clear". On the other hand, written French is quite easy.
A learner doesn't have the same advantage as a native speaker because they have less exposure (apart from, say, an American learning Italian and hearing a lot of Spanish), and more importantly, mutual intelligibility often relies on the words from the "periphery" - rare words, dialectal words, old meanings etc. Sometimes it's also just about Sprachgefühl, like knowing which sound shifts make sense and which don't. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| agantik Triglot Senior Member France Joined 4639 days ago 217 posts - 335 votes Speaks: French*, English, Italian Studies: German, Norwegian | Message 16 of 31 20 April 2013 at 7:05am | IP Logged | ||
I am not aware that fellow French people can understand Spanish without having ever studied it. It is true that Spanish is the most popular language among high school students because it has the reputation of being easy to learn, which is quite exaggerated according to teachers (otherwise all French students studying it would be rapidly proficient, which is far from being the case!) 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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