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Italian and French at the same time. | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| sofiapofia Pentaglot Groupie United Kingdom Joined 4941 days ago 88 posts - 103 votes  Speaks: Swedish, Hindi, Portuguese, English*, Marathi Studies: German, Danish, Sanskrit, Icelandic | Message 1 of 4 24 August 2011 at 6:37pm | IP Logged |
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I need to learn Italian for my degree and wondered if I could start a basic French course at the same time. Would
there be much interference? Oh and the Italian course is an intensive one whilst the French is a beginners one. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ScottScheule Diglot Senior Member United States scheule.blogspot.com Joined 5228 days ago 645 posts - 1176 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Latin, Hungarian, Biblical Hebrew, Old English, Russian, Swedish, German, Italian, French | Message 2 of 4 24 August 2011 at 7:48pm | IP Logged |
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I've said this before, but I think it bears saying again.
1. With related languages, there will be interference that will produce some problems. False friends, spelling, etc. 2. But there will also be re-enforcement of vocabulary and grammar. For example, say you know the words for rock in French and Italian. But you've forgotten the French word (pierre). So you think of the Italian word (pietra). Well once you recall pietra, that's quite likely to jog the memory enough to remember the French word. Moreover, eventually you'll learn certain tricks by which you can guess at the cognate word in the other language. For example, I know that intervocalic consonants in Italian are often voiced in their Spanish cousins. So if I know the Italian word for chain is catena I can take a guess that the Spanish is cadena. And "c"'s in certain contexts became fricatives in French and final syllables were lost, so you could take a guess at the French chaine as well. Now, in my experience, the 2nd positive effect vastly outweighs the 1st negative effect. One reason is, when you start speaking a language, you get into a mode where foreign terms are unlikely to come up, as if certain parts of your brain are sequestered by language. Which is to say, once I start speaking Spanish, after a few minutes, though I know various other languages, they seldom pop into my head to interfere with the terms I'm using. It may be, however, that certain languages are close enough to interfere more actively with each other. Just speculating. But, at the same time, I doubt it. I mean, even with different registers of English, they seem to sequester pretty easily from each other in my usage. If I'm writing English, I typically use a different register than when I'm speaking--nonetheless, I don't have trouble when writing with interference from the lower register terms, and vice versa. Edited by ScottScheule on 24 August 2011 at 7:53pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| yall Diglot Newbie Italy Joined 5961 days ago 22 posts - 31 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Latin, French | Message 3 of 4 25 August 2011 at 1:24am | IP Logged |
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Although Italian and French have a very high lexical similarity, I find that the words sound different enough that interference isn't an issue.
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| Mycroft Diglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5981 days ago 9 posts - 9 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: French, Spanish | Message 4 of 4 25 August 2011 at 9:50am | IP Logged |
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I'd say go for it - the reinforcement will certainly outweigh the interference. I speak
from experience of a degree in Italian (20 years ago) and self-taught French. I'm currently trying to maintain my Italian whilst improving my French with occasional diversions into Spanish and often find initial trouble switching when it comes to speaking/writing/just thinking but the more I do it the easier it becomes. Enjoy your Italian journey - they're so kind to foreigners speaking their language. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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