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Spanish and Italian together | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Silvance5 Groupie United States Joined 5494 days ago 86 posts - 118 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, French | Message 1 of 18 15 April 2010 at 10:28pm | IP Logged |
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I'm about 4 months into my Spanish, and I would like to start working on Italian on the side. I'm taking Spanish in a classroom setting and the Italian would be on my own time. Is this feasible? Are the languages too similar for me to be able to learn them simultaneously?
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| Kika Tetraglot Newbie Poland soffa.pl Joined 5354 days ago 3 posts - 5 votes Speaks: Polish*, EnglishC2, German, SpanishB2 | Message 2 of 18 16 April 2010 at 1:22am | IP Logged |
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I have learnt all my languages simultaneously and found no problem with it.
However they were not very much similar. Anyway, if my experience is of any use for you, I would say that learning simultaneously had no influence on my progress. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Smart Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5339 days ago 352 posts - 398 votes Speaks: Spanish, English*, Latin, French Studies: German | Message 3 of 18 16 April 2010 at 5:08am | IP Logged |
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I would highly recommend you reach intermediate level in Spanish before touching Italian.
Get Assimil Italian with Ease when you start Italian :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| TheBiscuit Tetraglot Senior Member Mexico Joined 5923 days ago 532 posts - 619 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Italian Studies: German, Croatian | Message 4 of 18 16 April 2010 at 7:40pm | IP Logged |
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I think this works better if you concentrate more on exposure type stuff i.e. reading, listening, music, TV etc. At least that has been my experience. When I started learning Italian I had already done the 'learning' part of Spanish and I found knowing Spanish (and French) helped immensely in understanding Italian.
I teach on a degree course where the kids are learning two languages in the classroom (English and French) and most of them seem to confuse the two, a lot. Perhaps it's because they're trying to learn two languages as their second language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| furrykef Senior Member United States furrykef.com/ Joined 6472 days ago 681 posts - 862 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Japanese, Latin, Italian | Message 5 of 18 16 April 2010 at 8:15pm | IP Logged |
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I suppose there's no harm in trying the idea out. If you keep getting the two languages confused, drop one and come back to it later. If not, well then, there's no problem, right?
I study both Spanish and Italian myself, but I waited until I was already pretty good at Spanish (well, the written language anyway) before really diving in with Italian. So far I don't confuse them at all, but I've still not studied a whole lot of Italian. But I have no idea if I'd confuse them if I were learning both from scratch at the same time. - Kef 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| victor-osorio Diglot Groupie Venezuela Joined 5432 days ago 73 posts - 129 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: Italian | Message 6 of 18 17 April 2010 at 2:42am | IP Logged |
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I'm pretty sure that when you start learning and practising the verbal conjugations in
Italian things are going to get a little bit messy. I mean, if I were you I wouldn't start STUDYING Italian until I master the Spanish verbal tenses. Meanwhile I think it's nice idea to read texts in Italian just to see if you get something out of context. But not actively studying it. KIKA: What do you mean when you say that learning those languages simultaneously didn't have any influence on your progress? Do you mean it took you as much time to learn the languages simultaneously as if would have taken you learning them apart? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| canada38 Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5495 days ago 304 posts - 417 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French Studies: Portuguese, Japanese | Message 7 of 18 17 April 2010 at 1:27pm | IP Logged |
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I'm learning both languages that way; Spanish in class and Italian at home. However, I
also speak French and have studied a good amount of Latin, so clearly those are of help. I don't think the two languages are as similar as everyone thinks, but I think it would still be easy to mix them up until you can really see their differences. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| psy88 Senior Member United States Joined 5591 days ago 469 posts - 882 votes Studies: Spanish*, Japanese, Latin, French | Message 8 of 18 18 April 2010 at 11:37pm | IP Logged |
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My experience was somewhat do different. I had three years of Italian in college and was fluent enough to travel in Italy and be able to do well in the the typical social/tourist situations. In Rome I was even mistaken for a native by other natives. However, years later, when I had (unfortunately) lost much of my Italian through disuse, I started to study Spanish. I found that my Italian came back and, at least initially, got in the way. It is called negative transference of learning. After reaching a conversational level with Spanish (and motivated not a little by this web page!) I decided to add a second language. I thought of Italian but was afraid of the negative transference again. I picked French, a language I had studied and enjoyed a very long time ago in high school. The French does not impact my Spanish nor the Spanish my French the way Italian did. Of course, you might say that if I really had my Italian down pat it would not have interfered. Perhaps, but for me they were just too similar. As an example, when I had traveled in Mexico I spoke Italian and I was understood more in the non-tourist areas than if I used English.
So, from my experiences the two were not a good combination due to my own short comings and the close similarity I perceived in mixing them. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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