tuffy Triglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6993 days ago 1394 posts - 1412 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, German Studies: Spanish
| Message 1 of 32 27 June 2006 at 6:09am | IP Logged |
What are in short the similarities between romance languages? The word order for instance: if I know the Spanish word order, is that the same in French and Italian, both?
And why can you learn another Roman language twice as fast after the first one? Is it because of the word order or other things? Italian looks a lot like Spanish when it comes to the words I think. But French seems to differ quite a lot.
I get the impression that once you are fluent in Spanish, you'll probably be able to understand Italian tv a lot too? (There are Spanish speakers who do without having studied Italian I believe.)
But this certainly won't be the case with French I think.
Anyway, word order alone is something that would be nice, if it were the same for all Roman languages. That would be a big advantage when learning a new language.
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patuco Diglot Moderator Gibraltar Joined 6974 days ago 3795 posts - 4268 votes Speaks: Spanish, English* Personal Language Map
| Message 2 of 32 27 June 2006 at 6:44am | IP Logged |
tuffy wrote:
I get the impression that once you are fluent in Spanish, you'll probably be able to understand Italian tv a lot too? (There are Spanish speakers who do without having studied Italian I believe.)
But this certainly won't be the case with French I think. |
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It's true in my case. French was (still is) harder to learn than Italian.
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Journeyer Triglot Senior Member United States tristan85.blogspot.c Joined 6827 days ago 946 posts - 1110 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, German Studies: Sign Language
| Message 3 of 32 27 June 2006 at 11:36am | IP Logged |
I've heard somewhere that actually French is closer in relation to Italian than Spanish is (grammatically, not phonetically).
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brumblebee Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6734 days ago 206 posts - 212 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese
| Message 4 of 32 27 June 2006 at 12:50pm | IP Logged |
Yes, the Romance languages are very similar. I'm to an intermediate level in Spanish, and have good reading proficiency, and I can also read in Italian, Portuguese, and French (to a certain degree) even though I have not really studied them.
The way I see it is that Spanish vocabulary is closest to Portuguese, Spanish grammar is closest to French, and Spanish pronunciation is closest to Italian.
Since they are so similar, learning one will make it easier to learn a second or third one.
I hope this helps. :)
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jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6868 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map
| Message 5 of 32 27 June 2006 at 1:51pm | IP Logged |
I don't remember which Romance language is better to learn first (is it French or Spanish?), but anyway, I wonder if it even might be so that after you have learned the first Romance language you can learn a second and a third in a much shorter time - perhaps even in shorter time than two Germanic languages (despite that you already speak one)...
When I learned French my previous knowledge of Spanish was only helpful, and I'm pretty sure that if I had continued my studies I could have added a third Romance language.
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tuffy Triglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6993 days ago 1394 posts - 1412 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, German Studies: Spanish
| Message 6 of 32 27 June 2006 at 4:35pm | IP Logged |
That's good to hear. Maybe I'll pick up French after Spanish some day. I was attempting to do that a little prior to Spanish, until I suddenly had to switch :)
I hadn't learned much yet and now I only remember a few simple things like the days of the week in French. After a while I could hardly count anymore in French because I mixed it up with Spanish. That does seem difficult to me, avoiding mixing up the languages.
Edited by tuffy on 27 June 2006 at 4:36pm
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jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6868 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map
| Message 7 of 32 27 June 2006 at 5:27pm | IP Logged |
Ah, I found the thread I thought of earlier:
Romance language learning sequence. It might be to some help. Scroll down to Ardaschir's post for some good ideas.
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brumblebee Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6734 days ago 206 posts - 212 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese
| Message 8 of 32 28 June 2006 at 10:49am | IP Logged |
Spanish is usually a good choice for a first language. It is pretty easy and it has few irregularities, and it has phonetic spelling (except for h's). French is harder to learn than spelling, probably because of its nasal sounds and strange spellings. Italian is also very easy to learn like Spanish, but the grammar is a little bit more difficult.
That's my opinion for Romance Languages. (I don't know very much about Portuguese and other Romance Languages.
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