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Which Romance language to self teach? | ||
Tags: Romance Languages | Italian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| 11thHeaven Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4472 days ago 6 posts - 6 votes Studies: English | Message 1 of 16 05 November 2012 at 7:15pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hi all, I'd really like to learn a romance language (French, Spanish or Italian) but can't afford language lessons so am looking into self studying. Which of the 3 languages is generally considered to be the least difficult to self teach?
I've done French to secondary school level a few years ago - would this give me a reasonable head start with it? Edited by 11thHeaven on 05 November 2012 at 7:16pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Elexi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5376 days ago 938 posts - 1839 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 2 of 16 05 November 2012 at 7:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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Probably French - because there is just more material out there for self teaching,
followed by Spanish and then Italian (don't know if that is a controversial statement). Also having a little bit of school French certainly gets you moving quicker. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Gosiak Triglot Senior Member Poland Joined 4937 days ago 241 posts - 361 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, German Studies: Norwegian, Welsh | Message 3 of 16 05 November 2012 at 8:10pm | IP Logged | ||
Sure, most people retain bits and pieces of formerly studied languages even when dropped the studies years before deciding to continue. I have no idea about your former language level so I can not say much. Have you tried to brush up your French? You could go through your old books and check if some things are still familiar. Since you've already invested some time in learning that language why not give it another try? Romance languages do not vary drastically in their levels of difficulty, pick the one that sounds beautiful to your ears or the one that is a native language of your friends or maybe the one your favourite author wrote their masterpieces in. Which country would you choose for your holiday destination? Find some intrinsic motivation for choosing one of those languages. Good luck. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4655 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 4 of 16 05 November 2012 at 9:11pm | IP Logged | ||
I've never heard of shortage in Spanish (or Italian) courses... But to answer the question: If you like any of the three better, take that one! If you don't, go for Italian: phonetic script and easy to pronounce (unlike French) and relatively easy verbal system (unlike Spanish). Edited by Josquin on 05 November 2012 at 9:24pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5192 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 5 of 16 05 November 2012 at 10:21pm | IP Logged | ||
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Why not give yourself a week of study with each language and then start out with the one that appealed the most to you?
3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| 11thHeaven Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4472 days ago 6 posts - 6 votes Studies: English | Message 6 of 16 05 November 2012 at 10:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for the reply guys, that's really helpful :)
While I get the feeling that French or Spanish would be languages with more utility (I could speak them in more countries) I'm more interested in Italian, I think. Can anyone recommend any good Italian resources, or is this the wrong subforum to ask this in? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6408 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 7 of 16 05 November 2012 at 11:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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Comparing the amount of materials available for these languages is like asking what is more worth visiting: Louvre, El Prado or il Uffizi :) Although ironically, the resources that French and Spanish have and Italian doesn't are mostly due to the fact that the first two cover some underdeveloped areas (mostly in Africa and South America). There's the same "problem" with the Scandinavian languages, btw.
Anyway, my absolutely favourite resource is lyricstraining.com . It's a site with songs in many languages that you can "play" like a game. In the beginning you can also just listen to the songs and follow the lyrics there - each line is highlighted when it's sung (or rapped). Also, this may not be something you wanna do from day one but try to have more and more of your fun in Italian. Mostly music at first, later comic books, Twitter, computer games, parallel texts, books... I also watch a lot of football and Serie A is my favourite league :) But really the techniques you use http://learnanylanguage.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Techniques are more important than the resources themselves:) 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Gosiak Triglot Senior Member Poland Joined 4937 days ago 241 posts - 361 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, German Studies: Norwegian, Welsh | Message 8 of 16 05 November 2012 at 11:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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I can't recommend anything myself because I don't study Italian but I found a useful thread:
Italian free video courses and more and free FSI course .BBC Italian basics: Italian 101 I use Memrise and enjoy it 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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