Comment on I either want to learn French or Italian. Which should I learn in your opinion?
Sergio@piefed.social 1 week ago
Italian might cause me to mix up Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian
For speaking the language, that’s a consideration. But if you’re listening or reading, I’ve found they tend to strengthen one another.
I suggest the following:
- do you want a “quick win”? Then go for Italian
- do you want a challenge, to keep building on in the future? Then go for French.
paraplu@piefed.social 1 week ago
My experience starting with Spanish, and then trying French was that it still warded off most of the difficulty others in my class had.
There were loose patterns for grammatical gender for others to follow, but it mirrored Spanish well enough that it was ignorable. The next big thing that tripped classmates up was the subjunctive. French didn’t seem to use it as often, but the concepts largely translated.
There were a few false friends, but it seemed rare. Hearing spelling may be harder in French, there are a lot of homophones or near homophones.
All that to say, French should still largely be a quick win (in as much a language ever can be).
Sergio@piefed.social 1 week ago
I still have a big problem understanding spoken French, especially if it’s by one native speaker to another. And I’ve discovered that my French accent is literally laughable. In contrast, I find Italian much easier to understand and speak.
Cheesus@lemmy.ca 1 week ago
Subjunctive is used very frequently in French actually, especially in day-to-day conversation.
“Il faut qu’on y aille” “Ça se trouve qu’on puisse…” Etc.
paraplu@piefed.social 1 week ago
Oh I didn’t mean to imply French didn’t use it. Just that it seemed to come up in a slightly more narrow set of circumstances. That could’ve been a misunderstanding though.