French or Italian?
Hi everyone!
Which languae do you think I should learn? I like them both, but French a little more, because I like France and its literature. However, French seems to be harder in regards to pronounciation, while Italian is a phonetic language. Also, I'm very bad with pronounciation, and I'm afraid I won't be able to speak well. My first language was Polish, and I still have an accent when I talk English. Please help me decide!
I studied Spanish for the last to year, by the way.
Since both are fairly popular choices and you are interested in both, you may also consider some more things:
- which is easier because of more good learning materials and help from native speakers you can meet?
- My experience that, despite a few complicated rules and quite a few exceptions, French pronunciation is still fairly regular. Let's think out of the box. For every word item (or phrase; because French has liaison and I believe almost every language has its own unique expressions) has to be remembered through means so that each word enters into the long-term memory. Although easier spelling makes pronunciation easier, you still have to remember the word which is inseparable from the pronunciation. ALA you do enough regular practice, pronunciation and spelling shouldn't be too difficult.
It all comes down to two things: motivation and interest. Beyond the basic levels, whichever language you are learning, no matter how similar it is to any languages you already know (to different degrees), is equally difficult. You won't learn a supposedly easy language you don't like; but if you truly like things like Chinese, a script that is hardly phonetic, you would still try hard to learn it despite possible difficulties in practice.
(btw, personal interest is exactly a reason why I'm delaying Japanese at the moment, even though I'm supposed to be one of the few peoples who can learn the Japanese script very quickly [and I did] and know a lot of Kanji for free orthographically...)
>> sorry for some obvious grammatical mistakes (and maybe typos).
The exceptions of French words, namely those about spelling or certain function words (that is associated with things like liaison), IMO, may be treated like foreign words.
My experience with German is that, even though German spelling is much much easier than French, not to mention English, a lot of loanwords just don't follow spelling rules and are just remembered by heart or whichever methods. Esperanto is perfectly phonetic, but 1) you still have to remember a lot of word items and 2) the heavy use of prefixes/suffixes requires people to think more creatively, which is, conceptually, a unique difficulty of Esperanto itself.
So, in the long run, the most important motivator is still personal interest. Even if you had the best materials in the world and were always surrounded by native speakers, you still wouldn't want to learn a language if you don't like it.
Since you already studied Spanish, I'd say you take Italian, it'd be way easier for you.
Nana : si les deux langues te plaisent, tu dois pouvoir apprendre les deux. Non ?
Since you already studied Spanish, I'd say you take Italian, it'd be way easier for you
WHY ????
cuz, french is like the least romace language of all the romance languages, it is way too germanized, it is the least understandable language for any latin-language speakers, that's why.
Learn patois is better than French
French isn't germanized AT ALL, it is Latin based.
Italians can understand French for example
Spanish and Italian are languages that should be studied more.
<< French isn't germanized AT ALL, it is Latin based. >>
It actually does have some Germanic influences, as well as influences from Gaulish (which is Celtic), just as Spanish has some influence from Basque, etc.
- Kef
<< French isn't germanized AT ALL, it is Latin based. >>
It actually does have some Germanic influences, as well as influences from Gaulish (which is Celtic), just as Spanish has some influence from Basque, etc.
- Kef
It has Germanic influences exactly like Italian, so are they Germanic languages?
Nobody was claiming that French is actually a Germanic language. At least, I hope not. Saying it is "germanized" is different from saying it is Germanic.
Nana,
So you started with Spanish last year.
If you have already a good intuitive (nearly fluent) command of Spanish, you can take Italian. Otherwise do not, not yet. Too much risk of confusion with both languages polluting each other.
Italiano! Perché è una lingua fabulosa!