Which language should I learn after Italian: Spanish or French?

September 11, 2014 7:29 AM

I plan to try to learn both eventually, it's just a matter of order.

Throughout the years I worked on learning Italian, motivated by my ancestral heritage and love of the culture and language itself. This was mostly during college and I had more time and resources to devote to the task. I was also able to take intensive language classes in Italy and make Italian friends. My grasp of the language is solidly intermediate though a bit rusty. I'd like to move on to both French and Spanish at some point. I don't have any immediate plans to use either language, but would like to travel to countries where they speak either of those languages in the future. My main goal is to be conversational in both, though of course I would like to be able to read and write in the languages as well.

I've heard that French and Italian are very similar grammatically and it also seems like Spanish and Italian are very similar in pronunciation and vocabulary so I could see the pros to transition to either. I also live in the US so there are more Spanish speakers where I live than French.

So basically, I would like to know if I should learn French or Spanish next, or if it matters. And another question is, would it be helpful to get a book in Italian for learning either of these languages since they are all romance languages? Has anyone had any success with learning a language via a language that is not your 1st?

Thanks!

posted by Shadow Boxer to Writing & Language (14 answers total)

Best answer: I speak French decently and used to speak Italian decently. I've never studied Spanish but I can understand it when I'm immersed in it long enough.

I've had native Italian speakers tell me that they forget how Italian works when they start studying Spanish. The two languages are so close that they're almost mutually intelligible -- I've seen and participated in conversations where one person spoke European Spanish and another Standard Italian and both people understood each other -- which seems to make it complicated to transition from learning one to learning the other, as they can easily get very muddled in your head.

French and Italian are similar grammatically but fairly different (at least as Romance languages go) in pronunciation, which means, for me at least, knowing one made learning the other one easier rather than more complicated.

(I am of course not claiming that one can never know and speak both Spanish and Italian, as millions of people do. But my vote for moving from "solidly intermediate" to another language would be for studying French.)
posted by jaguar at 7:46 AM on September 11, 2014

Best answer: I personally would do Spanish first, because it's more likely to be useful in the near future since it's spoken so widely throughout the US, travel plans aside. I only know bits of Spanish, tiny bits of French, and food-related bits of Italian, so I can't answer in terms of being an experienced polyglot.
posted by obfuscation at 7:46 AM on September 11, 2014

I speak Spanish and Portuguese and have some knowledge of French. Spanish and Portuguese are close enough that they've become mixed up in my head. I learned French after becoming fluent in Spanish and Portuguese and I found it easy to learn while still being able to keep it separate from the other Romance languages. So this echoes what jaguar mentions above.

(I have found I can follow along Italian movies without reading the subtitles after about half an hour of so of listening, and I have never studied Italian other than knowing food-related words.)
posted by research monkey at 8:02 AM on September 11, 2014

I'm with obfuscation. Ask yourself which language would be more useful. If you live in the US, that's probably Spanish (and you'll probably have more opportunities to immerse yourself it in, which is essential to learning any language - or at least has been for me).
posted by Blissful at 8:03 AM on September 11, 2014

I don't think it really matters. If you've got the aptitude for language, you'll pick either one up pretty well. I studied Italian in high school (and was somewhat more conversational than "high school Italian" would lead you to believe) and transitioning to Spanish in college led to a fair bit of vocabulary confusion--the sound of the two is, as noted above, somewhat similar--but I don't feel that I was helped or hindered particularly.

I will say that I evidently speak Italian with a Spanish accent (or look Spanish, although I don't think I do), because when I began conversations in Italian while vacationing in Italy, I was answered in Spanish (by Italians) more than once. The two are so close that although I noticed the disconnect, it wasn't troublesome to continue the conversation in either language.

I find French to be distinct from both the other languages in a lot of ways (although I haven't studied it as much), and it's certainly much less-spoken in the US, so ... another vote for Spanish-first, I suppose.
posted by uncleozzy at 8:11 AM on September 11, 2014

Best answer: Everyone above is wise and correct, spanish is so close to italian that you will likely breeze through learning the basics. French, while also easy, is closer to Catalan than it is to Spanish or Italian, and (i know this is the wrong word but idk what the right one is) the mouthfeel of French is often quite different to both Spanish and Italian, and it can be frustrating when you see a familiar word with a pronunciation that is totally other than what you're expecting.

So really I guess it depends on if you want a breeze or a bit of a challenge.
posted by poffin boffin at 8:34 AM on September 11, 2014 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I've studied travelers Spanish and Portuguese. I am fluent in French; it's my second language. I have a miserable time keeping Spanish, Portuguese and Italian separate in my head. I can understand when it is written and spoken but I always want to reply in French.

My vote is FRENCH! Mainly because French pop music is so chic. And French movies are so different in humor and in style. Many countries list French as their official language or are part of la Francophonie; for travel in Europe, you will do well with English + French. Clearly I love this language.

(You being you, it sounds like Spanish will be more practical though. So ask yourself what will motivate you most, since the majority of language-learning is being motivated.)

Also I find relating a 3rd language back to my 2nd language is easier than relating it back to English - conjugation, definite articles etc. This is true even when I've studied slavic languages or Japanese. So +1 to learning a language via your 2nd language (though the books I read are not of the Hablamos Francés! variety, it's just that I related it in my head that way).

Honestly if you are jonesing for a 3rd language, I might pick something entirely non-romantic, just to clear your head a little. Then cycle back and try Spanish or French.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 8:38 AM on September 11, 2014 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Hey, native (Mexican) Spanish speaker here. I learned French in high school and Italian in college. You really do have to think about whether you want something a easy or hard. Italian was a cinch for me (I practically didn't study, could intuit sentence construction, and was often able to guess words by 'Italianising' Spanish words). French was still easier for me than my English-speaking classmates but the pronunciation was tough. Italian did affect my Spanish for a while - I went through a period in which I randomly replaced Italian with Spanish. Anyway, I think you'll have fun learning either language. If you ever want to drop me a line in Spanish (or Italian) for some practice, feel free.
posted by Partario at 8:52 AM on September 11, 2014

Best answer: I took Spanish for years and studied Italian as a hobby for about six months. I've never studied French though I would like to. When I studied Italian, there was a native Spanish speaker in the class who frequently unintentionally answered questions in Spanish. It seems like there are a lot of words that overlap. I wasn't good at either language and mixed up the two on occasion. A simple example - in both Italian and Spanish, 1 is uno, 4 is quattro in Italian but cuatro in Spanish, 8 is otto in Italian, but ocho in Spanish.

I struggled a little to keep straight "ch" sounds in English, Spanish, and Italian. English and Spanish speakers both pronounce "ch" sounds the same way (like chocolate) but in Italian, the English "ch" sound is a "ci" (like ciao) whereas in Italian, if you see a "ch," it's pronounced like a hard "c" (like gnocchi).

As an outside perspective on French, it seems like there are a lot more accent marks involved than in either Spanish or Italian. Plus I think that the pronunciation in French is less intuitive than in Spanish or Italian. I've never studied French and when I look at French words, I have no idea how I would pronounce them. There are French sounds that I don't think you make in either Italian or Spanish. I think that Spanish would be more useful than French generally but maybe if you distance yourself slightly from Italian in your head, it will be easier to learn French now and Spanish eventually.
posted by kat518 at 10:23 AM on September 11, 2014

I studied Spanish for many years in middle school and high school, then I studied Italian for a couple of years in college. Now I mix up the two languages and my mind is completely jumbled. I don't think that would have happened had I taken French in college, as I feel that there is a greater difference between French and Spanish/Italian. (During my very first Italian class, the professor had us all counting out loud together - and the entire class said "UNO! DOS! TRES!" Boy did the professor not like that, but he said it happened every year)

YMMV, however - you probably won't have the same issue if you keep practicing. For me, the confusion really solidified once I stopped taking Italian classes, and the two languages subsequently gelled together into Spanitalian (or Italish).
posted by sweetpotato at 10:28 AM on September 11, 2014

One of the factors why Spanish and (dialects of) Italian are so close is that for some centuries the Kingdom of Naples was ruled by either Aragon or Spain (after the unification of Aragon and Castile), so in the southern half of the country there's a certain amount of imports and influences from Spanish in the vernacular languages. But this is not the standard Italian you'd learn at school, anyway.
posted by sukeban at 11:29 AM on September 11, 2014

Best answer: I'm going to have to suggest Spanish, only because you said you live in the US. #1 reason being that it can potentially help with a career in the future. #2 reason being that the Spanish-speaking population is growing and as you already know Spanish is already very common, especially in certain parts of the country. I don't know where you live but the entire Southwest US is heavily populated with people that only speak Spanish. It is definitely not a minority language anymore.

Spanish is the more practical and probably eventually will prove to be a useful choice if you're a US resident.

Oh, and there's more countries that speak Spanish than French. So if you plan on traveling you have a higher chance of Spanish being more useful to you, maybe?

Unless you're planning on moving to Canada at some point. Then French by all means!
posted by atinna at 1:39 PM on September 11, 2014

Response by poster: Thanks everyone! Good points made for either language but I think that the tipping point is indeed that I live in the US and so it will definitely be more useful for me to know Spanish (and will have more opportunity to practice).

I'm hoping that my Italian helps rather than hinders me - one of my weaknesses is listening comprehension and I hope it will help more with learning Spanish, at least on that front. I can already pick more words listening to Spanish than French so that's encouraging. If I enter into a Spanitaliano spiral early on, I'll switch to French instead...thanks for the head's up from everyone who's experienced that before!

Grazie, gracias & merci!
posted by Shadow Boxer at 5:07 PM on September 11, 2014

Spanish will give you a much bigger range for travel.
posted by Jacqueline at 5:30 PM on September 11, 2014