Which is easier to learn and why: French or Spanish?...

[happykids]

Dd will have to take 4 semesters of one language in college. She will be in grade 12 next year and would like to start preparing to learn her choice of language. She has been learning Italian the past couple of years, but that is not a choice at her college, and she doesn't know enough to CLEP it.

 

Thanks!

Sabrina

[Ailaena]

I really think that after some exposure to Italian, she could go either way. However, the pronunciation would be most similar to Spanish.

 

I speak Spanish and French very well and, interestingly enough, can fumble my way through an Italian movie or book. Im not sure I could actually speak it, but I can understand most of it because it is so close to both languages!

[Hilary]

I wouldn't worry too much about which is "easier" ... if she has some knowledge of Italian, I agree that it will aid her immensely in either French or Spanish. French pronunciation is definitely a bit more tricky.

 

My question would be ... which language is she more likely to use in the future? Certainly in this day and age, a knowledge of Latin American Spanish might well be a career asset and she will have more opportunities to use Spanish on a day-to-day basis (for example, my kids and I often wish we knew Spanish so we could understand what's going on on the "Laura" TV show ... the Spanish equivalent of Maury Povich :lol: ). OTOH, I have a personal bias toward learning French because (no offence to the Spanish) I think French literature is immensely more interesting ... Proust, Zola, Balzac, Hugo, Flaubert, even Jules Verne ... I've been reading French literature my entire adult life and I don't feel like I've even skimmed the surface of what French writers have to offer. Furthermore, Paris is my favorite city in the world, and France my favorite country ... and while you can certainly navigate the country without it, a knowledge of French makes travelling much more enjoyable.

 

So I guess I would be asking, which language will she be more likely to use in the future? If she has a reason to use the language, she will be more motivated to learn it ... and whether the relative ease of learning won't make such a difference.

[Jan P.]

Wow! I think either learning French or Spanish would be great. I think Spanish might come easier due to the similarities in the languages. I'm coming with a Spanish background to Italian since my dd is studying Italian this year. I've been able to pick up Italian quickly. However, if she decides to go with French she still may have an easy time in learning it. Since she has studied Italian she should have by now an understanding of how the grammar of Italian works. She would know about conjugating verbs, verb tenses, formal "you", etc. These same grammar rules apply to French with probably a few variations. Knowing Spanish helped me in learning Latin, too. It didn't help me with declensions, though. I think like the other posters, your dd should go with the language she may use the most or rather the one she really would prefer to learn. I would love to know French. I think it sounds so beautiful. However, I have a difficult time hearing the nuances of this language. Sometimes I wished that I had been a linguist like my uncle!

 

Ciao,

Jan

[happykids]

she will have a heavy class load, so it would be nice for her not to have to struggle.

Spanish looks a little easier because the words seem to be written similar to the way they are pronounced. French words seem to look quite different from their pronounciation. Would this make French harder to learn?

 

Thanks!

Sabrina

[Hilary]

Gosh, this board is loading slowly for me today!!

 

From what I have read, Spanish is a phonetically perfect language. Every word is pronounced the way it looks. Once you learn the rules, you should be able to pronounce every word properly. I don't think French pronounciation is anywhere near as quirky as English (doe and dough ... nay and neigh ... for example), but I think some of the nuances in pronunciation can be challenging. For example, the words dessus (above) and dessous (below) are very difficult for a non-native speaker to distinguish, and yet how different the meanings! Also, final consonants are generally not pronounced and elision is often used to link words (final consonants, whether silent or not, are used to begin the following word if it starts with a vowel or silent "h"). These result in a beautiful, flowing, melodic sound ... but can also make it devilishly hard to understand ... especially if the speaker is a typical French person and speaking a mile a minute :)

 

So, yes, I would say if you're looking for ease of pronunciation and comprehension, Spanish would be your better bet.

[Nan in Mass]

The trick to learning a language well enough to be able to use it is to be exposed to lots of it ON TOP of whatever curriculum you are using, so if you live in an area where French TV is available, and you can cheaply buy French comic books, and it is easy to take a day trip to a place where French is spoken, then I'd go with French. If Spanish is readily available, I'd go with the Spanish. For both, it is easy to get internet radio and play it in the background. The idea is to expose yourself to enough of the language that your brain starts to recognize where one word begins and the next one ends, and starts automatically to get the accent right when you are speaking it. That helps you to make the switch between just being able to do school French or Spanish and actually being able to use the language. Reading lots of the language with a dictionary is a great help with building vocabulary, but that requires finding books (like TinTin and Astrix comics GRIN) that you actually WANT to read. Otherwise, you are unlikely to do it. All these things help "cement" a language. They also help keep you motivated.

-Nan

[Cindy in the NH Woods]

my dd's Latin tutor at the time told us that there are certain sounds in the French language that need to be learned before the palate is fully formed at around age fifteen. I'm not sure how scientifically valid this is, but she spoke several languages beautifully, and had lived in Europe a good portion of her life, so we took her advice.

 

Just a thought for consideration. ;)

 

Cindy

[C_l_e_0..Q_c]

I believe there are sounds like that in all languages. The 'th' sound in English was a killer for me...

[Mabelen]

Phonetically speaking Spanish will be definitely easier than French. In terms of level of difficulty in this area, Italian and Spanish are on par. They are not perfectly phonetic by any means, but close enough for this not to be a challenge.

 

One question I have is why can't your daughter keep on taking Italian at College at a more advanced level, say equivalent to Italian 3 or 4 or whichever level is suitable? Please bear with me. Neither my dh or I are US educated and we are still in the process of becoming familiar with the education system here.

 

I just think it would be better to become proficient at a language rather than to just end up knowing a little of two. If you are proficient at Italian, Spanish will be extremely easy to learn later on if necessary. As a native Spanish speaker I found Italian to be very easy to learn.

[Janet in WA]

Dd will have to take 4 semesters of one language in college. She will be in grade 12 next year and would like to start preparing to learn her choice of language. She has been learning Italian the past couple of years, but that is not a choice at her college, and she doesn't know enough to CLEP it.

 

Thanks!

Sabrina

Spanish is universally considered the easiest language to learn because its grammar and pronunciation rules are the simplest.

[Kareni]

You mentioned that taking the CLEP is not a possibility. What about the SAT subject test? Has she taken enough Italian to make that a possibility? There is a sample test of each subject test available in the book:

 

The official study guide for all SAT subject tests

 

It is a big blue book put out by the College Board. You might find a copy of this at your library.

 

Regards,

Kareni

[Mabelen]

Spanish is universally considered the easiest language to learn because its grammar and pronunciation rules are the simplest.

 

I have to disagree here. There is no "universal" easiest language to learn unless you include, for example, Esperanto which was created with simplicity and ease of learning in mind.

 

The level of difficulty of a language depends on many factors, one of which is the learner's native language and knowledge of any other languages. Spanish grammar and pronunciation rules are like I said on the same level of complexity as other languages such as Italian. French grammar is also comparable in terms of complexity, but French pronunciation and spelling rules are harder, it is not as phonetic as Italian and Spanish. On the other hand, many latin based terms came into English via Norman French, so that is something that would make French easier than Spanish even though both are Latin based languages.

 

I believe for a native English speaker there are in fact easier languages than Spanish, such as Dutch, and possibly German.

[threetreasurs]

I found Spanish much easier than French but perhaps only because I took French first?

[Ailaena]

Spanish is universally considered the easiest language to learn because its grammar and pronunciation rules are the simplest.

 

 

 

I always though that Spanish was regionally considered the easiest language because we hear it most often and are attuned to it. Im not sure that this would be true in an Creole speaking area, or in Maine. Plus, like Mabelen said, aside from the sounds, German may actually be easier due to its grammatical construction.

 

I have to admit I thought that my background in Spanish would make it much easier in college, but the upper-division classes were DIFFICULT. The nuances were enough to make my head spin. Plus, there are so many countries with so many different accents...:ack2:

 

I will tell you that for me, each language I learned got easier, because I knew what to expect and how to learn it. HOWEVER, my first semester of Japanese, I had a teacher that used his own materials and presented everything VERY different than any other language class I had taken. I had to leave him and find a "normal" teacher!

[Michelle in MO]

she will have a heavy class load, so it would be nice for her not to have to struggle.

Spanish looks a little easier because the words seem to be written similar to the way they are pronounced. French words seem to look quite different from their pronounciation. Would this make French harder to learn?

 

Thanks!

Sabrina

 

your daughter from studying French. I think French pronunciation is actually not that difficult, once you understand the letter combinations. In my opinion, the spelling, although archaic, is much more "regular" in its patterns than English is, and certain letter combinations (from what I can remember) seem to always make the same sound.

 

I would go with what several have already suggested here: first of all, what is your daughter most interested in? If she has more interest in one language over another, she is likely to do better at that language. Secondly, what does her future entail? Spanish is very practical, no doubt about that. Third, I second what Nan suggests: what resources are available in your area for studying each language? That might also be a very important factor in influencing your decisions.

 

Bonne chance!

[Michelle in MO]

is a Germanic language (Anglo-Saxon); however, grammatically I would say my experience with French proved it to be far simpler than German. I was told by one of my German professors, who had also studied Latin, that German was more similar to Latin in its grammar than the Romance languages. German has retained 4 out of the 5 case endings (nom., acc., gen., and dat.) and substituted prepositional phrases, such as English has, for the ablative case. Overall, I would say that German is considered a more difficult language to master, grammatically-speaking, than French or Spanish. Much of the vocabulary, however, is more familiar to an English speaker, just as much of French vocabulary is familiar to an English speaker, because English has been so heavily influenced by French.

 

Plaid Dad would be more of an expert on this, though! He has a Ph.D. in German, and I have just a B.A.

 

For anyone who has studied Latin, though, I would say that studying either Spanish, French, and German would be a piece of cake!

[C_l_e_0..Q_c]

Well, I would say my kids had an easier time learning French than any other language. English, though, was a challenge! :tongue_smilie:

[happykids]

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