French - how big a challenge?

niallcon4re

Hi

I am in my mid 30s and when I was a school kid I had no interest in French and never did my homework and got a C in PASS french (i.e. lower level).

I have about 2.5 years studying spanish and it has got me interested in trying to learn French again (not that I tried first time).

Basically, my questions are
(1) Should I just concentrate on the one language as learning French will slow my Spanish
(2) Will French be easier now that I have an intermediate level of Spanish?
(3) Will I pick up French due to the six years I spent in school not really working but doing enough to pick up enough to pass the exam.
(4) Would I be better off studying German as it is very unlike Spanish and so I won't get mixed up between the words as German sounds nothing like Spanish.


Many thanks

Pauvre Con

I'd definitely only learn one language at a time. Either give up Spanish or go all out to learn it to fluency.

niallcon4re

Thanks.

No way I am giving up Spanish so if a few others agree with you I'll take your advice.

Thanks again

Niall

Pauvre Con

Well I can't believe anyone would suggest learning two languages at once! Learning a foreign tongue to fluency as an adult is so involved you'd definitely be slowing down progress on your Spanish if you start on French.

I've never studied Spanish but I would imagine as they're both romance languages that you'd be able to pick French up much more quickly if you had fluent Spanish.

Canard

I don't see why you couldn't learn both like a lot of people are saying...many people do more than one language for LC, and most of us do Irish and a European language simultaneously. Personally I don't speak any Spanish but got a high grade in LC French, and in a few weeks I'm starting my course which will be continuing French and starting Spanish - I'm sure you won't get mixed up too easily.

I'll admit my friend who did Spanish did confuse me by saying the Spanish for a locker and getting it stuck in my head for the months before my exam, but I knew it was Spanish. I think the articles make a fair bit of difference.

So to answer your questions more directly:

(1) I think they'd complement each other, actually, and that learning both could be fun.
(2) I'd say yes - having learned a lot of French in school and looked at basic Spanish, it's easy to see links with words. Having that a library is a "bibliotheque", I find it easy to remember that in Spanish its "biblioteca"!
(3) I'd say you'll refresh your memory, yes, but I can't really comment because I don't know what standard exactly an OL C is. It depends how much you'd actually known in the first place.
(4) I wouldn't say you'd be better or worse off really, but they won't help each other too much. I learned some basic German this summer (and I mean just words/basic verbs) and noticed a few similarities - une tasse/die tasse being French/German respectively for "a cup" - but they're pretty different otherwise. Why not try both and if you're mixing up words, go for German?

Good luck!

Aard

It depends on how well you want to learn your languages. So many people I come across say they've "learnt" a language, whereas in actual fact they couldn't hold a conversation or even watch the news. Anybody can easily learn to string together a few words in a foreign language (even several foreign languages). To get to that almost-native level is *really really difficult*. OK, maybe not "difficult", but it certainly takes a lot of time and dedication. I don't know how good your Spanish is atm, but I imagine you're not fluent yet. Say you have an hour a day to dedicate to learning your language(s) -- after two more years' study you could have a really high level of Spanish, or you could be just pretty good at Spanish and still working your way through French.

I'd recommend you stick with Spanish, as you have already invested so much time in it. Learning two languages at the same time is hard, and made even more so if the languages are very similar.

Pauvre Con

Aard wrote: »

It depends on how well you want to learn your languages. So many people I come across say they've "learnt" a language, whereas in actual fact they couldn't hold a conversation or even watch the news. Anybody can easily learn to string together a few words in a foreign language (even several foreign languages). To get to that almost-native level is *really really difficult*. OK, maybe not "difficult", but it certainly takes a lot of time and dedication. I don't know how good your Spanish is atm, but I imagine you're not fluent yet. Say you have an hour a day to dedicate to learning your language(s) -- after two more years' study you could have a really high level of Spanish, or you could be just pretty good at Spanish and still working your way through French.

I'd recommend you stick with Spanish, as you have already invested so much time in it. Learning two languages at the same time is hard, and made even more so if the languages are very similar.

This.

Even if it doesn't hinder, learning French isn't going to really help you on with your Spanish. And vice versa. Everytime you sit down and study French it's time that you could be spending on Spanish.

Getting to "intermediate" is easy. A few books, cds etc and you're there. Getting to fluency is very difficult imo. Dealing with idioms, slang, regional accents...you could spend a lifetime trying to improve to a native standard.

niallcon4re

Thanks all

I guess after listening to a 5 minute demo of French on michel thomas language site (his Spanish is fantastic for beginners) I thought I'd give it a go.

However, you are right, I'll concentrate on my Spanish for another 2 years or so , I won't be fluent (I've no intention of living in Spain) but will be able to "have a laugh" with people I meet in Spain or South America in their language.

Maybe then, I'll try Brazilian portuguese but I'll leave that thread for another 2 years.

Cheers

Niall

oranje

It is more than possible to learn languages simultaneously, it's not like your brain has a limited capacity for language learning and once you have used it for Spanish then you have nothing left in the tank. I think a good site to look at for some tips is www.fluentinthreemonths.com written by an Irish polyglot. He has a lot of advice on how you can make learning languages easier and you can take what you want out of it.

My own experience (as a 40 year old) is that it can be restrictive and boring concentrating on one language. Like most people I took Irish and French at school and thought I was fluent by the end of it without really knowing how much I had to learn. In uni I studied engineering but I had a Swedish speaking girlfriend so I learned some of her lingo. I also took French as a module in my final year and I was a bit schocked to find out that I was not quite as good as I thought. I realized that I just hadn't practiced reading French enough or watched enough films etc. so I gradually started engaging more with the language and taking advantages of chances to talk with native speakers.

When I was doing my masters I started German classes which I kept up later at the Goethe Institut in Dublin. I also did evening classes at the Alliance Francaise. I was really interested in adding Dutch so I did a month long intensive course at UvA in '94. Later on I lived in Germany for a while and then moved to Holland so both Dutch and German improved.

In Holland I met my Polish wife so I started learning her language. We both love Spain so I started Spanish classes too but it didn't mean I abandoned the other languages. I still read books, magazines etc. and watched films/television. As I was working at a Japanese company I started learning some Japanese though my level has never gone beyone lower intermediate as it takes a lot of practice to get good. I took classes again in Swedish at one point and also began to learn Italian (which is very similar to French and Spanish).

Of course I don't speak all the languages equally well. My Irish in particular has gone backwards but at any time in my life I could be reading a book in one of the languages and when I travel I will always try to speak as much as I can of the languages I know. Recently I was in Portugal and Portuguese is similar to Spanish so with a phrase book in my hand I interacted just fine by converting Spanish words to Portuguese and picking up words like obrigado, galao, frango and morango as I went along.

Basically there is no limit to how many languages you can learn but you can only be really fluent in a limited set. As I live in Holland I am obviously better at Dutch than any other language but that doesn't mean that you can't get a lot of pleasure in speaking French quite well and interacting with locals.

Pauvre Con

Hey, that's impressive oranje. I guess it does depend on an individual's own goals and to what standards they're striving for. For me, you can dabble in a few easily enough but to get to fluency is extremely time consuming and unless you're regularly immersed in and practising the language - very difficult to reach and stay at an advanced level. As the OP is in Ireland and as time is finite personally I'd only bother to get really good at one - or if ambitious, one at a time. It's fair enough that some people are natural polyglots and pick foreign tongues up at an amazing speed but also to be fair these people are very rare!

oranje

Pauvre Con wrote: »

Hey, that's impressive oranje. I guess it does depend on an individual's own goals and to what standards they're striving for. For me, you can dabble in a few easily enough but to get to fluency is extremely time consuming and unless you're regularly immersed in and practising the language - very difficult to reach and stay at an advanced level. As the OP is in Ireland and as time is finite personally I'd only bother to get really good at one - or if ambitious, one at a time. It's fair enough that some people are natural polyglots and pick foreign tongues up at an amazing speed but also to be fair these people are very rare!

I agree with you that it does take time to get very fluent and most people don't have the time. For me the languages I speak are part of my life so it's not really work, I am not spending hours doing languages training. For Spanish for example I have a subscription to Punto y Coma and that comes every couple of months. I read the articles and listen to the audio and that's enough to maintain my Spanish. I couldn't work through Spanish or anything like that but I do know enough so that I don't have to speak English in Spain and I can understand what Spanish people are talking about. If your goal is to speak a language perfectly obviously concentration is better but the Pareto Principle applies it is easy to get to a relatively fluent level in a language especially if you have already done it once or twice. Learning your second language is the hardest, learning a seventh if you speak six is just applying what you already know.
I am not trying to advocate that everyone becomes a polyglot but learning French with a prior knowledge of English and Spanish is not the same as trying to learn Hungarian or Mandarin where you will have zero prior knowledge so I think that the OP could combine learning the two.

LimeFruitGum

I studied French and German through school and college. Granted, the languages are not alike, but in college (DCU), they didn't like you doing two languages from scratch at the same time.
Those in my year who took French and Spanish always tended to favour Spanish, although that could be down to them trying to get some cool party-town university in Barcelona or the Canaries for their Erasmus year ;-)

I say go for it, OP. Pick the language & culture that you feel more drawn to.

syntax1

What? Of course you can learn more than one language at a time! Just depends on how much time you have to spare. Learning two or three foreign languages at a time can be good as you can take a break from one by learning another. You can keep Spanish as your main project and have French on the sideline if you wish. I am learning Estonian mostly but also spend time on Welsh, Lithuanian and Gaelic (Scottish) as well as keeping up my French and Irish. It's just a matter of interest. Two languages is quite do-able!

Micky Dolenz

I'm learning French at the moment and have just started Italian. I find it helps a little actually as there are similarities.

Canard

Pippa Middleton's Arse wrote: »

I'm learning French at the moment and have just started Italian. I find it helps a little actually as there are similarities.

Unless you have a reason for doing those two specifically / don't feel like starting more than 2 at once (very understandable), you should look at Spanish. It's very similar to French and, while I don't learn Italian, I sometimes look up the words just because they're so similar. It's pretty cool I think.

Micky Dolenz

Patchy~ wrote: »

Unless you have a reason for doing those two specifically / don't feel like starting more than 2 at once (very understandable), you should look at Spanish. It's very similar to French and, while I don't learn Italian, I sometimes look up the words just because they're so similar. It's pretty cool I think.

I have a reason. Otherwise I would certainly have gone for Spanish. Italian doesn't travel too well out side of Italy sadly.

I'm finding a lot of similarities between French and Italian. But some words I say them the French way so I really have to stop and think, say them in my head before I say them out loud

I wish I was better at this language craic

davwain

Pauvre Con wrote: »

This.

Even if it doesn't hinder, learning French isn't going to really help you on with your Spanish. And vice versa. Everytime you sit down and study French it's time that you could be spending on Spanish.

Getting to "intermediate" is easy. A few books, cds etc and you're there. Getting to fluency is very difficult imo. Dealing with idioms, slang, regional accents...you could spend a lifetime trying to improve to a native standard.

I would say, among Romance languages, Spanish and Portuguese are the most alike. My French helped me a bit with my Spanish, but I would say my Spanish helped me more with my French (particularly with the subjunctive of the latter language).

I would say Spanish and Portuguese are about as alike as Russian and Bulgarian, although both Slavic languages have words whose origins are in Romance languages.