i genuinely have no idea if i should study italian or french. on one hand, french is probably more useful, especially since i live in the u.s. and could communicate with people from french-speaking canada. french also seems to have more speakers. however, i also have an italian study book and it seems easier to get the hang of for me than french, especially since i can’t yet differentiate what people are saying and the way things are spelled in french.
i genuinely love both languages but i don’t know which one i should learn, even if i’m the only one who can decide this. i have a study book for italian and busuu as a language learning app but i don’t have a french book yet. should i learn italian first and then go with french? learn italian and pick up bits of french along the way?
@nonBInary@thelemmy.club
¿Por que no los dos?
Each language make it easier to learn the other because they share characteristics not present in English, characteristics of which are found not only in Italian and French, but also Spanish and Portuguese.
For example, conjugation of verbs: English is quite “simple” (I talk, she talks, we talk, they talk, I will talk, she will talk, I talked, she talked, I would talk, she’d talk, etc) whilst the so-called Romance languages (languages whose common ancestor is Latin, which includes French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese) have a more complicated system of conjugation, e.g. in Portuguese present tense “eu falo, tu falas, ela fala, nós falamos, vós falais, eles falam”, past tense “eu falei, tu falastes, ela falou, nós falávamos, elas falaram”, and many more conjugation forms.
As for which one should be the first, I’d personally likely pick Italian, but it’s more of a personal choice depends on one’s contexts and current set of knowledge/experiences (to me, Italian feels closer to my native Portuguese than French so it’s what driving my answer when having to choose between the two).
There’s also the Interlingua worth mentioning, which aims to be understandable across all Romance languages. I don’t know how exactly to speak it, but I do get to understand when I hear/read it somehow.
oooooo já falo português num nível intermediário !
Oh Italian is going to be a bit easier with your Portuguese knowledge
@nonBInary@thelemmy.club
Excelente, já é um ótimo começo! Porque, nesse caso, você já tem o conceito linguístico das conjugações (que, pro pessoal que ainda há de aprender Português/espanhol/etc, geralmente é o mais complexo passo do aprendizado), então daí seria mais aprender as especificidades do francês e do italiano.
Ao menos pra mim, o italiano soa um tanto mais fácil de de começar que o francês, mas é como eu falei, aqui existe um aspecto mais de contextos pessoais e de bagagem de vida, talvez no seu caso o francês fosse mais interessante como próximo idioma devido ao fato que você relatou de estar nas proximidades do Canadá (embora, como foi falado por alguém nos comentários, só Quebec que foca em falar francês, porque Quebec tem certo “orgulho francófono” que não está presente em outras províncias canadenses)