2d ago

how can i decide what language to learn?

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?

30 comments

Don't sleep on Spanish if it's being offered, it's the 4th most spoken language on the planet and is heavily woven throughout the US.
I took it in high school but didn't solidify it until adulthood, when we had Venezuelans marry into the family. And it's a fantastic and fun language. Can't recommend it highly enough.
Esperanto
Do you only have those 2 choices?
For the future and education wise (Idk your age maybe you are young) I would choose mandarin.
But if you have to choose between the 2, french is more broad. Also once you learn one romance language (except for romanian) it's usualy easier to learn the other.
I'd go with Python.
- This 🤣
I'd learn Mandarin but it's very hard.
I learnt Spanish and use it every day, it is easy.
中文
Whichever interests you more. Flip a coin and when it's in the air ask yourself which you're hoping it lands on, pick that and ignore the result.
One will help you learn the other eventually though. It's a very long process to learn a language though so take it one at a time.
Flutter
Italian. Then you can watch the cartoon Pimpa from 1982 ❤️
Learning a language is easiest when you have opportunities to speak it. Which one are you more likely to use? A book might not be as effective as an app, like Duolingo or similar. Duolingo is free for a single language.
French phonetics is a bit more different from English, but both Italian and French are romance languages (based on Latin). Many English root words are Latin (also German, Greek, Dutch, and Indigenous languages). English also borrows loanwords from French and Italian, but pronunciations vary. I'd say both are relatively easy to learn as an English speaker (as is Spanish or Portuguese).
Grammatically, sentence structure is close to English. French introduces an extra word for negation which takes a little getting used to. "I cannot" becomes "Je ne peux pas" while Italian conjugates the verb to remove the subject "Non posso".
One big difference with French is that there is a governing body that determines official French spelling and pronunciation. L'Académie Française was founded in the 17th century by the bad guy from the Three Musketeers, and is committed to maintaining linguistic purity. They tried for years to get French people to say "le courriel" instead of "email" but I don't think anyone actually says that. Italy also has Accademia della Crusca, aka la Crusca, which had a similar function until the early 20th century when they were made more of an philology organization.
The benefit to both is that, once you understand spelling and diacritics, reading a word tells you precisely how to pronounce the word. The downside is that the languages have been basically stagnant for 350 years, so there are many strict, archaic phrases and sentence structures. English is notorious for homophones, homographs, and homonyms, which aren't nearly as common in either French or Italian.
That said, reading from a book will never be the same as speaking with and listening to a native speaker. If you don't have someone to practice with, there are online resources and probably local community options to find people who will help.
- Just a small precision, courriel is from Quebec, and everyone* uses it cause it's a great translation. It rolls off the tongue and was an excellent neologism from the Office Quebecoise du Francais. The académie wanted to use "mail" which is dumb and confusing and bring nothing to the language that just using "email" doesn't already do. It is often a case study of how Quebec does some neologism better.
  *Maybe a bit less in very colloquial speak, but still at least as common as using the anglicism.
German.
I will not be taking follow up questions.
I took some French classes and picked up some Italian by spending some time in Italy. I wouldn't say either language is easier, but I'd say Italians are (at least back in my day) incredibly patient with non-Itlalian speakers flipping through a dictionary in order to talk to them. Anyway, French and Italian are related (both Romance languages) and speaking either one will make the other easier.
I find spoken Quebec French almost unintelligible even though I can somewhat understand French from France. Even French people have some trouble with Quebec French, especially as you go further east and the dialect gets stronger. It's a bigger difference than the difference between regional accents in the US. But, written French is mostly the same between France and Quebec, so at least you'll be able to read the signs.
I also once had the idea of improving my French by spending some time in Quebec, but then realized I'd end up speaking the Quebec dialect, which apparently is comparable to hillbilly English in how it sounds to French people.
Added: You don't mention what part of the US you are in. I'm in California and the most useful language here other than English is probably Spanish, then maybe Chinese. If you want a Romance language, maybe consider Spanish? It is pretty close to Italian, enough that I once managed to confuse the two.
- It's not so much that it's hillbilly French, it is just based on French from hundreds of years ago that then evolved separetly from France. So most people learn France French, which Quebecois people understand but doesn't go the other way as smoothly.
  If you aren't going to be speaking to France French people then learning Quebecois French would be fine.
  
  Also, the quebecois french you're likely to learn in big urban centers like montreal is pretty easy to understand for france french speakers
If you're in the US, Spanish. It might actually be useful.
Don't learn Italian as a way of learning French, just learn French. Language learning is very difficult, and the most useful language when it comes to learning French is English anyway.
I gave up on French because I couldn't figure out the vowels (and because other languages were a priority), so it's important to come up with a strategy for that.
Italian is easier and arguably sounds nicer (or at least softer), French is more common and useful. I'm not hating on French though, as I also learned it willingly in my teens (and, as of last year, I'm also a French citizen, lol). If it's just 'for fun', I'd say Italian.
If your goal was fluency, immigration, or finding employment, I would suggest learning the language of the countries where you would most like to go and which you have the most opportunity to practice in person. It sounds like you want to learn recreationally though, in which case I would say choose the one that excites you more, as you’re more likely to continue learning that way. You can also start by learning the very basics of both and see which you find more engaging before committing to studying one more intensively.
When learning a language it helps reading books and watching movies and shows in the language. Maybe thinking about which language has more books/movies/shows that interest you could help you decide.
especially since i can’t yet differentiate what people are saying and the way things are spelled in french.
French orthography isn't great, but if the whole nation of Canada learns it passively, you can figure it out too. Go for the more major one.
Did you know? French, Italian, and Spanish are all Romance languages; they are part of a large family of languages that evolved from Latin over hundreds of years. That's why they're similar. While I don't have the necessary citations on hand, learning a language might make it slightly easier to learn, or at least have a basic "I know a few hundred words" understanding of its sibling languages.
(I saw that other people have typed similar things but I already wrote it so I'm just gonna send it anyway.)
@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)
Flip a coin or start both on Duolingo and see which one interests you more. This is only a hard decision in your head. If you're not planning to move to somewhere where they speak either, this is just a hobby.
They are both romance languages so you'll find mental handholds in either language that can help you with the other. Similar conjugations, spellings, irregularities, etc.
The French you'll learn with internet resources or most text books will most likely be French French. As a learner, that will probably still make understanding the Quebecers an extremely hard task. It's like somebody from a Louisiana bayou talking to a Scottish highlander. On paper, they are both able to speak English but there are accents and differences in vocabulary that increase the level of difficulty, even for native speakers.
Do you already know some French Canadians? The best and most fun way to learn a language is by talking with people. If you know someone who speaks a language you want to learn and they're willing to struggle through talking with you, pick that language.
- i don't know any at all but i know some french speakers on reddit!!

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