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I reached a C1-C2 level in Spanish after years of studying. Now, I'm learning Italian and it feels like a dance on roses as I already know and understand many words. I can totally connect with this video and I think it had been difficult to learn both languages at the same time but now, instead, I get a lot of free Italian for all the effort I put into Spanish.
A fun game is to see how many minutes until he slightly mispronounced a word. It's typically 5 to 7 minutes. 3:00 there are "down-sizes" as well This isn't a criticism, btw. Speaking any language even your native one perfectly is impossible.
@@muttlanguages3912 It isn't impossible but speaking a language that isn't your native perfectly is extremely difficult, especially if you're speaking 13 other languages like Luca does.
Sometimes I see people get so worried about this topic. I think it is important to remember that... suffering from cross-linguistic interference is completely normal! It's part of the process! Even if you speak all your languages very fluently... sometimes, languages get a bit rusty (especially when you speak many)!! Sometimes, it's difficult to suddenly switch from one language to another! Sometimes, you are just tired, your brain gives up and so you start to mix a bit. It's fine!! we cannot be at our best all the time!! Now if you are constantly having problems with this, don't worry, it gets better as your skills improve. I normally only mix languages that I have at a low level (that is below B2). When I speak languages fluently, I don't really mix them... unless something unexpected happens or I'm simply tired, as I mentioned before. So no need to stress over this guys haha. Great video Luca!
Thanks for saying this. I'm learning Serbian and I desperately want to learn Russian one day (once I'm at least B2 in Serbian) but I'm so terrified of getting them mixed up.
At the moment I’m learning French after learning Spanish for 8 years. It’s definitely been easier than when I started learning Spanish. The pronunciation is so different that there is not much interference.
what level of spanish did you have before starting French and how much time do you spend on spanish to keep it up ? very cool to hear that you are learning another language.
@@Sosui2 I would say it’s around a B2 level and I don’t spend much time maintaining it. I have conversations or watch videos throughout the week in Spanish. So, it’s kind of become a habit to use it a few times a week.
Great dude, I'm Brazilian and I've been learning Spanish for about 4 months now, I wanna start learning French next year. Do u think it would be a good idea?
9:30 man, i really felt this. when i tried learning korean and japanese at the same time, i'd constantly be mixing up words bc i was still a beginner in both. it just got worse with time before i finally decided to learn one language at a time. i'm learning german now lol
I've got surprised when I watched one of your old videos in Italian without subtitles and I could understand about 50% of what you were saying. My native language is Brazilian Portuguese and I studied Spanish, for some years it was a rather interesting experience to understand some Italian without know a single word in it.
I don't agree with that. Without knowing a single word in Italian. You are kidding, right? You probably understood basic words and basic sentences. Io non so che cosa fare. Eu nao sei o que fazer Yo no sé que hacer. The ability to understand what you hear and what you read is different. If the speaker speaks slowly and uses those true cognates in his or her speech, plus the context, helps to understand the message, however without some basic knowledge in that particular language, you will not catch the meaning of what you hear. There is also a difference between understanding something immediately and recognising the meaning by struggling and analysing what you hear or read.
definitely resonate with this. since I reached around a B2 - C1 level in Spanish, my Portuguese learning hasn't been getting confused with my Spanish. Definitely should master one pretty well before moving to another.
How is Portuguese going for you? I also have a strong B2, on the verge of C1 in Spanish and want to learn Portuguese, but every time I start, I soon quit thinking my Spanish isn’t rock solid enough to start with its brother language...
@@ditav5283 Master a language is a stereotype. I am European Portuguese and I have just learned one slang word in my native language. What does it mean to master a language? The word master sounds big to me. If you have a B2 level in Spanish, you understand Spanish well, you know a bunch of words. You can even formulate some sentences. I find difficult to master a language because a language isn’t a subject. It is a bridge 🌉 to reach further information. When you read newspapers in your target language, you are getting information from different sources. Spanish and Portuguese are both my native languages. Furthermore,a language has 4 skills. For instance, I understand and I can speak more or less well Russian, however, I struggle to write. I see the language as Information, which will evolve overtime. Nowadays we use words like “ Google it, WhatsApp him or her, Facebook your mother, wi-fi”. The old generation didn’t use such terms 30 years ago. I speak German, however, I have no idea 🤷♂️ how to translate the It vocabulary I learned thanks to that language. You might know a bunch of medicine vocabulary in French because you studied Medicine In French, however, you have no idea how to say such words in your native native. That is why I don’t believe in the word “ Master”. You will find unknown words even in your native language. Besides that, some people claim after passing the C1/2 exams, struggle to follow lectures at university.
After learning Korean to a B2 level, over the course of 3 years, this video has given me the confidence to start Japanese! I will try and do at least an hour a day on Korean with the rest on Japanese as you recommended. Thank you very much Luca your polyglottery is inspiring!
So very true about Iberian Portuguese sounding like Russian ! As a Russian learner, everytime I hear Portuguese I feel so confused, because the sounds and intonation are similar but I don't get any of the words
This was an excellent video. I speak Italian, Spanish, French and I am starting to learn Portuguese. I practice all of them everyday however I was concerned my Spanish would interfere with learning Portuguese. We shall see how this goes!
I was intending to learn Czech, Croatian and Bulgarian at the same time, but had to choose just one in other to avoid interference and confusion. Now I am learning just Czech and improving my Dutch. You're really an inspiration, Luca! Which languages are you learning at the moment?
Hi Luca! You're an amazing language learner, just AMAZING! for that reason I think almost everybody on Earth should know about you, your videos, the impact information you share here with people who speak English, but what about the rest of them that don't. I mean, I know what could be the reason why you have this only channel in which you share most of your content in English you mentioned this before in another video but not everyone take English as their first language to learn, without mention their mother tongue of course, for example I have met people from France that their first language to learn was Spanish and probably you know more people like these, and even though for people who choose English first, will stumble too much before get a good level to understand such amazing information you share in your videos. What I'm trying to say is that if you create other channels on UA-cam with this same content but in other languages you will get to more people and this will bring a bunch of benefits to you not only to them, for example practice of the languages you already know is one of them. Moreover you already have a lot of content here you only could translate them. You motivate me every time you upload another video thank you so much I really appreciate it.
In Spanish we also say sometimes ‘without doubt’ but to express certainty, but ‘probably’ translated to French in an online dictionary gives you the word: probablement.
Good video! My brother studied languages at the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center in California. The pace of study was intense. Students had to master the language course in 36-64 weeks. Psychologically it was very difficult, but fortunately he was helped by Yuriy Ivantsiv's book "Polyglot Notes. Practical tips for learning foreign languages”. The book " Polyglot Notes" became a desk book for my brother, because it has answers to all the problems that any student of a foreign language has to face. Thanks to the author of the channel for this interesting video! Good luck to everyone who studies a foreign language and wants to realize their full potential!
Learning Italian after being fluent in French made grammar easier since it's basically the same. A little bit of confusion may arise when remembering which nouns are masculine or feminine in which languages because they can sometimes differ.
Yeah, I completely agree with you!. For example, in my particular case. Now I can speak 4 languages such as Kazakh, Russian, English and Spanish. For me, Kazakh and Russian are mothertongue languages. Well, my first foreing language is english, I have learnt that during the 3 years and passed IELTS exam in November 2020 in and got 7 score. Then, My spanish is at B1-B2 levels. Well, it has been 2 years as I have been learning that. Furthermore, Achieveing these levels on English and Spanish. Two weeks ago, I started to learn Italian and Arabic at the same time. I decided that I will not be confused because these two languages from absolutely different families. My knowledge in Spanish and knowing it structure really helps me in studying italian. As well as my Kazakh(it is originated from Turkish) helping me with pronunciation in Arabic. Well, concluding I would say that, just try to always learn something and get power of Self-Education.
Tremendous advice as usual, Luca. I make educational videos in the major romance languages (plus English) and interference is definitely something I contend with in my language learning.
I'm learning Latin actively, but am exposed to Spanish passively due to my household. Learning Latin had helped me understand Spanish grammar better, but I often trip up on pronouncing Spanish words as I read them. All of a sudden, I have to think twice ably whether I will pronounce a V like a W, or whether a double L is going to be palatal or not.
Hello from Montréal, Canada. I speak Spanish and French, trying to learn Italian and Portugues I experience the same issues you talked about. I think I will change one of them for another family language. Thank you for sharing.
I really enjoyed this! I can speak Spanish to a B2 level, and have recently fully committed to learning Italian. When I encounter new bits of Italian grammar my brain almost separates things into 'same as Spanish', and 'different to Spanish'. If I had no prior knowledge of Spanish there would be many instances where my brain would freak out from seeing something that is so wildly different to English. And maybe I'm the only one, but I actually get annoyed when I come across an Italian word that has an identical spelling to Spanish. I almost feel like if there are too many similarities, I'll on occasion get too relaxed and start assuming similarities that just aren't there.
Here's a trick, when I was learning Portuguese I realize that sometimes a Spanish word exists in Portuguese but for some reason we were taught a different word, a synonym that only exists in Portuguese, that helps me to reduce the mixing.
Learning both Korean and Japanese and am always finding similar vocab between the two. Sometimes the words are only slightly similar but still noticeable, or they're basically the same word lol. They both have basically the same sentence structure and similar use of particles as well. I like to write phrase lists with Japanese and Korean together (using both languages for the same phrase), and since my reading in Korean is pretty decent now and much better than my Japanese, I can improve my Japanese whilst at the same time continuing to strengthen my Korean.
I had same situation with the spanish and english. I'm from Bulgaria, but I was lived two ears in Spain. Theare I coudn't speak english not very well, because the spanish was blocked my english skills. Now I'm live in Bulgaria and I use more english than the spanish and I notice sometimes that the english is block for a short time my spanish skills. Everything go well when listen, speak or just speak with some spanish the language. for the last months I started to learn german and the result iscgreat. I'm historian and I have to learn latin and ancient greek. But because of the spanish when I´m starting to write or speak in latin, the spanish block the latin. Thank you very much for the great chanel!
I am learning French, Spanish and Italian and have recently done something that really helps. Because of my health I cannot form a schedule. I have inconsistent brain and memory function, this learning is one of the ways I am encouraging neuroplasticity. In the case of French it is relearning and topping up, Spanish the same, Italian is a new and very welcome joy. I use multiple learning platforms the main being Duolingo as that was my first prompt and I am too stubborn to drop a streak. 🙄 I also use Pimsleur, International news streams, Lingopie and others, 'Easy' language videos, art videos, movies, you name it. Often I can't write, although I do what I can. This learning is also three whopping carrots to get out of this bed, eventually walking and travelling again. ⭐So I have peripheral prompts using all the senses. ☆I have a corner of video playing with livecams of places associated with the language ☆If I am learning off line I have a famous classical music of that language softly playing in the background which is also on the livecams, but is not always from that country. Mozart clearly lived everywhere. Mostly in elevators. ☆Also offline I have different 'props' representing famous places associated with each country, little souvenir statues, postcards... ☆I use a different colour pen for each country, French navy, Spanish red, Italian green ☆If I am able to, I have associated fragrances, French lavender, Spanish frangipani, or a famous blue jasmine Galan de Noche, that puts me straight back to the Sierra Nevada near Granada, Italy a strong blend of coffee I associate with. Sorry, Italy I can't have pizza né pasta it's far too distracting 🤣 I also need to be able to eat garlic again, I miss it so much, but I get 'restless spasms' which 'int proper cumfi' Bit of Yorkshire for you there 😁
I agree with you, Luca. Learning sister languages is a great advantage. Recently, I've been learning Norwegian and English and German have helped tremendously. I experienced something really similar when learning Italian since I speak French and Spanish too. Great video!
One trick I discovered to prevent interference was adding a third unrelated language to my studies. By using German (a language I had no knowledge of) as a buffer when I switched between French and Spanish (both of which I had studied previously, separately), it was like cleansing my palate mentally.
I had this interverence but in a different way. I stopped learning Spanish around four years ago and startet Italian 9 weeks ago. As I tried to talk to people on tandem in Spanish, I was blocked and changed in the middle of the sentence into Italian. Since then I decided, against your advice, to listen and learn to both languages. It helped me to realise which words are Italian and which Spanish. Still have problems because both languages are on A2/B1 level but it is getting better
¡Gracias por este fantástico vídeo, Luca! Tomo nota de tus consejos. Hay también un aspecto que podemos tener en cuenta cuando aprendemos dos lenguas que no son de la misma familia y que facilita bastante el aprendizaje: el vocabulario compartido. Ocurre por ejemplo entre el inglés y el francés, que llevan siglos influyéndose.
Hey! Big fan of yours here altough its the 1st time I comment on any of your videos. I'm native Portuguese speaker from Lisbon, so yeah I´ve heard before that I sound russian :p As 20 year old studying French and Italian at University, I must say that I totally agree with you. I'm learning french since I was 12 and for the past 8 years I've been slowly improving although steadly in my path to fluency but as soon I as I took Italian about a year ago at University the process has been much much quicker . The grammar similarities are a big big help and until now I haven't got a problem with the Italian grammar ( hope this doesnt jinxed lol). I used to mixed a lot of the vocabulary but with pratice it has improved a lot and now it doesn't happen that often. Thanks for the tips !
I'm a native Spanish speaker, who's learned some Portuguese, and though I know some words, and some structure, I'm afraid to say that I only speak a bad portuñol. In addition to that, I studied Catalan in 2019-2020, for some months very actively (at least actively enough for not living in Catalonia, I did what I could, I watched every UA-cam video I found, about topics that wouldn't normally interest me when learning any language). But later on, when I wanted to write in Portuguese, It simply didn't come out. My learning strategy with Portuguese has been a failure: I've been overly confident that, as it's a Romance language like Spanish, it would be easy just to pick up, so I haven't really put much effort into it, so I've been "learning it" for like 8 years, but due to inconsistency, I still have a long way to reach a justifiable level. Whereas with Catalan, I learnt considerably more in less time. Nowadays, I want to study Portuguese again, as it's one of those languages that already has a place in my heart, now it deserves a place in my brain and mouth, like actively speaking it.
Grande Luca, sei mitico! Da quando ti ho visto in una intervista con Alberto Arrighini mi hai colpito davvero. Mai avrei immaginato che c'era tantissima gente pazza per le lingue, e ero felicissimo di vedere che il mio pensiero verso come imparare le lingue era certamente come il tuo. Grazie tante! Adesso vado in cerca la quinta con il portoghese dopo l'italiano e trovo quelle interferenze che dici, grazie per i consigli.
Very true. My testimony... I'm a French native speaker, and about 15 years ago I had reached a pretty decent level of Italian. Then my life circumstances forced me to make Spanish my primary focus, and in the beginning I experienced massive interference, so I decided to completely block the Italian, and I stopped reading, listening and speaking the language. Now that I live part of my life in Spain and speak fluent Spanish, I'm starting back to pick up some of my not-so-forgotten Italian: I recently re-read in the original, and with enormous pleasure Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore, this pure jewel from Italo Calvino. A very good way to restart !
How did you learn both of them just in a year its super cool, nowadays I’m related to Learn spanish,can u give me a few suggestions to learn rapidly and which channels you are following?
When i was learning german 2 years ago, after 1 year i was an A2/B1 in german, but i decided to learn swedish because is amazing, after 1 month i got tons of interference and german was my priority because i must go there for the erasmus, so i gave up. 4 months ago i decided to reopen the swedish book, my german now is a B2/C1 and i don’t mix anymore swedish and german, so i totally agre on what you said. Plus now i’m learning dutch, and as you said, i can understand dutch but i can speak, and when i try to speak my german came out😂😂 but i’m sure that after a while i will speak a good dutch after all. Grande Luca💪🏻💪🏻
The MAIN difference between Latin and Romance languages - Latin had declension with cases thus different word endings what doesn't appear in Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Romanian etc. In those languages there are prepositions (a, de, en, in, di, da, con) giving that sense of cases like Latin had.
I would really appreciate hearing your take on a different aspect of learning a second language in a language family, that is, using the language you already know in the family, as opposed to your native language, as the anchor language through which to learn the new target language. Japanese is a childhood language for me; I used it as the language of my classes and all of materials in my first two years studying Korean. This method worked well for me though I realize that Korean and Japanese, while they are structurally similar, are not cognate languages as in the Slavic, Romance and German language family cases that you discussed.
I have been learning German and reached B1 and I have booked my Serbian lessons for a few months from now. Can't wait to start learning a Slavic languages.
Thanks for another great Video! I really appreciate the tips you share. As to the topic: I have two relevant experiences. As a young boy, I learned Spanish to probably the C1 level. When I decided to learn Italian 4 or 5 years ago, I found my knowledge of Spanish extremely helpful. Lots of shared vocabulary and grammar. I quickly got to what I think is a B2 level. Of course there is a bit of interference. I might reach for a “ma” from the Italian box, but grab the “pero” from the Spanish box. I decided to learn Polish in 2021. I learned Russian to the B2 level in college and after. It’s still early to say, but the shared vocabulary and grammar are seeming to make Polish a bit less daunting than it might otherwise have been. (By the way, Spanish was 55 years ago and Russian 45 years ago, so they’re both pretty well anchored.) My experience accords well with your counsel. Thanks again for giving me perspective on this topic.
Am Hispanic. So know english and spanish really well. Am learning tagalog now. Was planning on learning french, then portuguese. And try to take advantage of my spanish skill. Thanks for the video!!!
Being Canadian I speak both French and English. I was learning German for 4 months and thought it was so similar to English.. I could have a simple conversation. Planned a trip to latin america so I learned spanish (only 6 weeks but I put in a lot of efforts, it was intensive). Went on my trip, I could use basic Spanish to get around, being so similar to French I could understand most of it. Some German tourists asked me for direcrions, I understood everything but couldn't remember a thing! I recdntly resumed my Spanish studies but I'll wait until I'm fluent before I attempt another romance or germanic language.
I speak other Romance languages and the same thing that happened to you with Romanian, happened with me. Also, I knew German very well, but as I had not practiced it in many years, I forgot everything. I had to relearn German for my job at the time, and I came across the strange phenomenon that I recognized certain words, knew that I had used them, but I did not know the meaning of the word.
I learnt french at school for 5 years to a meh level. Last august I divided to learn Spanish until the end of the year to see how far I would get (goals were A2 -> B1 -> B2) which I achieved B2. When I try to speak french to myself the pronunciation sounds Spanish, or even Japanese when it comes to the nasal vowels and now the Spanish is what comes to my brain instead of the french and that’s only since around April or may of last year I completely stopped french (because of the pandemic)
I studied Spanish and French in school at the same time, although I started Spanish one year earlier. I lived in Southern California (next to the US/Mexico border), there was a lot of Spanish spoken around me, and much less French spoken. So I didn't have much trouble separating the two. I do think that having started Spanish earlier helped with minimizing interference.
What you said happened to me. For many time I-m learning Portugues and Italian. And I Started Portugues first and when I thought that I was at a good level on Portuguese I start with the Italian language. But At the beginning was so difficult to differentiate these languages. When I talk Italian I use words of Portugues and Vice versa, and while I'm learning more of these languages I can differ a little bit between them. And I'm gonna take your advice and I'm going to learn other languages that are different "family". Thanks Luca. Greetings from Colombia...
Currently in the process of learning Spanish, French, German, and Arabic. 80% spent on Spanish, 10% French, and the last 10% divided between German and Arabic. Whenever I get really frustrated with Spanish, it’s nice to move onto a different language, to clear the mind and relax a bit.
French is my second native language and Spanish my third (although strictly speaking, in Spanish I'm a native speaker of only what I heard my mother say on the phone). I sometimes say "corriel" (fr: "courriel") in Spanish instead of the verbose "corréo electrónico". And I once said "vepecista" for someone who sells by mail-order (the French acronym "VPC" makes equally good sense in Spanish). I may say "sera" (Italian cognate of French "soir") for the time between tarde and noche. I occasionally use "mientra" as a noun. Although it's from Latin "dum interim", Spanish "mientras" and Italian "mentre" both look like plurals of a feminine noun.
I am bilingual in Spanish and English and I have interference all the time, and I know one word in one language , but not the other and vice versa. I have also forgotten words in both languages.
You need read more. If you use/learn the languages in diferent environments, you lack the words in these specific environment in the another language. AKA work/home. You need read in both languages about other situations/environments. I known, perhaps it go out of our confort zone but, this is the learning thing...
Decided to learn Italian and Spanish together, as these two languages resonate with me at a deeper level (one could say passionately). my Spanish is so much better than my Italian, as I'm only starting with the latter. But I tried to dabble in the grammar systems of both, (just to have an idea) I realized having knowledge of Spanish helped me understand Italian quickly. The downside is that I often confuse the vocab - which sucks at times. Spanish and Italian learner here (any help or friendship is appreciated!) kudos Luca! love from the Philippines!
Something that always amazes me is that when I start learning a new language, when I start speaking, the next language that comes to my mind is not my native language (Italian) but the one I know a little more than the new one, yet not as much as my native language... I was always afraid to learn similar languages because of interference and had always avoided that. Then, since my stronger language after English is Hindi, last Summer I decided to give Punjabi a go although it is as close to Hindi as Italian is to Spanish. I was surprised to see that I already had vocabulary, grammar and syntax ready and started speaking much earlier than any other new language. At the same time I had no problem with Hindi as I use it almost daily. My aim is to master most North Indian languages although I am in no rush...
As for the Romance languages, it also helps a lot if you have learned Latin at an early stage, for example at school. I had both Latin and French in high school, and looking back, I consider this a very good pair: Latin gave me the background knowledge for all Romance languages (especially regarding vocabulary), and French is probably the most difficult of the Romance languages regarding pronunciation. It was much easier to move on to Spanish, Italian and Portuguese from there. Romanian, however, needs an extra effort because of the strong Slavic layer in it.
yo primero aprendí ingles y luego empecé con portugués de Brasil, pero cuando trataba de hablar en portugués y no encontraba las palabras mi mente automáticamente saltaba a ingles, las personas con las que hablaba me decían que por no usaba el español, porque para ellos era mas fácil entender el español pero ya trataba de explicarles que era algo que yo hacia sin querer, luego empecé a estudiar italiano al mismo tiempo que aprendía portugués pero como mi nivel de portugués no era muy bueno y en italiano no sabia mucho, empecé a tener problemas, confundía las palabras porque eran muy similares y cuando intentaba hablar italiano empezaba bien pero de un momento a otro resultaba hablando italiano con pronunciación de portugués o lo mas gracioso era que empezaba hablando italiano cuando no encontraba las palabras cambiaba a portugués y si seguía teniendo dificultades pasaba a ingles pero nunca en mi idioma nativo, en conclusión me paso todo lo que advierte lucas en el video cuando se estudia idiomas que pertenecen a la misma familia
You are the best polyglot i have seen ever, your tips and advices helped me answering the questions that were in my head for a long time and surly i will use them while learning spanish and french, thank you so much🌸🌸
I found that almost everything you have mentioned Luca, has happened to me. My native language, like you, is Italian so I speak it at home and with my family in Italy all the time. Though, I live in Canada, so I use English pretty much everywhere else. I am a French Major in university, so I use that during classes and for my summer job as a camp counsellor in Québec. I also learned Spanish in university and got a job as a Spanish TA in order to practice. Sometimes my brain has no clue what's going on after spending long amounts of time on only one language LOL. Thanks for these interesting videos! As a language major, they're super helpful
Blocking is killing me right now! Learnt a lot of french years ago and stopped using but there was always a lot available in my head because it was the only foreign language knew,then i entered a ton on Spanish into my head and a few months later the french was totally blocked and all I could get out was spanish.I really had to dig hard to find the french words even though I knew they were there...Luckily though the french is still in there because when I read french it so familiar to me and I read it just fine .Plan now is to reach high level in Spanish then go back to raise my french. I fully relate to your american friend.Although i will probably try to practice my french again. Glad to know it's not just me and others have this problem.
It is a matter of practicing your skills. Interpreters train to be able to translate two languages simultaneously. It takes time. I remember when I was in Paris where I spoke a lot of French. My German friend phoned me and I wasn’t able to speak German. French was on my head all the time. You have to give time to your brain 🧠 to not muddle up language or even not be able to speak the foreign language or your native language. It can also happen. I am Portuguese. It is a lot of time consuming. Many people admire “ Luca”. Well to achieve fluency in so many languages he had to spend many years studying those languages for hours. Recalling everything what you have learned in the long term memory is a huge challenge to our brain. I admire his effort, the time he invested to achieve his goals. However, I do strongly believe anyone who have a penchant for languages can reach that aim as well. I look up to the massive effort and dedication, not the result. Without effort, there isn’t any good results.
As Portuguese is my native language, it is been quite interesting to learn Italian, As my strongest language within the same family is portuguese. Great video!
I actually learned to speak French about 40 years ago after having left school through having a French girlfriend as a 16 year old. Roll forward to 2019 and by then as a 56 year old, I decided to have a go at learning Spanish as I'd been on holiday a few times and had thought having at least some basic Spanish would be useful for the next time I go.... So to confirm: In a class of English monoglots (all absolute beginners in Spanish), my having rusty French (but to what was I now realise a very good level) gave me SUCH an advantage. Just knowing and understanding that all nouns have genders, for example. The word order and other structures or inflections. My Spanish is not fluent enough to the point I don't need a phrase book or small dictionary at all but I have found I can get away _a lot of the time_ with _CHEATING_ by 'Spanishifying' a French word (guessing at a cognate)... Cutting to the quick, I am just starting Italian (I hope to do a 6 week absolute beginners class). I can confirm with the French / Spanish interference that when selecting the Spanish word for and "Y", I always pronounce it as though it were the French "et" _even though I see Y in my minds eye!!_ and I really have to work hard to stop myself doing it. All of that said, I have enjoyed the renewed study and a feeling of accomplishment as things have fallen into place - Puedo decir que creo que llegado un poco. I will do the 6 week Italian course and then return to an adult learning intermediate+ Spanish class in the autumn. But if I can successfully introduce myself to Italian too then I will also consider German, Dutch, Greek, Russian, etc, etc, etc. I wish I'd decided to have a go at Spanish years and year ago. And Luca - this is a very good video. Thank you for the advice.
Very good video. Spanish and Portuguese are so close to each other and it's true that you have to be quite proficient in one before tackling the other.
An excellent video Luca, as usual, considering different points of view and giving lots of practical advice. I have had similar experiences to you learning Dutch after German and Czech after Polish after Russian. Two comments: firstly, your English is really excellent, but I don't think that "All that glitters is not gold" is the most appropriate saying in this context; we say that when something isn't what it appears to be. You seem to be stressing that every good thing has a downside, so maybe something like "every rose has a thorn" is more suitable. Secondly and conversely, I think that the "cloud" of interference has a "silver lining": for me, part of the beauty of learning similar languages is appreciation of the subtle differences between them. For example, "завод" in Russian is a factory, "zawód" in Polish is a profession and "závod" in Czech is a competition.
Really interesting video - thanks! And pretty timely as I was wondering just this morning about the best way of maintaining my Spanish level, improving my Catalan, and beginning to learn Italian this year. Food for thought!
7:55 This happens more often if you still haven't reached a B2 level in your languages. For example, when I was starting to learn Italian, I already had a very good Portuguese. Every time I wanted to practice my Italian, I often put many Portuguese words and I didn't know why I couldn't stop doing it. Another thing that surprised me was when I was practicing my English, French and Italian to keep getting better. In these languages you say: another (an + other), un autre and un altro. Like in Portuguese, in my native language Spanish, you only say otro (other). So, after having practiced all those 3 languages, when I was having a normal conversation in Spanish, for some reason I said "un otro". I quickly realized what I just said and corrected myself. But I was a little shocked because I totally wasn't expecting that to happen. Most of the time however, it is my Spanish that interfiere with my French, Portuguese and Italian because of the similarities among these.
I began really learning Spanish, German and Romanian all at the same time. I love them all and don't want to stop learning any of them. I also dabble in Japanese, Latin and Sanskrit, just for fun and mild interest. I have found that I can keep all three of the main languages mostly separate. I do notice, occasionally, vocabulary is a little bit of a trick. Sometimes I just can't think of the word in one language, so I think of it in another. I don't find I have much difficulty in keeping up with each language, especially since each one has a special meaning for me and I do different activities to practice each every day. I can appreciate how it might get difficult for some.
Thank you for this video! I'm a native Spanish speaker and I started learning English about 6 years ago. I'm at a C1/C2 level at the moment. I started learning French and Mandarin last year and I recently kicked off with Korean. Luckily all of them are different enough from one another not to mix them up! But I'll certainly wait until I have a higher level on those before picking another language up haha Pd: getting blocked is normal! It even happens to me in Spanish sometimes :)
Hi Luca! I speak English, French, German and can read and write Hiragana and Katakana and I know some beginner level words and grammar in Japanese. I can't speak Japanese, yet. I tried learning Spanish and Italian at the same time during the pandemic. I thought it might be a good idea to kill two birds with one stone. But I ended up mixing up the words I learned in these languages. I wasn't even aware whether I was speaking in Spanish or in Italian when I was pronouncing a word. So I stopped learning these two languages simultaneously. I've decided to learn Spanish first. When I reach B2 level in Spanish, then I'll start learning Italian . Thank you so much for your very informative video. Now I understood why I was mixing up these two languages.
Grandissimo Luca 🤙🏼 Can be hard to believe, but I have been mixing up my mother tongue (meaning Italian) and Polish, when it comes to specific vocabulary! For instance, I have never been interested in gardening before... then suddenly in Poland I gotta deal with shovels, sewers and other technical stuff. The long and short of it: "Ao passame la łopata che lo szambo è otturato" 🤣
I already can speak French so quite ago I tried to learn Spanish for 2 months then I decided to learn Italian at the same time with Spanish. But I just was getting confused and confused every time I tried to speak Spanish with people. My level was dramatically decreasing (even though I was practicing every day). So Italian was blocking my learning process of both Spanish and Italian. So I decided to put it aside, until I will be able to master Spanish as I am with French. Other ways, it just seems to be learning language haphazardly and wasting a huge amount of time. Thank you Luca.
Hi Luca... you must have been reading my mind. I really really appreciate hearing this great explanation about language interference. My dilemma... I am currently learning Irish (Gaeilge) and am probably between an A2 and B1 level. I was tempted to learn Scottish Gaelic but have stayed away because of my fear of interference, Over 40 years ago I was a solid B1 level in Spanish when I started studying Russian. The moment I threw myself at Russian, my Spanish practically disappeared.. I could not maintain the two of them. I went on to learn a bit of German while I was studying Russian, and had no problem with interference My Spanish even came back a bit. My Russian eventually got to about a C1 level, and I was able to try a few other languages, though they never stuck well. Fast forward to 2009 and I took a short course in French, which I did well in, my other languages were fast asleep in deep drawer. I didn't have the opportunity to keep it up, and then in 2018 I began studying Irish. I am tempted to try and bring back my French or even my Russian, but am unsure of what it will do to my Irish, which I'm committed to getting to a C1 one day. Am I crazy to dust off one of these two languages while continuing my Irish journey?
Even different family languages can confuse my brain. I speak rudimentary Zulu. But when I started learning Polish I found myself using Zulu words, even though I had not heard or spoken Zulu for many years. Another example ofdifferences between similar languages. I am fluent in Swedish. I read Danish, but cannot comprehend spoken Danish. However, reading Danish has helped me with Danish vocabulary, mostly intuitively through context. However listening to Danish is still a strange language to me.
for me I want to learn a lot of languges however I have only so much time so I must have priorities ,so first I want to learn languges that have different writing system,so I'm a native arabic speaker ,I know English ,I'm learning Japanese ,I want to learn ,russian,korean,hebrew ,hindi etc first
I recently spent just under 6 months learning Spanish and am doing well, but WOW does French interfere in some bizarre ways sometimes (the number of times I have said 'mais' in place of 'pero' is just astounding). Surprisingly, now that I'm diving back into French (I spoke it for years at around a B2 bordering on C1 but it's faded a lot in the past several years), Spanish is interfering! Not nearly as heavily, but I see now that I really need to be more careful about how I study. This video gives me a little clearer perspective on this issue, so thank you. Great timing, lol. And then there are those random German words that show up when I'm speaking any language. I barely even speak German... Apparently my brain just really likes it.
I learned german and spanish at the same time and I didn't experience many problems, except coming from english memorizing feminine and masculine was a big task--in german particularly it is the biggest task of language learning...needless to say germans and spaniards don't often agree on what nouns should be deemed feminine and masculine; even after three decades I find myself forgetting genders in german and less often in spanish. The weird thing that happened is that I'm actually much better translating between german and spanish than I am between either language and my native english.
I started to learn italian. My french is about Level B1. Because of the similarity of spanish and italian I want to learn portuguese before spanish. That's my agenda for the next years.
After many years of learning Spanish I think I'm about B2, and now I'm learning Italian. You are right Luca, but the part that helps me learn better personally is by listening. I don't have to watch the person ( if it's on UA-cam for example ) just lots of listening practice. My next trial is going to be ....Icelandic...a totally different kettle of fish ! You might ask why....it's the sound. I am turned on by the sound of a language more than say, it's culture initially. After that will be Portuguese !
omg,i want you as my leanguage teacher,like so amazed and inspired,for real keep going,i am proud of ur huge knowledge of leanguages and it have been a well understandable explenation so i know how to start from since a couple of months ago i really confuse all the leanguages i know and even forget some words
Very good video, I really enjoyed watching it. Particularly, what caught my eye, is a denomination of my mother tongue (Serbo-Croatian). Finally somebody calls that language the way it should be! Srdačan pozdrav iz Zagreba ;)
Hi Luca, I'll never know before, About the family languages, I choose Italian Spanish, French Because the alphabet similar but my goals are the same But circumstances, make me choose the harder one which is Arabic,. But Luca you make me think about how I'll be choosing the next language. Thank you Luca.
I remember when i started learning italian after learning English, I tended to see italian as English, I mean whenever i tried to read a sentence in italian I tended to look for the same syntax as English, no matter how close italian was to my native language (Spanish) , somehow my brain was well aware that I was learning a foreign language , and the only foreign language I was able to speak by that time was English therefore I ended up thinking in English now and then, nevertheless I could solve the interference within the following 2 months of hard-studying!.
Great video! 👍 In this video i realized that Luca can speak more than 14 languages : English Italian Spanish French Germany Russian Polish Greek Portuguese Hungarian Mandarin Japanese Dutch Swedish Danish Romanian... 16 languages ! ! And seems he also want to learn : Arabic Hebrew Turkish Persian? (If i'm not wrong)... total 20 languages! Wow... Hope you will learn Cantonese too someday. LOL 😆 Luca, you're a real amazing hyperpolygolt! 😀👏👏👏
I'm from Argentina. Currently, I'm studying Korean and starting with french because they are really different from each other. And yes, I've found it too difficult to learn the french pronunciation -still struggling- because there are several complex vowels, that sound different when speaking. Just wanted to share!
I learned french to fluency and completely quit using it in 1999. Then, spent 2003-present learned and use spanish constantly. In 2019, after a 20 year break, i started reading books and listening to french podcasts, and my french ability had INCREASED dramatically. It was the strangest feeling. Unfortunately, my speaking skill didn't follow the same pattern.
I kinda aware of that too. First i was studying Dutch at the same time of Swedish.. the first 3 months were okay until the two languages getting too close to each other that i confused one word with another.. so i dropped Dutch and continued Swedish until i got C2. My current goal is to learn some languages entirely avoid to learn languages of the same family/branch.. like first Swedish then French then Russian then Finnish then Turkish and finally back to Dutch then Portuguese then Polish and finally Korean
Uh I had a very similar thing happening with Italian and Spanish, but it was the opposite than your friend's story. After learning Italian for many years in school I went to work in Spain and managed to speak quite fluent Spanish after 5 months. Then I went to Italy to visit my sister, we were stopped in the street by some guys wanting to chat and while I wanted to respond to them in Italian only Spanish was coming out of my mouth. They were laughing when they realized they are speaking to two sisters, but one is responding to them in Spanish and the other one in Italian.
If you liked the video, share it with your friends & spread the word!
The Study System that Will Unlock Your Potential to Master Any Language ☞ www.lucalampariello.com/free-3-video-training/
And happy Language Learning to everyone!
What about English with Germany together???
My level in Eng B2 and German A1
@@Deutsch-2Easy I think you can learn both languages together as there are least similarities between them.
My name is Yermek. I,m from in Kazakhstan
I reached a C1-C2 level in Spanish after years of studying. Now, I'm learning Italian and it feels like a dance on roses as I already know and understand many words. I can totally connect with this video and I think it had been difficult to learn both languages at the same time but now, instead, I get a lot of free Italian for all the effort I put into Spanish.
Your English pronunciation is insanely good! 😱
If you look at the older videos, you can hear that he has continued to improve.
A fun game is to see how many minutes until he slightly mispronounced a word. It's typically 5 to 7 minutes.
3:00 there are "down-sizes" as well
This isn't a criticism, btw. Speaking any language even your native one perfectly is impossible.
Hai ragione!
@@muttlanguages3912 It isn't impossible but speaking a language that isn't your native perfectly is extremely difficult, especially if you're speaking 13 other languages like Luca does.
Dude! I have seen him in videos speaking german and spanish for 20 min or more...it is nearly native in each case, no stuttering. This guy is fire🔥
Sometimes I see people get so worried about this topic. I think it is important to remember that... suffering from cross-linguistic interference is completely normal! It's part of the process!
Even if you speak all your languages very fluently... sometimes, languages get a bit rusty (especially when you speak many)!! Sometimes, it's difficult to suddenly switch from one language to another! Sometimes, you are just tired, your brain gives up and so you start to mix a bit. It's fine!! we cannot be at our best all the time!!
Now if you are constantly having problems with this, don't worry, it gets better as your skills improve. I normally only mix languages that I have at a low level (that is below B2). When I speak languages fluently, I don't really mix them... unless something unexpected happens or I'm simply tired, as I mentioned before.
So no need to stress over this guys haha.
Great video Luca!
Thanks for the great and useful comment Santiglot! =)
@@LucaLampariello Thank YOU for having always been an inspiration to me 👍
Thanks for saying this. I'm learning Serbian and I desperately want to learn Russian one day (once I'm at least B2 in Serbian) but I'm so terrified of getting them mixed up.
@@chrissye9720 hey Chrissy, if you want to practice Serbian, I'm glad to help you!:)
Great content, following you guys
At the moment I’m learning French after learning Spanish for 8 years. It’s definitely been easier than when I started learning Spanish. The pronunciation is so different that there is not much interference.
what level of spanish did you have before starting French and how much time do you spend on spanish to keep it up ? very cool to hear that you are learning another language.
@@Sosui2 I would say it’s around a B2 level and I don’t spend much time maintaining it. I have conversations or watch videos throughout the week in Spanish. So, it’s kind of become a habit to use it a few times a week.
@@NathanSkates cool ! how is the french learning going ? sounds like you have a "plan" to keep the spanish fresh btw.
Great dude, I'm Brazilian and I've been learning Spanish for about 4 months now, I wanna start learning French next year. Do u think it would be a good idea?
9:30 man, i really felt this. when i tried learning korean and japanese at the same time, i'd constantly be mixing up words bc i was still a beginner in both. it just got worse with time before i finally decided to learn one language at a time. i'm learning german now lol
I've got surprised when I watched one of your old videos in Italian without subtitles and I could understand about 50% of what you were saying. My native language is Brazilian Portuguese and I studied Spanish, for some years it was a rather interesting experience to understand some Italian without know a single word in it.
I don't agree with that.
Without knowing a single word in Italian. You are kidding, right?
You probably understood basic words and basic sentences.
Io non so che cosa fare.
Eu nao sei o que fazer
Yo no sé que hacer.
The ability to understand what you hear and what you read is different.
If the speaker speaks slowly and uses those true cognates in his or her speech, plus the context, helps to understand the message, however without some basic knowledge in that particular language, you will not catch the meaning of what you hear.
There is also a difference between understanding something immediately and recognising the meaning by struggling and analysing what you hear or read.
definitely resonate with this. since I reached around a B2 - C1 level in Spanish, my Portuguese learning hasn't been getting confused with my Spanish. Definitely should master one pretty well before moving to another.
How is Portuguese going for you? I also have a strong B2, on the verge of C1 in Spanish and want to learn Portuguese, but every time I start, I soon quit thinking my Spanish isn’t rock solid enough to start with its brother language...
@@ditav5283 Master a language is a stereotype. I am European Portuguese and I have just learned one slang word in my native language. What does it mean to master a language? The word master sounds big to me. If you have a B2 level in Spanish, you understand Spanish well, you know a bunch of words. You can even formulate some sentences. I find difficult to master a language because a language isn’t a subject. It is a bridge 🌉 to reach further information. When you read newspapers in your target language, you are getting information from different sources. Spanish and Portuguese are both my native languages. Furthermore,a language has 4 skills. For instance, I understand and I can speak more or less well Russian, however, I struggle to write. I see the language as Information, which will evolve overtime. Nowadays we use words like “ Google it, WhatsApp him or her, Facebook your mother, wi-fi”. The old generation didn’t use such terms 30 years ago. I speak German, however, I have no idea 🤷♂️ how to translate the It vocabulary I learned thanks to that language. You might know a bunch of medicine vocabulary in French because you studied Medicine In French, however, you have no idea how to say such words in your native native. That is why I don’t believe in the word “ Master”. You will find unknown words even in your native language. Besides that, some people claim after passing the C1/2 exams, struggle to follow lectures at university.
After learning Korean to a B2 level, over the course of 3 years, this video has given me the confidence to start Japanese! I will try and do at least an hour a day on Korean with the rest on Japanese as you recommended. Thank you very much Luca your polyglottery is inspiring!
JUST GIVE TO US
100% OF YOUR ROUTINE TO LEARN LANGUAGES!🔥
So very true about Iberian Portuguese sounding like Russian ! As a Russian learner, everytime I hear Portuguese I feel so confused, because the sounds and intonation are similar but I don't get any of the words
Is Iberian Portuguese a Europian Portuguese? Where can I hear what it sounds like?
@@ЛюдмилаГе-ф9э Yes, it is. I guess you can find UA-cam videos...
@@laranidecker6390 thank you🌹
Чщшщж 😂😂
Portuguese: geração
Russian: gerabionac
The average time that elapses between the birth of a horse and the birth of a horse's offspring.
This guy is like the Messi of languages and Kaufmann is Maradona
But who is Christiano ?
@@aurelienbe Probably Tim Donner
And Laoshu is Ronaldinho xd
You forgot Pele: Richard Simcott xD
@@ichbinhier355 That's right 😂
I envy your wall of books.
why?
@@lucievec6683 all that book knowledge.
This was an excellent video. I speak Italian, Spanish, French and I am starting to learn Portuguese. I practice all of them everyday however I was concerned my Spanish would interfere with learning Portuguese. We shall see how this goes!
I was intending to learn Czech, Croatian and Bulgarian at the same time, but had to choose just one in other to avoid interference and confusion. Now I am learning just Czech and improving my Dutch. You're really an inspiration, Luca! Which languages are you learning at the moment?
Учите русский. На нем много стран говорят.
Hi Luca! You're an amazing language learner, just AMAZING! for that reason I think almost everybody on Earth should know about you, your videos, the impact information you share here with people who speak English, but what about the rest of them that don't. I mean, I know what could be the reason why you have this only channel in which you share most of your content in English you mentioned this before in another video but not everyone take English as their first language to learn, without mention their mother tongue of course, for example I have met people from France that their first language to learn was Spanish and probably you know more people like these, and even though for people who choose English first, will stumble too much before get a good level to understand such amazing information you share in your videos. What I'm trying to say is that if you create other channels on UA-cam with this same content but in other languages you will get to more people and this will bring a bunch of benefits to you not only to them, for example practice of the languages you already know is one of them. Moreover you already have a lot of content here you only could translate them. You motivate me every time you upload another video thank you so much I really appreciate it.
As an Italian speaker, it drives me crazy that the french "sans doute" actually means "probably" 😄
In Spanish we also say sometimes ‘without doubt’ but to express certainty, but ‘probably’ translated to French in an online dictionary gives you the word: probablement.
As an hispanic, same
@@Breylin24 in French sans doute=probably sans aucun doute =surely
@@barbaralore3924 sans doute must be a slang, it really is confusing.
@@Breylin24 No, it's not even slang! It's an idiom that we say without really thinking about it, but one day the absurdity of it struck me too 😁
Good video! My brother studied languages at the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center in California. The pace of study was intense. Students had to master the language course in 36-64 weeks. Psychologically it was very difficult, but fortunately he was helped by Yuriy Ivantsiv's book "Polyglot Notes. Practical tips for learning foreign languages”. The book " Polyglot Notes" became a desk book for my brother, because it has answers to all the problems that any student of a foreign language has to face. Thanks to the author of the channel for this interesting video! Good luck to everyone who studies a foreign language and wants to realize their full potential!
Learning Italian after being fluent in French made grammar easier since it's basically the same. A little bit of confusion may arise when remembering which nouns are masculine or feminine in which languages because they can sometimes differ.
Yeah, I completely agree with you!.
For example, in my particular case. Now I can speak 4 languages such as Kazakh, Russian, English and Spanish.
For me, Kazakh and Russian are mothertongue languages. Well, my first foreing language is english, I have learnt that during the 3 years and passed IELTS exam in November 2020 in and got 7 score.
Then, My spanish is at B1-B2 levels. Well, it has been 2 years as I have been learning that.
Furthermore, Achieveing these levels on English and Spanish. Two weeks ago, I started to learn Italian and Arabic at the same time. I decided that I will not be confused because these two languages from absolutely different families. My knowledge in Spanish and knowing it structure really helps me in studying italian. As well as my Kazakh(it is originated from Turkish) helping me with pronunciation in Arabic.
Well, concluding I would say that, just try to always learn something and get power of Self-Education.
Tremendous advice as usual, Luca. I make educational videos in the major romance languages (plus English) and interference is definitely something I contend with in my language learning.
Who dislikes this excellent content , beautifully delivered ?!!
Another gem Luca!
I like your vocabulary. I like your discipline. All the love man, greetings from a native spanish speaker.
Dios te bendiga !
I'm learning Latin actively, but am exposed to Spanish passively due to my household. Learning Latin had helped me understand Spanish grammar better, but I often trip up on pronouncing Spanish words as I read them. All of a sudden, I have to think twice ably whether I will pronounce a V like a W, or whether a double L is going to be palatal or not.
Hello from Montréal, Canada. I speak Spanish and French, trying to learn Italian and Portugues I experience the same issues you talked about. I think I will change one of them for another family language. Thank you for sharing.
I really enjoyed this! I can speak Spanish to a B2 level, and have recently fully committed to learning Italian. When I encounter new bits of Italian grammar my brain almost separates things into 'same as Spanish', and 'different to Spanish'. If I had no prior knowledge of Spanish there would be many instances where my brain would freak out from seeing something that is so wildly different to English.
And maybe I'm the only one, but I actually get annoyed when I come across an Italian word that has an identical spelling to Spanish. I almost feel like if there are too many similarities, I'll on occasion get too relaxed and start assuming similarities that just aren't there.
Here's a trick, when I was learning Portuguese I realize that sometimes a Spanish word exists in Portuguese but for some reason we were taught a different word, a synonym that only exists in Portuguese, that helps me to reduce the mixing.
Learning both Korean and Japanese and am always finding similar vocab between the two. Sometimes the words are only slightly similar but still noticeable, or they're basically the same word lol. They both have basically the same sentence structure and similar use of particles as well. I like to write phrase lists with Japanese and Korean together (using both languages for the same phrase), and since my reading in Korean is pretty decent now and much better than my Japanese, I can improve my Japanese whilst at the same time continuing to strengthen my Korean.
I've been learning only German for the last months. These videos help me to keep my English skills fresh!
Thank you Luca.
Pietro
I had same situation with the spanish and english. I'm from Bulgaria, but I was lived two ears in Spain. Theare I coudn't speak english not very well, because the spanish was blocked my english skills. Now I'm live in Bulgaria and I use more english than the spanish and I notice sometimes that the english is block for a short time my spanish skills. Everything go well when listen, speak or just speak with some spanish the language. for the last months I started to learn german and the result iscgreat. I'm historian and I have to learn latin and ancient greek. But because of the spanish when I´m starting to write or speak in latin, the spanish block the latin. Thank you very much for the great chanel!
I am learning French, Spanish and Italian and have recently done something that really helps.
Because of my health I cannot form a schedule.
I have inconsistent brain and memory function, this learning is one of the ways I am encouraging neuroplasticity.
In the case of French it is relearning and topping up, Spanish the same, Italian is a new and very welcome joy.
I use multiple learning platforms the main being Duolingo as that was my first prompt and I am too stubborn to drop a streak. 🙄 I also use Pimsleur, International news streams, Lingopie and others, 'Easy' language videos, art videos, movies, you name it.
Often I can't write, although I do what I can.
This learning is also three whopping carrots to get out of this bed, eventually walking and travelling again.
⭐So I have peripheral prompts using all the senses.
☆I have a corner of video playing with livecams of places associated with the language
☆If I am learning off line I have a famous classical music of that language softly playing in the background which is also on the livecams, but is not always from that country. Mozart clearly lived everywhere.
Mostly in elevators.
☆Also offline I have different 'props' representing famous places associated with each country, little souvenir statues, postcards...
☆I use a different colour pen for each country,
French navy,
Spanish red,
Italian green
☆If I am able to, I have associated fragrances,
French lavender,
Spanish frangipani, or a famous blue jasmine Galan de Noche, that puts me straight back to the Sierra Nevada near Granada,
Italy a strong blend of coffee I associate with. Sorry, Italy I can't have pizza né pasta it's far too distracting 🤣
I also need to be able to eat garlic again, I miss it so much, but I get 'restless spasms' which 'int proper cumfi'
Bit of Yorkshire for you there 😁
I am learning Spanish and French at the same time. I'm not having any problems.
I agree with you, Luca. Learning sister languages is a great advantage. Recently, I've been learning Norwegian and English and German have helped tremendously. I experienced something really similar when learning Italian since I speak French and Spanish too. Great video!
One trick I discovered to prevent interference was adding a third unrelated language to my studies. By using German (a language I had no knowledge of) as a buffer when I switched between French and Spanish (both of which I had studied previously, separately), it was like cleansing my palate mentally.
I had this interverence but in a different way. I stopped learning Spanish around four years ago and startet Italian 9 weeks ago.
As I tried to talk to people on tandem in Spanish, I was blocked and changed in the middle of the sentence into Italian. Since then I decided, against your advice, to listen and learn to both languages. It helped me to realise which words are Italian and which Spanish. Still have problems because both languages are on A2/B1 level but it is getting better
¡Gracias por este fantástico vídeo, Luca! Tomo nota de tus consejos. Hay también un aspecto que podemos tener en cuenta cuando aprendemos dos lenguas que no son de la misma familia y que facilita bastante el aprendizaje: el vocabulario compartido. Ocurre por ejemplo entre el inglés y el francés, que llevan siglos influyéndose.
Hey! Big fan of yours here altough its the 1st time I comment on any of your videos. I'm native Portuguese speaker from Lisbon, so yeah I´ve heard before that I sound russian :p As 20 year old studying French and Italian at University, I must say that I totally agree with you. I'm learning french since I was 12 and for the past 8 years I've been slowly improving although steadly in my path to fluency but as soon I as I took Italian about a year ago at University the process has been much much quicker . The grammar similarities are a big big help and until now I haven't got a problem with the Italian grammar ( hope this doesnt jinxed lol). I used to mixed a lot of the vocabulary but with pratice it has improved a lot and now it doesn't happen that often. Thanks for the tips !
So many ways of speaking bad Latin :)
I'm a native Spanish speaker, who's learned some Portuguese, and though I know some words, and some structure, I'm afraid to say that I only speak a bad portuñol. In addition to that, I studied Catalan in 2019-2020, for some months very actively (at least actively enough for not living in Catalonia, I did what I could, I watched every UA-cam video I found, about topics that wouldn't normally interest me when learning any language). But later on, when I wanted to write in Portuguese, It simply didn't come out.
My learning strategy with Portuguese has been a failure: I've been overly confident that, as it's a Romance language like Spanish, it would be easy just to pick up, so I haven't really put much effort into it, so I've been "learning it" for like 8 years, but due to inconsistency, I still have a long way to reach a justifiable level. Whereas with Catalan, I learnt considerably more in less time.
Nowadays, I want to study Portuguese again, as it's one of those languages that already has a place in my heart, now it deserves a place in my brain and mouth, like actively speaking it.
Grande Luca, sei mitico! Da quando ti ho visto in una intervista con Alberto Arrighini mi hai colpito davvero. Mai avrei immaginato che c'era tantissima gente pazza per le lingue, e ero felicissimo di vedere che il mio pensiero verso come imparare le lingue era certamente come il tuo. Grazie tante! Adesso vado in cerca la quinta con il portoghese dopo l'italiano e trovo quelle interferenze che dici, grazie per i consigli.
Very true. My testimony... I'm a French native speaker, and about 15 years ago I had reached a pretty decent level of Italian. Then my life circumstances forced me to make Spanish my primary focus, and in the beginning I experienced massive interference, so I decided to completely block the Italian, and I stopped reading, listening and speaking the language. Now that I live part of my life in Spain and speak fluent Spanish, I'm starting back to pick up some of my not-so-forgotten Italian: I recently re-read in the original, and with enormous pleasure Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore, this pure jewel from Italo Calvino. A very good way to restart !
I've learnt english and spanish together since last year, english always have been my language number one, though
How did you learn both of them just in a year its super cool, nowadays I’m related to Learn spanish,can u give me a few suggestions to learn rapidly and which channels you are following?
When i was learning german 2 years ago, after 1 year i was an A2/B1 in german, but i decided to learn swedish because is amazing, after 1 month i got tons of interference and german was my priority because i must go there for the erasmus, so i gave up. 4 months ago i decided to reopen the swedish book, my german now is a B2/C1 and i don’t mix anymore swedish and german, so i totally agre on what you said. Plus now i’m learning dutch, and as you said, i can understand dutch but i can speak, and when i try to speak my german came out😂😂 but i’m sure that after a while i will speak a good dutch after all. Grande Luca💪🏻💪🏻
The MAIN difference between Latin and Romance languages - Latin had declension with cases thus different word endings what doesn't appear in Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Romanian etc. In those languages there are prepositions (a, de, en, in, di, da, con) giving that sense of cases like Latin had.
I would really appreciate hearing your take on a different aspect of learning a second language in a language family, that is, using the language you already know in the family, as opposed to your native language, as the anchor language through which to learn the new target language.
Japanese is a childhood language for me; I used it as the language of my classes and all of materials in my first two years studying Korean. This method worked well for me though I realize that Korean and Japanese, while they are structurally similar, are not cognate languages as in the Slavic, Romance and German language family cases that you discussed.
I have been learning German and reached B1 and I have booked my Serbian lessons for a few months from now. Can't wait to start learning a Slavic languages.
Thanks for another great Video! I really appreciate the tips you share.
As to the topic: I have two relevant experiences. As a young boy, I learned Spanish to probably the C1 level. When I decided to learn Italian 4 or 5 years ago, I found my knowledge of Spanish extremely helpful. Lots of shared vocabulary and grammar. I quickly got to what I think is a B2 level. Of course there is a bit of interference. I might reach for a “ma” from the Italian box, but grab the “pero” from the Spanish box. I decided to learn Polish in 2021. I learned Russian to the B2 level in college and after. It’s still early to say, but the shared vocabulary and grammar are seeming to make Polish a bit less daunting than it might otherwise have been. (By the way, Spanish was 55 years ago and Russian 45 years ago, so they’re both pretty well anchored.) My experience accords well with your counsel. Thanks again for giving me perspective on this topic.
Native German here and I too have a hell of a difficult time not speaking a Dutchanized German when trying to speak Dutch :)
Am Hispanic. So know english and spanish really well. Am learning tagalog now. Was planning on learning french, then portuguese. And try to take advantage of my spanish skill. Thanks for the video!!!
Being Canadian I speak both French and English. I was learning German for 4 months and thought it was so similar to English.. I could have a simple conversation. Planned a trip to latin america so I learned spanish (only 6 weeks but I put in a lot of efforts, it was intensive). Went on my trip, I could use basic Spanish to get around, being so similar to French I could understand most of it. Some German tourists asked me for direcrions, I understood everything but couldn't remember a thing! I recdntly resumed my Spanish studies but I'll wait until I'm fluent before I attempt another romance or germanic language.
I speak other Romance languages and the same thing that happened to you with Romanian, happened with me. Also, I knew German very well, but as I had not practiced it in many years, I forgot everything. I had to relearn German for my job at the time, and I came across the strange phenomenon that I recognized certain words, knew that I had used them, but I did not know the meaning of the word.
I learnt french at school for 5 years to a meh level. Last august I divided to learn Spanish until the end of the year to see how far I would get (goals were A2 -> B1 -> B2) which I achieved B2. When I try to speak french to myself the pronunciation sounds Spanish, or even Japanese when it comes to the nasal vowels and now the Spanish is what comes to my brain instead of the french and that’s only since around April or may of last year I completely stopped french (because of the pandemic)
I studied Spanish and French in school at the same time, although I started Spanish one year earlier. I lived in Southern California (next to the US/Mexico border), there was a lot of Spanish spoken around me, and much less French spoken. So I didn't have much trouble separating the two. I do think that having started Spanish earlier helped with minimizing interference.
What you said happened to me. For many time I-m learning Portugues and Italian. And I Started Portugues first and when I thought that I was at a good level on Portuguese I start with the Italian language. But At the beginning was so difficult to differentiate these languages. When I talk Italian I use words of Portugues and Vice versa, and while I'm learning more of these languages I can differ a little bit between them. And I'm gonna take your advice and I'm going to learn other languages that are different "family". Thanks Luca.
Greetings from Colombia...
Currently in the process of learning Spanish, French, German, and Arabic. 80% spent on Spanish, 10% French, and the last 10% divided between German and Arabic. Whenever I get really frustrated with Spanish, it’s nice to move onto a different language, to clear the mind and relax a bit.
French is my second native language and Spanish my third (although strictly speaking, in Spanish I'm a native speaker of only what I heard my mother say on the phone). I sometimes say "corriel" (fr: "courriel") in Spanish instead of the verbose "corréo electrónico". And I once said "vepecista" for someone who sells by mail-order (the French acronym "VPC" makes equally good sense in Spanish). I may say "sera" (Italian cognate of French "soir") for the time between tarde and noche.
I occasionally use "mientra" as a noun. Although it's from Latin "dum interim", Spanish "mientras" and Italian "mentre" both look like plurals of a feminine noun.
I am bilingual in Spanish and English and I have interference all the time, and I know one word in one language , but not the other and vice versa. I have also forgotten words in both languages.
You need read more. If you use/learn the languages in diferent environments, you lack the words in these specific environment in the another language. AKA work/home. You need read in both languages about other situations/environments.
I known, perhaps it go out of our confort zone but, this is the learning thing...
Decided to learn Italian and Spanish together, as these two languages resonate with me at a deeper level (one could say passionately). my Spanish is so much better than my Italian, as I'm only starting with the latter. But I tried to dabble in the grammar systems of both, (just to have an idea) I realized having knowledge of Spanish helped me understand Italian quickly. The downside is that I often confuse the vocab - which sucks at times.
Spanish and Italian learner here (any help or friendship is appreciated!)
kudos Luca! love from the Philippines!
Something that always amazes me is that when I start learning a new language, when I start speaking, the next language that comes to my mind is not my native language (Italian) but the one I know a little more than the new one, yet not as much as my native language... I was always afraid to learn similar languages because of interference and had always avoided that. Then, since my stronger language after English is Hindi, last Summer I decided to give Punjabi a go although it is as close to Hindi as Italian is to Spanish. I was surprised to see that I already had vocabulary, grammar and syntax ready and started speaking much earlier than any other new language. At the same time I had no problem with Hindi as I use it almost daily. My aim is to master most North Indian languages although I am in no rush...
As for the Romance languages, it also helps a lot if you have learned Latin at an early stage, for example at school. I had both Latin and French in high school, and looking back, I consider this a very good pair: Latin gave me the background knowledge for all Romance languages (especially regarding vocabulary), and French is probably the most difficult of the Romance languages regarding pronunciation. It was much easier to move on to Spanish, Italian and Portuguese from there. Romanian, however, needs an extra effort because of the strong Slavic layer in it.
Do a video about the books in your library and your favourite ones
I got the same situation when I started to learn German after English. It was so awful but now it’s ok
don't worry, i think its just a difficult period, you'll get over it soon.
yo primero aprendí ingles y luego empecé con portugués de Brasil, pero cuando trataba de hablar en portugués y no encontraba las palabras mi mente automáticamente saltaba a ingles, las personas con las que hablaba me decían que por no usaba el español, porque para ellos era mas fácil entender el español pero ya trataba de explicarles que era algo que yo hacia sin querer, luego empecé a estudiar italiano al mismo tiempo que aprendía portugués pero como mi nivel de portugués no era muy bueno y en italiano no sabia mucho, empecé a tener problemas, confundía las palabras porque eran muy similares y cuando intentaba hablar italiano empezaba bien pero de un momento a otro resultaba hablando italiano con pronunciación de portugués o lo mas gracioso era que empezaba hablando italiano cuando no encontraba las palabras cambiaba a portugués y si seguía teniendo dificultades pasaba a ingles pero nunca en mi idioma nativo, en conclusión me paso todo lo que advierte lucas en el video cuando se estudia idiomas que pertenecen a la misma familia
You are the best polyglot i have seen ever, your tips and advices helped me answering the questions that were in my head for a long time and surly i will use them while learning spanish and french, thank you so much🌸🌸
I found that almost everything you have mentioned Luca, has happened to me. My native language, like you, is Italian so I speak it at home and with my family in Italy all the time. Though, I live in Canada, so I use English pretty much everywhere else. I am a French Major in university, so I use that during classes and for my summer job as a camp counsellor in Québec. I also learned Spanish in university and got a job as a Spanish TA in order to practice. Sometimes my brain has no clue what's going on after spending long amounts of time on only one language LOL. Thanks for these interesting videos! As a language major, they're super helpful
Blocking is killing me right now!
Learnt a lot of french years ago and stopped using but there was always a lot available in my head because it was the only foreign language knew,then i entered a ton on Spanish into my head and a few months later the french was totally blocked and all I could get out was spanish.I really had to dig hard to find the french words even though I knew they were there...Luckily though the french is still in there because when I read french it so familiar to me and I read it just fine .Plan now is to reach high level in Spanish then go back to raise my french. I fully relate to your american friend.Although i will probably try to practice my french again. Glad to know it's not just me and others have this problem.
It is a matter of practicing your skills. Interpreters train to be able to translate two languages simultaneously. It takes time. I remember when I was in Paris where I spoke a lot of French. My German friend phoned me and I wasn’t able to speak German. French was on my head all the time. You have to give time to your brain 🧠 to not muddle up language or even not be able to speak the foreign language or your native language. It can also happen. I am Portuguese. It is a lot of time consuming. Many people admire “ Luca”. Well to achieve fluency in so many languages he had to spend many years studying those languages for hours. Recalling everything what you have learned in the long term memory is a huge challenge to our brain. I admire his effort, the time he invested to achieve his goals. However, I do strongly believe anyone who have a penchant for languages can reach that aim as well. I look up to the massive effort and dedication, not the result. Without effort, there isn’t any good results.
As Portuguese is my native language, it is been quite interesting to learn Italian, As my strongest language within the same family is portuguese. Great video!
Thanks Alex!
I actually learned to speak French about 40 years ago after having left school through having a French girlfriend as a 16 year old. Roll forward to 2019 and by then as a 56 year old, I decided to have a go at learning Spanish as I'd been on holiday a few times and had thought having at least some basic Spanish would be useful for the next time I go.... So to confirm: In a class of English monoglots (all absolute beginners in Spanish), my having rusty French (but to what was I now realise a very good level) gave me SUCH an advantage. Just knowing and understanding that all nouns have genders, for example. The word order and other structures or inflections. My Spanish is not fluent enough to the point I don't need a phrase book or small dictionary at all but I have found I can get away _a lot of the time_ with _CHEATING_ by 'Spanishifying' a French word (guessing at a cognate)... Cutting to the quick, I am just starting Italian (I hope to do a 6 week absolute beginners class). I can confirm with the French / Spanish interference that when selecting the Spanish word for and "Y", I always pronounce it as though it were the French "et" _even though I see Y in my minds eye!!_ and I really have to work hard to stop myself doing it. All of that said, I have enjoyed the renewed study and a feeling of accomplishment as things have fallen into place - Puedo decir que creo que llegado un poco. I will do the 6 week Italian course and then return to an adult learning intermediate+ Spanish class in the autumn. But if I can successfully introduce myself to Italian too then I will also consider German, Dutch, Greek, Russian, etc, etc, etc. I wish I'd decided to have a go at Spanish years and year ago. And Luca - this is a very good video. Thank you for the advice.
I always enjoy the quotes at the end of the video 😍
Very good video. Spanish and Portuguese are so close to each other and it's true that you have to be quite proficient in one before tackling the other.
An excellent video Luca, as usual, considering different points of view and giving lots of practical advice. I have had similar experiences to you learning Dutch after German and Czech after Polish after Russian. Two comments: firstly, your English is really excellent, but I don't think that "All that glitters is not gold" is the most appropriate saying in this context; we say that when something isn't what it appears to be. You seem to be stressing that every good thing has a downside, so maybe something like "every rose has a thorn" is more suitable. Secondly and conversely, I think that the "cloud" of interference has a "silver lining": for me, part of the beauty of learning similar languages is appreciation of the subtle differences between them. For example, "завод" in Russian is a factory, "zawód" in Polish is a profession and "závod" in Czech is a competition.
Really interesting video - thanks! And pretty timely as I was wondering just this morning about the best way of maintaining my Spanish level, improving my Catalan, and beginning to learn Italian this year. Food for thought!
Visça Catalunya i Visça Barça...!!!!!!!!
Thanks for share with us your knowledge about this topic, one more time.
7:55 This happens more often if you still haven't reached a B2 level in your languages. For example, when I was starting to learn Italian, I already had a very good Portuguese. Every time I wanted to practice my Italian, I often put many Portuguese words and I didn't know why I couldn't stop doing it.
Another thing that surprised me was when I was practicing my English, French and Italian to keep getting better. In these languages you say: another (an + other), un autre and un altro. Like in Portuguese, in my native language Spanish, you only say otro (other). So, after having practiced all those 3 languages, when I was having a normal conversation in Spanish, for some reason I said "un otro". I quickly realized what I just said and corrected myself. But I was a little shocked because I totally wasn't expecting that to happen.
Most of the time however, it is my Spanish that interfiere with my French, Portuguese and Italian because of the similarities among these.
I began really learning Spanish, German and Romanian all at the same time. I love them all and don't want to stop learning any of them. I also dabble in Japanese, Latin and Sanskrit, just for fun and mild interest. I have found that I can keep all three of the main languages mostly separate. I do notice, occasionally, vocabulary is a little bit of a trick. Sometimes I just can't think of the word in one language, so I think of it in another. I don't find I have much difficulty in keeping up with each language, especially since each one has a special meaning for me and I do different activities to practice each every day. I can appreciate how it might get difficult for some.
Thank you for this video! I'm a native Spanish speaker and I started learning English about 6 years ago. I'm at a C1/C2 level at the moment. I started learning French and Mandarin last year and I recently kicked off with Korean. Luckily all of them are different enough from one another not to mix them up! But I'll certainly wait until I have a higher level on those before picking another language up haha
Pd: getting blocked is normal! It even happens to me in Spanish sometimes :)
Hi Luca! I speak English, French, German and can read and write Hiragana and Katakana and I know some beginner level words and grammar in Japanese. I can't speak Japanese, yet. I tried learning Spanish and Italian at the same time during the pandemic. I thought it might be a good idea to kill two birds with one stone. But I ended up mixing up the words I learned in these languages. I wasn't even aware whether I was speaking in Spanish or in Italian when I was pronouncing a word. So I stopped learning these two languages simultaneously. I've decided to learn Spanish first. When I reach B2 level in Spanish, then I'll start learning Italian . Thank you so much for your very informative video. Now I understood why I was mixing up these two languages.
Grandissimo Luca 🤙🏼
Can be hard to believe, but I have been mixing up my mother tongue (meaning Italian) and Polish, when it comes to specific vocabulary! For instance, I have never been interested in gardening before... then suddenly in Poland I gotta deal with shovels, sewers and other technical stuff.
The long and short of it: "Ao passame la łopata che lo szambo è otturato" 🤣
I already can speak French so quite ago I tried to learn Spanish for 2 months then I decided to learn Italian at the same time with Spanish. But I just was getting confused and confused every time I tried to speak Spanish with people. My level was dramatically decreasing (even though I was practicing every day). So Italian was blocking my learning process of both Spanish and Italian. So I decided to put it aside, until I will be able to master Spanish as I am with French. Other ways, it just seems to be learning language haphazardly and wasting a huge amount of time. Thank you Luca.
Hi Luca... you must have been reading my mind. I really really appreciate hearing this great explanation about language interference. My dilemma... I am currently learning Irish (Gaeilge) and am probably between an A2 and B1 level. I was tempted to learn Scottish Gaelic but have stayed away because of my fear of interference, Over 40 years ago I was a solid B1 level in Spanish when I started studying Russian. The moment I threw myself at Russian, my Spanish practically disappeared.. I could not maintain the two of them. I went on to learn a bit of German while I was studying Russian, and had no problem with interference My Spanish even came back a bit. My Russian eventually got to about a C1 level, and I was able to try a few other languages, though they never stuck well.
Fast forward to 2009 and I took a short course in French, which I did well in, my other languages were fast asleep in deep drawer. I didn't have the opportunity to keep it up, and then in 2018 I began studying Irish. I am tempted to try and bring back my French or even my Russian, but am unsure of what it will do to my Irish, which I'm committed to getting to a C1 one day. Am I crazy to dust off one of these two languages while continuing my Irish journey?
It’s natural to get confused. I get confused all the time. Well not all the time but sometimes.
Even different family languages can confuse my brain. I speak rudimentary Zulu. But when I started learning Polish I found myself using Zulu words, even though I had not heard or spoken Zulu for many years.
Another example ofdifferences between similar languages. I am fluent in Swedish. I read Danish, but cannot comprehend spoken Danish.
However, reading Danish has helped me with Danish vocabulary, mostly intuitively through context. However listening to Danish is still a strange language to me.
Thanks for the tips,🙂👍🏼
I practice each language every day by reading, and talking when possible, and writing is necessary for me.
for me I want to learn a lot of languges however I have only so much time so I must have priorities ,so first I want to learn languges that have different writing system,so I'm a native arabic speaker ,I know English ,I'm learning Japanese ,I want to learn ,russian,korean,hebrew ,hindi etc first
Ok
I recently spent just under 6 months learning Spanish and am doing well, but WOW does French interfere in some bizarre ways sometimes (the number of times I have said 'mais' in place of 'pero' is just astounding). Surprisingly, now that I'm diving back into French (I spoke it for years at around a B2 bordering on C1 but it's faded a lot in the past several years), Spanish is interfering! Not nearly as heavily, but I see now that I really need to be more careful about how I study. This video gives me a little clearer perspective on this issue, so thank you. Great timing, lol.
And then there are those random German words that show up when I'm speaking any language. I barely even speak German... Apparently my brain just really likes it.
I learned german and spanish at the same time and I didn't experience many problems, except coming from english memorizing feminine and masculine was a big task--in german particularly it is the biggest task of language learning...needless to say germans and spaniards don't often agree on what nouns should be deemed feminine and masculine; even after three decades I find myself forgetting genders in german and less often in spanish. The weird thing that happened is that I'm actually much better translating between german and spanish than I am between either language and my native english.
I'm so glad I found this video. 😁
I started to learn italian. My french is about Level B1. Because of the similarity of spanish and italian I want to learn portuguese before spanish. That's my agenda for the next years.
After many years of learning Spanish I think I'm about B2, and now I'm learning Italian. You are right Luca, but the part that helps me learn better personally is by listening. I don't have to watch the person ( if it's on UA-cam for example ) just lots of listening practice. My next trial is going to be ....Icelandic...a totally different kettle of fish
! You might ask why....it's the sound. I am turned on by the sound of a language more than say, it's culture initially. After that will be Portuguese !
omg,i want you as my leanguage teacher,like so amazed and inspired,for real keep going,i am proud of ur huge knowledge of leanguages and it have been a well understandable explenation so i know how to start from since a couple of months ago i really confuse all the leanguages i know and even forget some words
it's such joy to spend 16 minutes listening. :)
Very good video, I really enjoyed watching it. Particularly, what caught my eye, is a denomination of my mother tongue (Serbo-Croatian). Finally somebody calls that language the way it should be!
Srdačan pozdrav iz Zagreba ;)
Hi Luca, I'll never know before, About the family languages, I choose Italian Spanish, French Because the alphabet similar but my goals are the same But circumstances, make me choose the harder one which is Arabic,. But Luca you make me think about how I'll be choosing the next language. Thank you Luca.
I remember when i started learning italian after learning English, I tended to see italian as English, I mean whenever i tried to read a sentence in italian I tended to look for the same syntax as English, no matter how close italian was to my native language (Spanish) , somehow my brain was well aware that I was learning a foreign language , and the only foreign language I was able to speak by that time was English therefore I ended up thinking in English now and then, nevertheless I could solve the interference within the following 2 months of hard-studying!.
I have been dealing with so much interference, this was a great and directed video, bravo
Great video! 👍
In this video i realized that Luca can speak more than 14 languages : English Italian Spanish French Germany Russian Polish Greek Portuguese Hungarian Mandarin Japanese Dutch Swedish Danish Romanian... 16 languages ! !
And seems he also want to learn : Arabic Hebrew Turkish Persian? (If i'm not wrong)... total 20 languages! Wow... Hope you will learn Cantonese too someday. LOL 😆
Luca, you're a real amazing hyperpolygolt! 😀👏👏👏
I'm from Argentina.
Currently, I'm studying Korean and starting with french because they are really different from each other. And yes, I've found it too difficult to learn the french pronunciation -still struggling- because there are several complex vowels, that sound different when speaking.
Just wanted to share!
I learned french to fluency and completely quit using it in 1999. Then, spent 2003-present learned and use spanish constantly. In 2019, after a 20 year break, i started reading books and listening to french podcasts, and my french ability had INCREASED dramatically. It was the strangest feeling.
Unfortunately, my speaking skill didn't follow the same pattern.
I kinda aware of that too. First i was studying Dutch at the same time of Swedish.. the first 3 months were okay until the two languages getting too close to each other that i confused one word with another.. so i dropped Dutch and continued Swedish until i got C2. My current goal is to learn some languages entirely avoid to learn languages of the same family/branch.. like first Swedish then French then Russian then Finnish then Turkish and finally back to Dutch then Portuguese then Polish and finally Korean
Thank you, i had this question for a long time and you answered it perfectly.
Uh I had a very similar thing happening with Italian and Spanish, but it was the opposite than your friend's story. After learning Italian for many years in school I went to work in Spain and managed to speak quite fluent Spanish after 5 months. Then I went to Italy to visit my sister, we were stopped in the street by some guys wanting to chat and while I wanted to respond to them in Italian only Spanish was coming out of my mouth. They were laughing when they realized they are speaking to two sisters, but one is responding to them in Spanish and the other one in Italian.
Fun story, sometimes you can't help it