Language – Latin

6 Responses to “I speak Latin, so what will be the easiest of the romance languages to learn?”

1. kat1605nrw Says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 11:18 pm

   I learned English at school, then Latin, then French, and the French was pretty easy, though I must say that while I drew upon my Latin for about 70 %, I also got about 30% from what I knew of English.

   I know someone who had Latin as her first foreign language and found Italian quite easy to pick up after that, too. And my brother did Latin followed by Spanish. Essentially, it’ll help you with most of these languages, and if you’re most interested in French, don’t worry about the rules – if you’ve learned Latin, you probably know your grammar quite well and can profit from the fact that many structures are actually quite similar.

2. isaacsnts Says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 11:18 pm

   spanish!!!!
   plus its like totally more widely spoken than italian and way better.. and you’ll be able to watch Pedro Almodovar movies without subtitles!
   thanx betch

3. Daphne Says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 11:18 pm

   French is a beautiful language to learn especially if you have the base of Latin. Italian is a no-brainer, you’ll quite possibly find it to be very easy. Spanish is also an easy language to learn.
   You may also want to try Romanian if you are up for a challenge. Many (most) of the words are Latin-based with a few exceptions.
   Romanian, Italian, and Spanish are also easy to read because there are no silent letters like French and English. Each letter is sounded out.

4. kickyouintheface Says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 11:18 pm

   I think Italian is a good choice; it is a beautiful language in its own right and is also not as nonsensical as French. Spanish is widely spoken, but Italian is not, or course, useless. I am curious as to your intentions if you are choosing your next language thus, but if you don’t have a specific purpose to learn Spanish, there’s no reason to choose it just because it is widely spoken.

5. bluepearl Says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 11:18 pm

   It depends on what your native language is. Studies have shown that the difficulty of learning a language depends greatly on the person’s native language. If there are more similarities between the languages, then it will be easier learning it. If your native language is Spanish, for example, you’ll find Italian easier because they have a somwhat similar lexis. But it will also be confusing at the beginnning, precisely because of that.

   Furthermore, you can’t really categorize the difficulty of learning a language, because it also depends on the person. To illustrate the relative difficulty of language learning I’ll give you an example from my own experinces. I have learned German (although Germanic language) and English as foreign languages and while I found German more difficult to learn than English, some of my collegues disagreed. And we had all the same native language. It is the same with all languages.

   And for those who say that Italian is a very easy language to learn, I must warn you. That was my impression, too, at the beginning then it got really complicated. Even more complicated than English at times. Like my Italian teacher told us: "Italian is the language that looks easy on the outside but very complex and difficult on the inside." And he was right. There is a tense in the Italian language, the "passato remoto" which is very complicated. There are also the sexes which work in a complex manner.

   French is indeed somewhat difficult, mostly because of the pronunciation of words. The tenses are about the same as in other Romance languages.

   Spanish may not be as difficult as French or Italian. I have never studied Spanish, though I understand many things.

   Romanian is also a Romance language, I didn’t find it specifically difficult, but it also has some complex grammatical issues which may not be easy to learn.

   I can’t really tell you anything about the other Romance languages because I’m not familiar with them.

   All in all, there is no real answer to your question. You cannot categorize one language as the easiest and another the most difficult to learn beacuse all languages have something which is difficult in them and something which is easy.

   So it’s up to you to decide which language you’re interested in the most, because being interested in a language will help you learn it quicker and easier. If you want to learn Italian, then you should. The more you like a language and the more motivation you have, and the easier it will seem.

   P.S. All languages are beautiful.

6. aera Says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 11:18 pm

   They will all be pretty easy. Romanian is closest to Latin, so that might be the easiest, but I do not know. Spanish has the closest pronunciation to the Latin that is taught in the USA, but there’s those pesky accents! Instead of going for the easiest, consider the literature you would be reading in the target language, or the people you will be conversing with, or the places you will be going… each of the Romance languages has much to recommend it.