Autodidactic foreign language study?

In that sense, it's more confusing in many ways. Spanish is my second language, and when I picked French up at the beginning of this year, because of the similarities, I had a hard time remembering that French is not Spanish and I can't transfer Spanish rules into French. On the other hand, the similarities mean you can transfer your knowledge of one into another. Vocabulary is the best thing about learning from a single language family - you can pick out patterns and turn one English or Spanish word into a French word and get it right without having been taught the French word formally. However, I'd suggest that you get a proper teacher; they can clear up issues in less than a minute that could take you months to understand on your own.

It takes as long as it needs. If you learn Italian, but have no access to Italian speakers or Italian media, then it'll take longer, despite being easier than French. But if you have more access to French speakers and other stuff, you will be able to understand far more despite the relative complexity of the language.

It's most important to learn the structure - the most expansive vocabulary doesn't compensate for poor grammar and structure which turn well-thought things into nonsense.

 

Once you learn your first foreign language, the others come more easily. However, I've not found much success in the unstructured style like this. The way I learned Spanish was in a classroom, slogging through vocabulary and grammar lessons because they just stuck in my head. The conversational pieces were nice and helpful of course, but I didn't tend to remember them until I understood why the sentence was arranged how it was.

You might appreciate Spanish grammar. In our first few weeks, we learned how to introduce friends to others. I didn't get why the phrasing was "Te presento a (nombre de amigo)" for informal and "Le presento a (nombre)" for the respectful address. Only way later did we learn about object/reflexive pronouns and that that's how they work. That is when I finally got it.

But long anecdote aside, if you can learn English just by picking it up from media, you should be able to do the same with others.

^^Aussie, I tried dabbling a little in Italian, but it seems to be a common problem of getting it mixed up with Spanish. The two are so similar! XD Except that Italian is much softer and more aesthetically pleasing.

 

It depends what you need it for. If you want to go into a job where English or French is a formal requirement, potential employers won't be impressed by "yeah, I just picked it up on my own." If you don't, then maybe it is wisest to avoid wasting money, but a teacher will help your English a lot, and any other language you pick up.

 

French is a lot like English, and is the most different from Italian and Spanish. Spanish has fem and masc forms of "we", French doesn't. There are also a lot more structural differences between Spanish and French.

Not saying it wouldnt be easier, but I think it's relatively easy for English speakers to learn French, since the majority of English words are french loan words.

I don't have to translate half the crap I need to translate in Spanish that I do in French when it comes to English.

There are thousands of English words that are the same in French, and if you come from a Commonwealth country you already spell most of them the same; Americans are the only people that differed from spelling.

There are Faux amis, words that sound the same but mean something different; only because English chose to employ an older French meaning to the word, and French progressed to a new meaning.

I don't know how you could learn to spell another language by just engaging yourself in the media. Especially English and French, they are not PHONETIC languages.

Spanish, Italian, and Romanian are HIGHLY PHONETIC. They are spelt almost the exact same way things sounds.

French everything is spelt with many more letters than what is sounded. That is because the language was set up to flow perfectly, the last letters on like 95% of words are not pronounced unless the next word starts with a vowel. That means French is almost more about what you DON'T pronounce, so listening to it will not help you learn to write it at all. Also some letters you just don't pronounce, ever. I see French everyday because I'm Canadian and it's on all packaging, a couple channels are all french, and some radio stations are French. So I have a bit of an idea of how things are spell and meant to be pronounced, but it still confuses me.

French doesn't even seem foreign to me because again I'm Canadian, it's just another language that people here speak, but even with all my exposure, spelling gets me the most.

Same with English, English has no rhyme or reason to it's spelling, we borrowed so many words, and are such a huge collection of different languages that we couldn't possible follow one set rule on spelling, we have Germanic, French, Greek, and Latin influences, that make the spelling very hard to follow.

I have no idea how you could've learnt to spell anything in English by just listening to it.

What about laugh, thorough, pneumatics, night, fright, flight, might, where, wear, we're, there, their, they're, fair, fare. So many words.

I've been learning spanish, and that seems like a viable language to listen to and be able to spell with decent accuracy. Spanish pronounciation seems to be closer to English too; I know it's stupid I even said that, but it's alot easier to enuciate in Spanish than in French.

Take this for example

J'aime, and J'aimais sound the same to me from a French speaker, or Je parle, Je parlais, and Je parlerais, the ending sounds the same to me, but to a French speaker there is a little difference, you put more emphasis on certain letters, something that I cannot get my head around, it all sounds the same.

This is one French word that gets me everytime, Ils peuvent, is pronounced "ILL PERVE", How does ILS PEUVENT make ILL PERVE is beyond me.

My brother's girlfriend is from the Northern part of my province which has a lot of French people, and she cannot spell half the words in French, so you cannot learn that language by just listening to it.

 

Duolingo?

 

I would say that watching movies, speaking with native speakers (who know the idioms, slang, along with grammar/vocabulary) are the best methods.

If you need more help, I suggest babbel.com


Also, I speak French and Portuguese along with your native language, and I understand Italian. Why? For the reasons that Aussie said.

I can understand Italian simply because if the word isn't similar to Spanish, it's similar to French. French and Italian are closer together in terms of grammar (clitic nouns (j'en pensais instead of pensaba en eso, where the direct object is in the middle) and certain words (comer/manger/mangiare).

As a person who has basically done what you're doing, I think that you should just apply what you know in Spanish and just apply it to the others. Remember that each Romance language has its own special endings and spelling rules, therefore you can automatically know what the word will be without ever having to study it. (mujer--> mulher (j--> lh), therefore bruja--> brulha).

 

Reading books in English, watching series/films in English (with English subtitles!) and listening to English music are great ways to improve your understanding of English and to get used to it, but you shouldn't rely on them for exclusively.
Try to look for books on grammar, vocabulary and the like and do the studying on your own, if you can't afford a class. Learning a language by yourself is possible, but you need to be diligent.