French or Spanish?

[subaru000]

I am considering learning a new language using Rosetta Stone and so far it looks like I'm most interested in French, German and Spanish, each for different reasons.

French is a language that I find elegant and sophisticated. The words seem to glide like butter and it would be enlightening to learn the ins and outs of the language. My concern with French is that I don't know where it's spoken in the world and that is one of the things that I'm considering when it comes to another language.

Spanish is the language that I have had the most experience with. I took two years worth of it in high school and it was fine for the most part. My only concern about sharpening my skills would be that I would find it a bit boring. In the two years I spent learning it, I've gotten to the suffixes (ar, er, ir), tenses, numbers, basic introductions and the beginnings of reading the language aloud.

I am also considering German but like my problem with French, I know that it is not spoken nearly as much as the others and the pronunciations may be difficult.

Out of the three:

-Which is the easiest to learn given my native English speaking?
-Which of the three are most spoke throughout the world? (Sorry if this is a stupid question).

and

-If I were in a situation where I had a flat tire and needed assistance, which of the three would make me look the least idiotic? (or in any emergency situation).

Thanks for any assistance.

PS: I'm most comfortable speaking Spanish. Makes the decision for me much more obvious but I want to see what you guys think.

[Hoppip]

French is incredibly easy, and here's why:

1. Phonology. The French spelling system is completely standardized and although words may seem strange at first, soon you will that EVERY cluster of letters is standardized. There are only two sounds not in the English language (r and u). The u is simple—you make the "eee" sound with rounded lips.

2. Grammar. French is arguably more similar to English because subjects are required (you cannot drop "je" like you drop "yo" in Spanish). There are also fewer tenses: present, past perfect, imperfect, and then conditional, future, and subjunctive. The compound tenses are made easily by combining the past-perfect with the other tenses (conditional past, future past, etc.) The verb endings are easy to memorize because they get duplicated:

Basic tenses:
Je pense - I think / am thinking / do think
J'ai pensé - I thought
Je pensais - I was thinking
Je penserai - I will think
Je penserais - I would think
Je pense - I think (subjunctive mood)

Compound ("to have" conjugated + past participle):
J'avais pensé - I had thought
J'aurai pensé - I will have thought
J'aurais pensé - I would have thought
J'aie pensé - I thought (subjunctive)

EDIT: The -é, -ais, and -ai endings all sound identical, too. See? Easy! Nothing to be afraid of. It is extremely standardized.

French only has three classes of normal verbs (-er, -ir, -re) and most "new" verbs almost always fall into -er. There is no estar/ser division, only être.
There are only two grammatical genders in French (unlike German which has three).

3. Usefulness? Talking about the usefulness of language is null—a common argument is that Spanish is more "useful" in the United States. Of course, a language is only useful if you know it, and how many people really remember high school Spanish five years after having graduated? French is one of the top international languages. Yes, you will Spanish if you're a clerk, yes, you might use French as a government employee. It all depends on your personal situation. For me, I speak French simply because I love it, and I love French culture.

La langue française est ma langue favorite, sans doute.
The French language is my favorite language, without doubt.

I hope that helps. If you have any questions at all on the French language, I'd be more than happy to give you my perspective, and if I don't know the answer, I'd be glad to point you in the right direction.

Bonnes études !

[IsItSo]

Originally Posted by Jyupisseondeo

The French spelling system is completely standardized and although words may seem strange at first, soon you will that EVERY cluster of letters is standardized.

Still, French spelling is messier than German and especially Spanish. Et, ez, er, ais, ai, ait, é, ée, és, ées, and several other clusters are all pronounced either identically or very similarly, for example.

To answer your question about how much each language is spoken, both Spanish and French have around 500 million speakers each, with Spanish being somewhat more popular. In terms of native speakers, Spanish is the second most popular language in the world and French is the fourteenth. In terms of total speakers, Spanish is the third most popular and French is the fourth. German is spoken by around 200 million speakers in total and is the tenth most spoken language in the world. It's also the most popular language in Europe.

[partietraumatic]

Spanish is the easiest language to learn as an english speaker. Widely acknowledged to be so. It follows the exact same grammatical rules as english. I learnt both French and Spanish, and found spanish alot easier.

Also, i think learning how to read spanish is easier. Its pretty much 100% phonetic. Whereas in french you have some sounds that aren't said as they are written, spanish is pretty much 'say what you see'.

anyway this is just from my experience, as an english speaker who learnt both french and spanish, i find spanish markedly easier.

Usefulness is debatable, as speaking any 2nd language is useful

[edogs334]

I'd say learn Spanish- it's a lot more useful than French- at least in a professional sense. Unless you're going to be living (or are already living) in a place where the local population speaks a lot of Creole- then Creole would be easier to learn if you already learned French. French is also spoken in a lot of countries in Northern Africa and the Middle East as a secondary language (correct me if I'm wrong on that one).

[alexi12]

Spanish is more widley used in the world then the other two.

Originally Posted by partietraumatic

Spanish is the easiest language to learn as an english speaker. Widely acknowledged to be so. It follows the exact same grammatical rules as english. I learnt both French and Spanish, and found spanish alot easier.

Also, i think learning how to read spanish is easier. Its pretty much 100% phonetic. Whereas in french you have some sounds that aren't said as they are written, spanish is pretty much 'say what you see'.

anyway this is just from my experience, as an english speaker who learnt both french and spanish, i find spanish markedly easier.

Usefulness is debatable, as speaking any 2nd language is useful

Not true.

Norwegian, Afrikaans, and Esperanto are all considered to be the easiest for really any Latin or Germanic language based speaker. This is because of the simple pronunciation rules, and simple grammar.

In fact, languages like Dutch (but not German) are substantially easier for an English speaker because of the similarity in grammar since it is also a west-Germanic language.

Romantic languages (such as Spanish, French, Italian, Romanian, and more) are not that difficult but they are most definitely not the easiest for the average person because of the differences in pronunciation and huge differences in grammar, which include complex verb conjugations, genderized nouns and adjectives, and much more use of different moods.

French is easier than Spanish once you get past the pronunciation because the vocabulary is often similar to English and the grammar is not as extensive as Spanish.

However you live in Florida, so learn Spanish. Florida has a huge amount of Spanish speakers. Barely any French speakers (and even fewer German speakers.)

The only people who say Spanish is the easiest are people who have only tried to learn one language and people who studied Spanish then jumped to a language like Mandarin or Japanese.

[OutToSea]

Could you learn both Spanish and French? Maybe one fluently and the other less-so? I'm pretty much facing the same predicament..I love how French sounds. Spanish here is much more economical to learn though where I live. My entire family (extended family included) speaks mainly Spanish, so I'm probably going to settle with Spanish.

German is meant to be easier than French.

Originally Posted by ahhthehorror

German is meant to be easier than French.

If you just google "French Vs German Language" or "French German Difficulty" you will find multiple articles upon articles (and forums, and question sites) where people say German is more difficult than French. In fact, the ones I looked at had multiple German-born (thus native German speakers) saying German is harder than French.

Also, for something to be "meant" to be easier, it would have to be created with intelligent design. German was not created with intelligent design in mind. It, along with every other major language spoken (really, the only language that was intelligently designed that has more than 100,000 speakers is Esperanto) evolved after thousands of years of primitive languages evolving.

[Hoppip]

Subaru000, I think the greatest indicator of which language will be the easiest/hardest is how much effort you are willing to put in to learn it. It took me less than a day to learn the entire Korean writing system hangeul—it's been a week, however, and I only know 15 rudimentary Japanese hiragana (and not very well). I could very well say that hangeul is easier than hiragana, but in the end, that's not going to help me memorize hiragana—I'm just gonna have to put in the work regardless and do a little extra to get down Japanese.

I wish you luck on your linguistic endeavors!

N'importe quelle langue que vous choisissez je suis certain que vous l'aimerez.
[NEG]-to.be.important which language [COMM] 2S-[POL] choose-2S 1S be-1S certain [COMM] 2S-[POL] like-2S-[POL]-[FUT]
No matter which language you choose, I'm certain you'll love it.

[xCrazyInsanity]

By your location, spanish seems like the more obvious choice.

By prononciation and ease of learning, i'd say french. I've tried to learn both, french seems to come more easily

however, if you can learn one, you'll be able to learn the others very easily.
there's a lot of overlaps and cognates (similar sounding words, usually same latin root)

[Zumbro]

Well, I'll step in and say that German is awesome. It's pretty easy to learn words and sentence structure too, until you get into some of the deeper levels of grammar (which then sucks). Many words and structures are nearly identical to english. Plus, the Germans specialize in drinking, and all of the fun drinking songs are a part of their culture.

Really though, it depends on what you want to use it for. If you're looking for business purposes, it depends on your career. French is the language of politics and international sports. Spanish is good if you'll be managing people in any way. German is good for engineers (at least in the defense industry). Chinese is getting pretty damn important too.

[Hoppip]

Originally Posted by IsItSo

Still, French spelling is messier than German and especially Spanish. Et, ez, er, ais, ai, ait, é, ée, és, ées, and several other clusters are all pronounced either identically or very similarly, for example.

That makes sense, but in my mind it's far easier to remember one sound over many spellings than it is to remember one spelling with many sounds. In fact, the spellings may represent the same sound, but not the same morpheme. This means you can learn more morphemes without having to memorize distinct sounds—which I think is even easier.

[subaru000]

Thank you all for the input so far. It's really helping me narrow down the search to decide which to further look into.

[otc877]

Living in Florida, I'd imagine you'd run into Spanish speaking people far more often than Francophone people. That said, French is more common throughout the planet (I'm pretty sure the Olympics are announced in the host country's language, English and French).

If you already have a base in Spanish, than continuing would obviously be easier than learning a new language. However French and Spanish do have their similarities.

I took 3 years of French in high school, only because I wanted to learn German but it wasn't offered and I hate(d) the way Spanish sounds. I rarely find any use for it, but when I do it's a nice little treat (namely tags written in multiple languages, or the occasional tourist).

Good luck in whichever language you choose.

[Gerry]

I would suggest choosing whichever you feel is more for you. Maybe listen to some Spanish, French, and German audio and hear pronunciations, etc to get the feel of it. Personally I've been studying French for years and find it pretty easy to get. I tried taking a Spanish class and did well, although it wasn't for me. I didn't have an interest in the language, despite the practicality it plays in the US. I also tried German. Again, I didn't like it as much as French, but that's just me. I'm sure you'll do well in whichever you choose. Do let us know which one you pick!

[partietraumatic]

Originally Posted by Lady Gaga

Not true.

Norwegian, Afrikaans, and Esperanto are all considered to be the easiest for really any Latin or Germanic language based speaker. This is because of the simple pronunciation rules, and simple grammar.

In fact, languages like Dutch (but not German) are substantially easier for an English speaker because of the similarity in grammar since it is also a west-Germanic language.

Romantic languages (such as Spanish, French, Italian, Romanian, and more) are not that difficult but they are most definitely not the easiest for the average person because of the differences in pronunciation and huge differences in grammar, which include complex verb conjugations, genderized nouns and adjectives, and much more use of different moods.

French is easier than Spanish once you get past the pronunciation because the vocabulary is often similar to English and the grammar is not as extensive as Spanish.

However you live in Florida, so learn Spanish. Florida has a huge amount of Spanish speakers. Barely any French speakers (and even fewer German speakers.)

The only people who say Spanish is the easiest are people who have only tried to learn one language and people who studied Spanish then jumped to a language like Mandarin or Japanese.

well just from expereince, i learnt French for about 3 years before i started learning spanish, so had a huge head start. However after two years i found that my spanish was equal, if not better than my french, despite the fact id been learning french for 5 years, and spanish for 2.

I found spanish grammar and syntax far easier than french. It just seemed to make more sense to me.

Equally, everyone i know who learnt both found spanish the easier. But maybe we are all exceptions

[507bro]

German sentence structure is almost the same as english and alot of the words sound the same.
our teacher gave us a story on our first day of class and we didn't know german and we could understand it. The only thing that sucks is knowing the genders of words.

[subaru000]

I'll let you guys know which language I choose as soon as I know. Haha.