I'm not sure if people have experienced this, but has anyone taken similar languages like French and Spanish at the same time and has it caused difficulties in any way?

I've been taking French for years, and I remember when some of my friends took Spanish in 9th grade. I could understand a lot of what they showed me. I mean, on the upside it would make it easier but I don't want to get all confused ;]

The only thing I would imagine could really mess you up is the gender cases, since you'd probably be getting them confused between the two languages all the time. As far as I can tell... those don't seem to match up well between any languages :(.

The vocabulary, on the other hand, is around 85% the same between the two languages, so even if you accidentally substitute the word for something in one from the other, you have an 85% chance being correct (assuming you attempt to change it to sound like the other language)

On another interesting note, have you noticed that Spanish completely lacks the "sh" sound, and French lacks the "ch" sound? I just thought that was something interesting that I noticed :p

Haha, I think I'll hate gender cases in any language. You practically have to memorize words and what gender they are. Yeah, I've noticed the "sh" and "ch" thing. It's interesting how "ch" is pronounced as "sh" in French, and I think it's the opposite in Spanish... or something, I forget. =P

Originally Posted by feonateresa

Haha, I think I'll hate gender cases in any language. You practically have to memorize words and what gender they are. Yeah, I've noticed the "sh" and "ch" thing. It's interesting how "ch" is pronounced as "sh" in French, and I think it's the opposite in Spanish... or something, I forget. =P

Ya... I don't see how gender cases improve the language in anyway. I asked an Italian person once and they said something along the lines of,

"Oh, it makes it so much better. See, in English you get confused all the time when someone says 'it'. In Italian, for example, if I'm at a dinner table I can literally say 'pass him' or 'pass her' and it makes it easier for people to know which thing on the table I'm talking about"

...I hardly find it hardly worth remembering a billion noun genders just so that you can be slightly less ambiguous while being ambiguous :p

I still manage to mix up French and Cantonese sometimes.

I think some people are better than others at keeping languages separate, and I'm not one of them.

I took German and French together in high school and I got a little confused because I was in beginner's German but had taken several years of French. However, I managed to do well in both. Come to think of it, I actually did Chinese school at the same time.

The thing about taking two languages at the same time is that you kind of have to switch gears and think in a different way whenever you switch languages. For French and Spanish, they are fairly similar so I think you might not be as confused as compared to taking languages like Chinese and French together. That can be very hard on your brain :S...

I was in French Immersion in high school and took a semester of Italian. It was SO helpful to have a background knowledge about the gender of nouns (because they were usually the same in both languages) and a lot of the words were similar in structure. The only part that confused me was words that were spelled the same and meant the same thing in both languages, but they were pronounced differently!

Originally Posted by KRan

The only part that confused me was words that were spelled the same and meant the same thing in both languages, but they were pronounced differently!

Better than them looking the same and meaning something completely different (i.e. In Spanish, preocupado = worried, while in English the similar looking word preoccupied can just mean you're busy :p)

I took six years of French and then took the 1Z06 Spanish about six years after. I found I was constantly mixing things up. Although the languages are similar, there are a lot of differences.