Answers
Mar 29, 2016 - 10:10 AM
Hi Jon. If you are good at languages, maybe it will work for you. I did Spanish and French, but one after the other. When I am traveling to a Spanish speaking country, I freshen my Spanish, same if I am traveling to a French speaking country. But when I switch from one to the other, I do have difficulty at first sorting them out. I can only do well in one or the other when I try to put the second one out of my mind. They are alike to some degree, Spanish having a lot of Arabic influence that French doesn't have. One problem (?) I think is that Fluenz uses very similar lesson plans for the two languages, and so the vocabularies, limited as they are, overlap considerably. Fabrice, who monitors this site fairly regularly, did those two successfully I think, but I think he was able to add some full immersion to solidify it.
Mar 29, 2016 - 02:29 PM
Hi,
I'm a French native, so my experience is different. At the beginning I had some difficulties with "lookalikes" (not necessary false friends) like "tener" which took me a while to grasp as meaning "to have" and not "to hold" (tenir). Also, on a higher level, there are uses of the subjunctive that are different in Spanish from French, so that can be confusing. I bought Fluenz Italian and Mandarin and started Mandarin first to make sure that I wouldn't slow down my spanish learning experience while engaging on a new language, thinking that Italian might be too close and confuse me at that point.
I would say try both, and get a feeling of your learning. Is the other language slowing you down? Are you mixing words and grammar structures? Learn French in one room, and Spanish in another room, make sure you completely disconnect from one language when you start another. I think French grammar is more difficult than Spanish, but I don't know how far Fluenz French goes, so at the beginning i would imagine that the two will look very similar, may be too similar to do at the same time.
I'm a French native, so my experience is different. At the beginning I had some difficulties with "lookalikes" (not necessary false friends) like "tener" which took me a while to grasp as meaning "to have" and not "to hold" (tenir). Also, on a higher level, there are uses of the subjunctive that are different in Spanish from French, so that can be confusing. I bought Fluenz Italian and Mandarin and started Mandarin first to make sure that I wouldn't slow down my spanish learning experience while engaging on a new language, thinking that Italian might be too close and confuse me at that point.
I would say try both, and get a feeling of your learning. Is the other language slowing you down? Are you mixing words and grammar structures? Learn French in one room, and Spanish in another room, make sure you completely disconnect from one language when you start another. I think French grammar is more difficult than Spanish, but I don't know how far Fluenz French goes, so at the beginning i would imagine that the two will look very similar, may be too similar to do at the same time.