Learn Spanish and French First to Learn All Romance Languages
I have seen blog posts around the web giving directions to people wishing to learn all major romance languages (for our purposes: Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian and Catalan). They suggest either starting with the most complex of these (I would say Romanian, but some think French is challenging due to the fact that it’s not highly phonetical) or with the easiest (usually Spanish). They list resources to help with this fantastic endeavor and are correct in pointing out that each romance language will be easier to learn that the previous one.
My intention is not to criticize or contradict these eager polyglots who have kindly offered advice and resources. However, I suggest a different approach to be able to, at the very least, understand all major Romance languages in writing. I advice to tackle Spanish and French throughly first, because these two languages have features that all the others do, in different combinations. Allow me to elaborate.
Spanish boasts the following features shared by Italian and Portuguese: pronoun dropping, a degree of phonetic writing, contractions, and placement of direct and indirect object pronouns in phrases with infinitives. With Portuguese, Spanish shares the existence of two words for the verb to be, used almost in the same situations in both languages, and a great deal of vocabulary. Knowing these grammatical features helps considerably since you can spot them when you are learning those languages in the future.
French is less phonetic and does not drop subject pronouns in sentences. However, like Italian and Catalan, it features the partitive and gender-subject/object agreement with some motion verbs in the past. It also employs contractions more frequently than Spanish. I have heard from phonetics experts that French phonetics, full of nasal sounds, resemble those of Portuguese to a degree, too. Furthermore, let’s not forget that while Spanish and Portuguese share most of their vocabulary, the same is true for French and Italian. Italian learners will see that the pronunciation and placement of object pronouns is very similar to that of Spanish, while finding French cognates and tenses.
As a disclaimer, I am less knowledgeable about Romanian. I’ve heard (and this seems plausible, due to geography) that Italian resembles it the most in the group of major romance languages. I have also heard it features grammatical cases (this is a good excuse to learn Latin, by the way). Since French and Spanish will make the study of Italian significantly easier, I still advice this power duo to arrive to the often ignored Romanian. The even more ignored Catalan language should also not worry learners, since it finds itself at the crossroads of French and Spanish and thus is also greatly enhanced by knowledge of both.
I would also like to mention that I am a literate native speaker of Spanish, familiar with formal Latin American and European Spanish. This, in addition to my knowledge of French, makes understanding most written romance languages an incredibly simple task most of the times. If you find French and Spanish did not magically open the doors to Portuguese, Italian, Romanian and Catalan, I suggest you at least be mindful of those common grammar features found in French and Spanish that facilitate learning the remaining languages in the group. Each language is unique and has its own quirks and accents, so I am not guaranteeing fluency nor listening and speaking skills by learning French and Spanish first. I am rather commenting that those two can be your solid foundation for the knowledge of Latin’s children. Go ahead and see the similarities!
