Learning French After Spanish

Learning French after Spanish has both its benefits and its drawbacks. If your Spanish isn’t strong enough then you could get the two languages mixed up or even lose your Spanish. If your Spanish is quite well established then you can use the things you’ve learned to help you with French. Let’s take a look at some of the advantages of this, some of the downsides and how you can best approach learning French after Spanish.

Potential Issues Of Learning French After Spanish

One of the major issues that people run into when learning French after Spanish is mixing the two up or finding that their Spanish starts to fade and get replaced with the French. A way to get around this is to get your Spanish up to an intermediate level before moving onto French. This means you have a solid understanding of the language and can use it in most situations even if your Spanish isn’t perfect. A B2 level or above would help prevent you from forgetting Spanish.

It’s also important to make sure you keep using your Spanish as you learn French. If you swap between the two and make an effort to keep up to date with Spanish by watching films or speaking it regularly then there’s less of a chance you’ll forget it. Once you’ve reached an intermediate level there’s plenty of Spanish media you can consume. With Netflix, Amazon and Youtube you now have access to plenty of Spanish material. You can also find language partners on websites like italki where you can continue to practise speaking in Spanish. If all else fails a diary is a good way to make sure you’re thinking in Spanish as you formulate your thoughts to write them down.

You might find French more difficult than Spanish. Spanish is fairly consistent in its spelling and pronunciation and has fairly few irregularities when it comes to grammar. Where as French is a bit more like English in that the pronunciation doesn’t always make sense, the spelling can be confusing and they have a load of irregular verbs. Don’t let this put you off though, Spanish might be a bit easier but look at French as levelling up. Now you’re ready for something similar but a bit more challenging.

Advantages Of Learning French After Spanish

One of the major advantages of learning French after Spanish is that they share a lot of common words. They both come from the romantic language family so have a lot of similarities meaning it’ll be easier for you to pick up French vocab as you’ll have come across a lot of it in Spanish already even if the pronunciation is a bit different.

Also once you learn one romantic language it becomes a lot easier to learn a second. Romantic languages tend to have fairly similar grammar structures that you may not have come across in English especially if you just know English from being a native speaker and haven’t looked into the grammar in depth. Once you’ve learned verb conjugation in Spanish it’ll be a lot easier for you to get your head around it in French.

As you’ve already learned one language you’ll know what works for you. Not all techniques work for everyone and when you first start learning a foreign language a lot of time can be wasted on learning how to learn. Once you’ve learned Spanish you’ll know what methods were useful for you and can make your French learning much more efficient.

Learning French after Spanish puts you at an advantage for learning French as you’ve already dealt with new grammar, similar vocab and finding out how you best learn a foreign language. However, its downside is that it could harm your Spanish in the process. If you have a strong level of Spanish and you make an effort to keep practising this should be enough to help prevent your Spanish from slipping. If you notice you are getting mixed up then make sure you speak each language every day and practise switching between the two so you become more used to using your Spanish brain and your French brain.

Article: Learning French After Spanish

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