Will learning Latin help me learn Italian & French?

Question

Or should I just get straight on to learning Italian & French?

Answer 1

You can just go straight into learning French or Italian without knowing any Latin. However, Latin would be useful as you would have a better idea of what a word means if you can break it down into Latin.

Answer 2

No, it won't. Just go right into Italian and French. Latin might even confuse your understanding...Learning Latin would be a time-wasting barrier between learning Italian and French, since knowing English is a first step to either, a step closer than knowing Latin.

That's not to say that learning Latin is a waste of time, far from it, but it's definitely not going to help learning Italian or French any more than knowing English does.

French and Italian grammar are actually closer to English than to Latin, anyway.

Answer 3

Yes, I completely agree with Graham and Goddess ... get right on with learning Italian (oh, alright and French too if you really really want to!) ... knowing Latin will not help you in the least to learn Italian. Latin to the Italians is what Old Saxon is to the English - a completely foreign language to all intents and purposes. Any slight benefit you might derive from a knowledge of Latin would be massively outweighed by the wholly disproportionate effort you would have to put in to learning it.

However, learning Italian will most certainly help you to learn French - and vice versa. They really are quite similar in many respects, above all lexically, even if they sound quite different.

Answer 4

Latin is the mother ship of the European languages and it'll be very useful to study Latin only if you're a linguistic ,other wise go a head and learn the Italian & French and if you do so it'll be very easy to learn other European language
because there's alot of similarities but the most important thing for learning any foreign language is to start with the grammer,memorize (10)words
daily,practice phrases & daily conversation,and try to watch a lot of Italian movies made by natives
with English subtitle and you'll be on your way.
Good luck / Buona fortuna / Bon chance.

Answer 5

Whilst at school I studied French, Spanish and Latin simultaneously. Far from Latin helping me with my French and Spanish, I found that knowing French and Spanish just about helped me scrape through my Latin exams. The moral of the story is forget about Latin and just get on with learning French and Italian, 2 vibrant and useful modern languages.

Answer 6

You can go straight into Latin and french, but if you are given the option of learning Latin, it is really useful (in my experience it really helped with spanish) for both languages, but especially for Italian, which is really similar to latin

Answer 7

The short answer...no. learning latin will help you understand the origins of some of the words...but it will do the same for any language, my advice...just move straight to learning french and italian, latin will make no fundamental difference.

Answer 8

It'll help with the vocabulary, and if you don't know any other languages, it'll help with the idea of how different languages can work, but I believe Latin is pretty much always still taught with the old emphasis on grammar and translation, whereas French and Italian "should" be taught with much more emphasis on communication. So, just get on with Italian and French!

Answer 9

Yup, you'll definitely catch on to Italian/French faster if you learn Latin.
However, if you factor in the time you spend learning Latin, it's not worth it at all. Unless you really want to learn Latin, which you should :D

Answer 10

You may aswell just get straight ont to learning Italian and French, I cant see the point of trying to learn another language first hoping that it helps.