I'm currently taking French and I'm pretty familiar with it. I'm still learning it but I'm already thinking about what language means next. Spanish doesn't interest me in the least so it definitely will not be next. I am thinking about German and Italian, leaning towards German. My question:
Are the "structures" of these languages similar to french? That is the tenses such as present indicative, simple future, past historic, etc. I'm not concerned about how close in spelling or sound, but I just don't want to start totally from scratch. If I could apply the same concepts when learning another language that would be great. Any other opinions, comments are welcome.
2007-10-10 08:07:59 · 10 answers · asked by Quelqu'un 1 in Society & Culture ➔ Languages
German has a totally different sentence construction and rules of grammar. I'd say you will find Italian easier as both French and Italian are based primarily on Latin. German is also much harder work physically on the vocal organs and you may have to learn to pronounce some new sounds. Like Scots, German has the sound CH as in loch which many English speakers find impossible to pronounce. German is also a rotic language- that is they pronounce all their R's and their R's are gutteral. Good luck whatever you choose.
It also depends why you are learning the language. German is recognised as an important language in engineering. Italian not so.
2007-10-10 08:23:36 · answer #1 · answered by coffee 5 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Concerning my own experience, I've never learnt Italian but as I'm French, I do often understand it, because on a lexical level these both languages are quite similar. Don't know about the tenses and stuff, but as far as these two languages have a "latin" origin, you will certainly find several similar elements between these two.
I'm also learning German, and actually, English and German are quite alike too, because they have the same origin, even though I find German more difficult to learn than English because of the declensions and the 3 different genders, and also, the tenses are quite hard to understand when you start learning German.
So on one hand you have French & Italian, on the other, English and German. Then it's up to you if you want to learn a language that is closer to your native one or to your first foreign one.
Hope this helped (sorry for my English!)
2007-10-10 09:04:34 · answer #2 · answered by katiajm 1 · 2⤊ 0⤋
Aside from vocabulary, German is more like English than either Italian or French. That's because English & German have a common ancestor and Italian & French do, too.
2007-10-10 08:16:17 · answer #3 · answered by RoVale 7 · 2⤊ 0⤋
As to grammar (morphology and syntax) and idioms & phrasing, Italian is very similar to French (both have a somewhat different idioms&phrasing from English).
German has a grammar more complex than Italian or French do (may be Italian verb is more complex than German one, but in German nominal system is more difficult (German has cases and you have to know grammatical gender word by word (few general rule).
Yet English and German share a common origin (both are Germanic languages), I don't think they are so similar in idioms&phrasing; it is sure that German grammar is very different from English one
2007-10-10 22:39:38 · answer #4 · answered by ? 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
German is quite different to French, and a bit more difficult.
2016-01-20 10:27:38 · answer #5 · answered by Orla C 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Italian would be closer to French, they are both romance languages, along with Spanish and Portugeuse. Because of that it would probably be easier to learn because they both have he Latin base. Italian just sounds nicer than German and seems more fluid to me.
2007-10-10 08:14:21 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 4⤊ 0⤋
Italian is similar to French.
2007-10-10 08:11:13 · answer #7 · answered by Anonymous · 4⤊ 0⤋
german is far more difficult that italian. italian would be the most like french. if you're looking for a challenge, go for german!
2007-10-10 08:29:07 · answer #8 · answered by a!yak 3 · 1⤊ 0⤋
i learnt french & german at the same time not to long ago, and i found that i got some similar words/ phrases mixed up, however there aren't too many. i would say you should learn the one that is least similar so that you don't get them mixed up.
2007-10-10 08:27:12 · answer #9 · answered by sarah 1 · 0⤊ 1⤋
italian is great =]
2007-10-10 08:40:41 · answer #10 · answered by riko 3 · 3⤊ 0⤋