Learning Spanish When You Know Other Languages?

by Rosana on October 22, 2009

in Languages

On the plane from Guadalajara to the US this past summer,  I chatted in English with a Mexican priest who said he had only started learning English about a year before.  I could hardly believe it — his English was really good.

I asked him how come he spoke such good English so fast, and he explained that he already spoke Spanish, French, German, and two African languages. I do think he has a gift, but still it got me wondering about people who speak multiple languages. Readers, I would love your comments at the end of this article!

My own language background is that I used to know enough French to pick up a newspaper or a novel and read it easily. I had three years in high school and more in college, and I spent one college year in France. BUT I never spoke it as easily as I do Spanish now. Why? Because the French people were not friendly when I made errors,  but the Spanish and the Mexicans have always been warm and encouraging.

I have found that my French has helped me learn Spanish words and points of grammar, but there have been times in my life when I managed to completely jumble the two languages. Once at an international conference back in the day when I knew way less Spanish than I do now, I chatted with a woman from Argentina who didn’t know much English. We started out in Spanish but I kept using words in French. Turned out she knew French so we switched to that… but I kept mixing Spanish in! Somehow the Spanish part of my brain was turned on more than the French part!

Nowadays, I don’t use my French much. But last week we happened to catch a French movie with English subtitles on television, and I was pleasantly surpised at how much of the French I could follow. I even commented to my husband several times at nuances in French that the subtitles didn’t bother with.

Readers, I’m curious. Do you know other languages and if so, how has it helped or hindering your learning Spanish? (Even if you come upon this webpage some time in the future, I’d still enjoy your comments! But webmasters looking for a quick and easy link, be warned that you have to add to the conversation in a substantial way!)

  • Bradley
    Hello!

    I've tried to pick up Spanish in a variety of ways since my renewed interest piqued over the last few years. I hadn't had Spanish since High School more than twenty years ago so I enrolled in a Span 101 course at a local college for a refresher and also spent 2 weeks studying in Mexico in 2008. The key to remembering is to use it! I was proud of what I learned in Mexico but saw how quickly it fades when you aren't using it daily. Now, I'm back at trying again. While in my host home, there was a young woman from Germany and the only way we could communicate was to use the Spanish we were both learning.

    I also volunteer at an adult ESL program downtown. Many of those students are learning English as a third or even fourth language. I see them struggle with it and just keep encouraging them to use it and use it often! They, too, sometimes fumble with words from thier native or other languages. They've also been able to help one another out because several know various languages.

    It can be frustrating but well worth the effort!
  • Rosana
    Thanks, Bradley. I've found that my Spanish does quickly fade if I am gone from Mexico for quite a long time, but that it comes back fast when I get back into speaking it.

    I've been listening to a French program recently on TV and have been quite amazed at how much I can get, despite very little use of my French for ages!
  • George Mobbs
    OOPS! Alicia's experience does not sound like it bodes well for me. I was hoping that I could "get over" my Italian with more practice. Now I wonder if I am fooling myself.

    Thanks for sharing!

    George
  • Alicia Eykyn
    It is interesting to read George's comments. I too learnt my Italian in Italy with friends and family in the 60's with no grammar background and very poor "schoolgirl" French.

    Now I am trying to move to live in Mexico and in the meantime live part time in Spain but find Spanish very difficult indeed. Earlier this year I lived for 4 months with a family in Mexico City who only spoke Spanish and when I thought I was beginning to relax and speak reasonably well I found without being aware of it, I was in fact relapsing into Italian and the faces of the recipients of my conversations said it all!! In the end I gave up and enrolled in a marvellous school for a month and my ability to speak improved enormously after that comparatively short time !

    Thank you Rosana for your website and you newsletter etc It is great.
  • George Mobbs
    Back in the late "sixties" I was in the US Air Force, stationed in Italy for three years. I became fairly conversationly fluent in Italian. Italians were also very quick to try to help you, if you even tried to speak their language. (I agree about the French!) I had an Italian friend who took a short trip to Spain, and he said that they could converse with no problems.

    Many, many words are very similar, cuando/quando etc.

    I find that it both helps and hurts me in trying to learn Spanish. I know many words, and understand word order, that you "have" hunger, instead or are hungry, and "how are you called" instead of "what is your name", and so on.

    It seems to me that Italian is much more consistent, such as a word ending in "o" is masculine, and "i" is plural, "a" is feminine and "e" is plural. Uno/Una . In Spanish, sometimes the masculine ends in "o" , sometimes not. Doctor/Doctora.

    Many words seem to be totally different. Anche Io vs. Yo Tambien (me too).

    I also had a little bit of French and German in High School

    I seem to always be able to understand far better than I can speak. I seem to remember that was the case in Italian as well. At one time I became fairly fluent in American Deaf Sign Language. There, I can always "send" much better than I can "receive".

    Anyway, so far, I find that whenever I get in a pinch trying to speak Spanish, it may start off in Spanish, but it soon devolves into some weird combination of Spanish/Italian/Deaf Sign Language, as I try to communicate as best as I can.

    So to sum it up, having learned Italian from Italians while living in Italy, I "think" that I could pick up Spanish fairly quickly if I were in Mexico, or some other Spanish speaking country. Trying to learn from various tapes, books, websites, seems to be much more of a challenge, but it definitely helps to have the "core" vocabulary down to at least get started.

    Thanks for all your efforts with you website/blog. I really need to carve out more time to spend trying to learn.

    Hopefully I can get down "Mexico Way" for a long enough period to time to test out my theory of being able to quickly pick up more of the Spanish language.

    George
  • Rosana
    Thanks, George and Donna, very interesting! Donna, I've also had that thing of words from decades ago suddenly be accessible to me.... weird feeling! George, I laughed out loud at the Spanish/Italian/ASL combination!

    Others, please chime in, whenever you come this way.
  • Hi Rosana,

    I've been in Mexico about 2 months now, and must admit that I'm barely into learning my Spanish... I took French in high school (that was in the 60's -- a lonnnnnnnng time ago) and I find myself NOW remembering long-forgotten French when I'm trying to speak or remember my Spanish.

    I so admire multi-lingual people but wonder sometimes if it's going to be possible at my age to un-jumble the strange rebirth of long ago language usage? I'm not going to give up, but did want to share that you are not alone in your dilemma. :)

    I would add that I never became fluent in French, but do find it strange that words I'd not used in over 40 years suddenly have re-emerged as I try to integrate more and more Spanish words & phrases into my vocabulary.

    Thanks for your great website!

    Donna
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