Spanish vs French (How Similar Are They?!)

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  • čas přidán 27. 05. 2019
  • In this video I compare two major global languages: Spanish and French! How similar are they? How different are they? ** Learn French with FrenchPod101: bit.ly/frenchpod101, or Spanish with bit.ly/pod101spanish.
    (Full disclosure: if you sign up for a premium account, Langfocus receives a small referral fee. But the free account is great too!)
    Special thanks to Edu Tudela for his Spanish audio samples, and Lùthais MacGriogair for his French audio samples.
    Support Langfocus on Patreon / langfocus
    Current patrons include these superb people: Andres Resendez Borgia, Anjo Barnes, Auguste Fields, Behnam Esfahbod, Bennett Seacrist, Brandon Gonzalez, Brian Michalowski, Clark Roth, Fiona de Visser, Georgina Toland, Guillermo Jimenez, Jacob Madsen, John Moffat, Marcelo Loureiro, Matthew Etter, Michael Arbagi, Michael Cuomo, Nobbi Lampe-Strang, Patrick W., Paul Boychuk, Rosalind Resnick, Ruben Sanchez Jr, Sebastian Langshaw, ShadowCrossZero, Victoria Goh, Vincent David, Yuko Sunda, [APG]RoboCop[CL], Adam Fitch, Adam Powell, Adam Vanderpluym, Alberto del Angel, Alex Hanselka, Ali Muhammed Alshehri, Andrew Woods, Angeline Biot, Aous Mansouri, Ashley Dierolf, Atsushi Yoshida, Avital Levant, Bartosz Czarnotta, Brent Warner, Brian Begnoche, Brian Morton, Bron X, Bruce Schultz, Bruce Stark, Bruno Filippi, Carl saloga, Charis T'Rukh, Chelsea Boudreau, Christian Langreiter, Christopher Lowell, David Anglin, David LeCount, Diane Young, divad, Divadrax, Don Ross, Donald Tilley, Edward Wilson, Eric Loewenthal, Erin Robinson Swink, Fabio Martini, fatimahl, Florian Breitwieser, Gary Walker, Grace Wagner, Gus Polly, Hannes Egli, Harry Kek, Henri Saussure, Ina Mwanda, Jack Jackson, James and Amanda Soderling, James Lillis, Jay Bernard, Jens Aksel Takle, JESUS FERNANDO MIRANDA BARBOSA, JK Nair, JL Bumgarner, Justin Faist, KEERTHI BANGALORE JAYARAM, Kevin J. Baron, Klaw117, Konrad, Kristian Erickson, Laura Morland, Leo Coyne, Leo Barudi, Lincoln Hutton, Lorraine Inez Lil, Luke Jensen, M.Aqeel Afzal, Maanas Nukala, Mahmoud Hashemi, Margaret Langendorf, Maria Comninou, Mariana Bentancor, Mark, Mark Grigoleit, Mark Kemp, Maurice Chou, Merrick Bobb, Michael Regal, Mike Frysinger, mimichi, Mohammed A. Abahussain, Nicholas Gentry, Nicole Tovar, Oleksandr Ivanov, Oto Kohulák, Panot, Patriot Nurse, Paul Shutler, Pauline Pavon, Paulla Fetzek, Peter Andersson, Peter Nikitin, Peter Scollar, Pomax, Raymond Thomas, Renato Paroni de Castro, Rob Hoskins, Robert Sheehan, Robert Williams, Roland Seuhs, Ronald Brady, Ryan Lanham, Saffo Papantonopoulou, Samuel Croes, Scott Irons, Scott Russell, Sergio Pascalin, Shoji AKAO, Sierra Rooney, Simon Blanchet, Spartak Kagramanyan, Steeven Lapointe, Stefan Reichenberger, Steven Severance, Suzanne Jacobs, Theophagous, Thomas Chapel, Tomáš Pauliček, Tryggurhavn, veleum, William O Beeman, William Shields, yasmine jaafar, Éric Martin.
    Intro music: "Rocka" by Text Me Records/Bobby Renz.
    Outro music: "Majikk" by Jingle Punks.

Komentáře • 7K

  • @Langfocus
    @Langfocus  Před 4 lety +320

    Hi everyone! If you're currently learning Spanish, visit SpanishPod101 ►( bit.ly/pod101spanish )◄, one of the best ways to improve your Spanish. For French, check out its sister site FrenchPod101 ( bit.ly/frenchpod101 ).
    For 32 other languages check out my review: ►langfocus.com/innovative-language-podcasts/ ◄.
    I'm an active member on several Pod101 sites, and I hope you'll enjoy them as much as I do!
    (Full disclosure: if you sign up for a premium account, Langfocus receives a small referral fee. But if I didn't like it, I wouldn't recommend it, and the free account is pretty good on its own!)

    • @juansanta6966
      @juansanta6966 Před 4 lety +4

      Hi Langfocus, nice video. Let me correct You about 2 words in spanish.
      1. Bombom it' candy in spherical shape for what I know it doesn't mean chocolate in any Country (maybe in some country).
      2. The right way to say constipated is constipado You can also say constipado when due to mucus it's impossible to breath Through the nose. Constipated= constipado or estreñido.

    • @jennzero803
      @jennzero803 Před 4 lety +5

      Dear Paul, in México, bombón=marshmellow (only) but with chocolate =bombón con chocolate , constipado en México es = el atasco de moco en la naríz o imposibilidad para defecar aunque lo correcto estrictamente sea sólo el atasco de moco en la naríz... :D

    • @epif1
      @epif1 Před 4 lety +2

      love it! I'm a native Spanish speaker, I can read french better than understand it by listening. I just wanted to add, in Spanish we sometimes can drop the subject because our verbal times are very specific to each form (yo, tú/vos, él, ella etc.).

    • @forgespolyglothouse3555
      @forgespolyglothouse3555 Před 4 lety

      I actually already have an account, but aren't the lessons paid?

    • @MajaxPlop
      @MajaxPlop Před 4 lety +1

      15:02 I think you put an older version of our flag lol
      Really nice video I learned a lot

  • @Palki1999
    @Palki1999 Před 3 lety +3977

    When you're french, with a little bit of Spanish classes you can understand Spanish memes, and this is priceless

    • @ja4309
      @ja4309 Před 3 lety +179

      Well I have learned Spanish and started to learn French all thanks to Joueur de Grenier. It seems that learning it is a little easier now except for some quirks and obviously the phonology

    • @xin-xicomenta6942
      @xin-xicomenta6942 Před 3 lety +119

      And it works in the other way, understand French memes

    • @Palki1999
      @Palki1999 Před 3 lety +44

      ​@@ja4309 Haha Joueur du Grenier, one of my favorite youtubers, i've been watching their videos for almost 10 years, glad you started learning french thanks to this chanel. And yes I often see that peoples are struggling with french phonology, but I find english phonology to be difficult as well

    • @Palki1999
      @Palki1999 Před 3 lety +4

      @@xin-xicomenta6942 Stonks

    • @ja4309
      @ja4309 Před 3 lety +5

      @@Palki1999 Basically the AVGN of French and I even like his episodes recently than the ones AVGN released around the same time. I just wanna watch his newest episodes since there arent any subtitles for them yet. My French right now is really influenced by him and I have the phonology a bit in my head already

  • @racsito39
    @racsito39 Před 3 lety +2808

    As a native Spanish speaker, I can generally understand written French. However, this is not the case when listening to French.

    • @MarlonDeLaTorreyoutube1
      @MarlonDeLaTorreyoutube1 Před 3 lety +128

      También

    • @ja4309
      @ja4309 Před 3 lety +83

      He aprendido español y he tambien vido una canal en frances llamada "Joueur du Grenier" y actualmente, puedo entenderlo aunque un poquito. Estoy aprendiendo frances hoy y es mas facil a estudialo

    • @Ozzy-R
      @Ozzy-R Před 3 lety +69

      Same here. I can read it but will pick up a word here and there. With Portuguese and Italian, that’s a different story, I can understand about 75% of what’s being said.

    • @rebeccam.7249
      @rebeccam.7249 Před 3 lety +31

      it hard to understand french

    • @BrandonClaridge
      @BrandonClaridge Před 3 lety +34

      I guess this is similar to how English speakers can understand some French words in writing (due to historical borrowings and similar spellings), but would not be able to understand those same words if spoken.

  • @dub4fun671
    @dub4fun671 Před 3 lety +505

    Salir in French = to make dirty
    Salir in Spanish = to go out
    Salire in Italian = to go up

  • @y2k2all
    @y2k2all Před 3 lety +758

    My favorite false friends (shown in a very funny French movie) -
    French - gateau = "cake"
    Spanish - gato = "cat"
    🤣🤣🤣🤣

    • @TheRealChiults
      @TheRealChiults Před 3 lety +12

      Which movie would that be? :)

    • @mariconsciencia139
      @mariconsciencia139 Před 2 lety +38

      i’m brazilian who is learning french and i really thought that gateau was cat grrr lkkkkkjjh

    • @adeptatlearning3907
      @adeptatlearning3907 Před 2 lety +7

      English -pussy..
      Not that different actually. Jk

    • @Rescue162
      @Rescue162 Před 2 lety +20

      Yeah in French is "le chat" = cat, which is close enough to remember.

    • @diego246
      @diego246 Před 2 lety +12

      @crowthrone no please i'm allergic to cake's hair

  • @user-wd8wx5md5z
    @user-wd8wx5md5z Před 4 lety +1986

    "Molestar" in Spanish = to disturb
    "Molester" in French = to molest
    It is my favorite false friends in Spanish.
    It makes "No molestar por favor" sounds so funny for naive French-speaking tourists.

    • @RC-dp1gu
      @RC-dp1gu Před 3 lety +506

      😂 I’ve even heard Spanish speakers still learning English say “may I molest you for a moment” MEANING to say “may I bother you for a moment”😂 very unfortunate 😬

    • @mr_max_carneiro7090
      @mr_max_carneiro7090 Před 3 lety +83

      In portuguese could be both

    • @lissandrafreljord7913
      @lissandrafreljord7913 Před 3 lety +237

      Don't forget embarrassée and embarazada. In French, embarrassée means embarassed, while in Spanish, embarazada means pregnant.

    • @christiannjmnzz
      @christiannjmnzz Před 3 lety +1

      -_-

    • @tp230
      @tp230 Před 3 lety +59

      Molester in French can also be like molestar, but it sounds a bit old and administrative.

  • @diegomoreno6274
    @diegomoreno6274 Před 5 lety +3940

    As a native spanish speaker and french student I can ensure you that this guy nailed it
    Great video!!

    • @therealmaskriz5716
      @therealmaskriz5716 Před 5 lety +21

      Perfect Video.

    • @krasnnyshiba1523
      @krasnnyshiba1523 Před 5 lety +37

      Pues suerte y que termines de aprenderlo lo más rápido posible

    • @oDrashiao
      @oDrashiao Před 5 lety +84

      I'm on the other side, native french learning spanish, and I agree with you :)

    • @PHLCoffeeSnob
      @PHLCoffeeSnob Před 5 lety +7

      The only small thing is that he didn't make a side note about ojala and espero in spanish.

    • @DimiDzi
      @DimiDzi Před 5 lety +27

      yo sé un poco de español pero cuando veo francés para mi todo es como mirando a texto chino ni puedo leer ni puedo entender que está escrito

  • @mborok
    @mborok Před 2 lety +397

    When I was in Mexico, I kept asking people to speak "mas lente", thinking the word for "slow" must be a cognate of the French "lent". Turns out I was asking for "more lens".

    • @MartinME3
      @MartinME3 Před 2 lety +93

      Lento is slow also in spanish. Despacio is more used but people will understand lento too.

    • @MartinME3
      @MartinME3 Před 2 lety +27

      @ꅏꍟꍏꌚꍟ꒒ yup. The official definition would be despacio = lentamente.

    • @mikejames509
      @mikejames509 Před 2 lety +12

      Not lente, that means lens. Slow is LENTO/A depending on the gender of the noun. la musica lenta - or el discurso lento.

    • @jeanrichard6340
      @jeanrichard6340 Před 2 lety +5

      @@MartinME3 - Puede ser lentamente, despacio o despacito (como en una canción).

    • @GAMINGGuru-me3ex
      @GAMINGGuru-me3ex Před 2 lety

      Sava bien

  • @ardaakn8047
    @ardaakn8047 Před 3 lety +449

    As a Turkish, French and Spanish are my favorite languages.
    I want to learn both of them. Greetings from Turkey.

  • @Tameemterminator
    @Tameemterminator Před 5 lety +798

    It’s a super coincidence . I tried finding this video that shows similarity between Spanish and french about 20 minutes ago and then I see you uploading a video on this . Unbelievable

    • @YiriUbic3793
      @YiriUbic3793 Před 5 lety +28

      The law of attraction

    • @mertylmaz9549
      @mertylmaz9549 Před 5 lety +8

      lmao ı also checked that video yesterday. ı am so hapy now

    • @vikingsailorboy
      @vikingsailorboy Před 5 lety +2

      Same for me. I just signed up for both French and Spanish classes for this summer.

    • @IncuManiac696
      @IncuManiac696 Před 5 lety +7

      By any chance is your cellphone a Huawei one?

    • @laskarsangkuriang5129
      @laskarsangkuriang5129 Před 5 lety +5

      CZcams logarithm systems jajaja

  • @iduntyra7566
    @iduntyra7566 Před 4 lety +981

    When you know French and Spanish you basically understand Italian
    Edit: I think it's also pretty easy to learn Portuguese when you know those langages, but personally, I think Italian is easier than Portuguese

    • @shaide5483
      @shaide5483 Před 4 lety +34

      O que sobre o Português?

    • @joseignaciodiezpelaez7999
      @joseignaciodiezpelaez7999 Před 4 lety +116

      That's absolutely true. I'm a native Spanish speaker. I studied French at school for two years and then we were forced to learn English, but French is such a beautiful lenguages that I have taken up to learning it.
      I speak a little bit of Portuguese too, but sorry to say, as much as I love Portugal and its people, I find it really difficult.
      But Italian is something else.
      I listen to Italian CZcamsrs and believe me in this, I understand it up to a 90 or 95% even though I haven't started to study it yet.
      So, chances are that I'll start learning Italian very soon!

    • @shaide5483
      @shaide5483 Před 4 lety +23

      José, Italian will be very easy. I found it easy, with barely 0.33% of prior Italian. It’s a more vowel-strong language

    • @maria6yearsago126
      @maria6yearsago126 Před 4 lety +15

      Shade Nada. Son más importantes los superiores idiomas, el portugués no es superior, los superiores son: Español, Francés y Italiano.

    • @shaide5483
      @shaide5483 Před 4 lety +7

      I meant Brazilian. It’s a separate language to Portuguese

  • @mr.nanolando7892
    @mr.nanolando7892 Před 2 lety +299

    How do you pronounce oi?
    Spain: oi
    Italy: oí
    Romania: oi
    Portugal: oi
    Catalonia: oi
    Galicia:oi
    Piedmont:oi
    France: *_ua_*

  • @NikhileshSurve
    @NikhileshSurve Před 2 lety +145

    6:49 I very much love this aspect of the Spanish language, other languages should definitely adopt it.

    • @galazy_mc
      @galazy_mc Před 2 lety +7

      Im spanish xd

    • @yasuhirowlf4327
      @yasuhirowlf4327 Před 2 lety +16

      @@galazy_mc ¿crees que le importa?

    • @galazy_mc
      @galazy_mc Před 2 lety +18

      @@yasuhirowlf4327 y tú crees que me importa tu opinión ? :)

    • @marc11221122
      @marc11221122 Před rokem +9

      I agree with you. Spanish in this sense has an advantage to guess the intonation in a story o narration. Have a nice day.

    • @marc11221122
      @marc11221122 Před rokem +2

      @@yasuhirowlf4327 ¿por qué eres tan borde?

  • @masichasi
    @masichasi Před 4 lety +458

    I speak Spanish and French and never realized they were so similar. The "pl" / "ll" blew my mind.

    • @agme8045
      @agme8045 Před 4 lety +16

      Chasi in my opinion they dont sound similar at all

    • @murrayaronson3753
      @murrayaronson3753 Před 4 lety +18

      Que sera sera, che sara sara, and ce que sera sera. Spanish, Italian, and French - and they all sound different.

    • @agme8045
      @agme8045 Před 4 lety +8

      Jonathan Soko Brazilian Portuguese is really similar to Spanish, I can pretty much understand it all, I mean French is way harder because of pronunciation, like you aren’t even able to guess what they re saying because they pronounce everything very different from us, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese (Brazilian at least) all share this Latin type of pronunciation, were we are pretty loyal to the sound of the letters. Perhaps Portuguese is the one with the more distinctive accent but it’s still pretty loyal to the sound of the letters you see.

    • @schadenfreude000
      @schadenfreude000 Před 4 lety +10

      Initial PL, CL and FL all changed to LL in Spanish. Hence plano > llano, clave > llave, flama > llama

    • @noaccount9985
      @noaccount9985 Před 4 lety

      Ba quand même. Llover c'est pleuvoir ..

  • @Syl75
    @Syl75 Před 4 lety +381

    In French secondary schools, when we have to choose a second foreign language between Spanish and German, 70 to 80% of the schoolchildren choose Spanish for one simple reason: it's easier.

    • @h.m.d5852
      @h.m.d5852 Před 4 lety +13

      Est l'anglais une matière courant dans vos écoles ? Ou sont d'autres langues européennes plus commun

    • @philippe-lebel
      @philippe-lebel Před 4 lety +46

      @@h.m.d5852 L'anglais est souvent choisie en première langue et l'espagnol en seconde. c'est le plus courant et cela permet, potentiellement, de parler avec beaucoup de gens. L'allemand et l'Italien sont aussi beaucoup choisis mais moins souvent.

    • @dorthusiast
      @dorthusiast Před 4 lety +6

      @@philippe-lebel Moi, je voudrais parler l'allemand parce que c'est difficile.

    • @gaipa2006
      @gaipa2006 Před 4 lety +8

      @@dorthusiast l'allemand ne pas difficile parceque elle est la langue dans une L'Europe. Le chinos, le Japonias sont difficile.

    • @sephikong8323
      @sephikong8323 Před 4 lety +20

      I'd have to correct on something : it depends on your region
      In the south east the choice for the secondary foreign language is between Spanish and Italian with German being very rarely even proposed by the schools (and the ones that do generally get ..... A handful of students at best). And between Spanish and Italian, Spanish is overall taken by more students (I'd say around 60%) generally because there are more Spanish speaking countries than Italian, but the gap is overall way smaller than it is in other regions where the choice is between Spanish and German

  • @youmaycallmecath
    @youmaycallmecath Před 3 lety +43

    Native french speaker here, learning spanish is pretty easy since there is so much cognates, but I think it's also because the syntax is soooo similar, except for some little things but they aren't complicated to remember.
    However, i did some tutoring for Mexican teens learning french when I was in college and it seems a lot harder for spanish speakers to learn french than for french people to learn spanish. I think it is due to all the graphemes and the silent letters in our words since in spanish they pronounce every letter. It was really really really hard for the students to remember that certain letters are silent at the end of words. Also the pronunciation is soooo different, especially nasal vowels. They are just so alien to non-french speakers in general. and we laughed a lot when I tried to explain to them how to do it! For me it's so natural since it's my first language and I never really have to think about it, but for them it was so difficult! Oh and also the "u" sound. No, it's not an "oo" sound lmao (when english people say "déja-voo, it makes me laugh) but I understand it is a really difficult sound to learn to do!
    And the "ch" sound. They say it as "tsh", but we just say "sh" without the t sound in front.
    Anyways, spanish is a very pretty language, I wish I could continue learning it!

    • @asignificantspek
      @asignificantspek Před 3 měsíci

      As a native english speaker learning French, thank you for reminding me about the "u" sound. I'll definitely make sure to be mindful about pronouncing it the right way.

    • @Luis-GZ
      @Luis-GZ Před měsícem

      I am a native spanish speaker and yes, those silent letters in french make me nuts

  • @ashleylee630
    @ashleylee630 Před 3 lety +299

    My mother language is Korean, second Spanish, and third English and I am trying to learn french. So far English is the hardest one to learn. There are so many exceptions in grammars XD

    • @Nonthemon
      @Nonthemon Před 3 lety +21

      That's truly amazing!! Best of luck to you!!
      English has so many peculiar rules

    • @MarlonEnglemam
      @MarlonEnglemam Před 3 lety +47

      it's the first time I see someone saying that English grammar is the hardest one to learn lol. It's pretty easy when compared to spanish, portuguese, french grammar etc. (I don't speak Korean so I cant really opine on that)

    • @yutomatsuki6375
      @yutomatsuki6375 Před 3 lety +17

      @@MarlonEnglemam it really is, just curious is your native language english? i feel like my germanic language speaking friends find english easier, while my romance language friends find other romance lanaguages easier than say english. Especially in japanese, the sentence structure is completely opposite of english, let alone the pronounciation or idioms

    • @MarlonEnglemam
      @MarlonEnglemam Před 3 lety +10

      @@yutomatsuki6375 Nope, my native language is Portuguese, brazilian portuguese to be more precise!
      I don't find any romance language to be easier than English when it comes to grammar...!

    • @yutomatsuki6375
      @yutomatsuki6375 Před 3 lety +8

      @@MarlonEnglemam Ah nice! English is truly one of the more simpler languages, with much less gendered language than say french or spanish. However, i feel like english pronunciation and spelling is much more difficult than other languages, would u agree?

  • @e.matthews
    @e.matthews Před 4 lety +1327

    I'm learning Spanish now, and I feel so grateful that I know French. For all Spanish speakers learning French, you'll just have to get over our weird sound systems and then the grammar will not be so bad! I was literally laughing when I started learning the Imperfecto, Futuro, and Condicional - they're very similar to French! El Pretérito made me want to die though, so many irregulars!!!
    Cheers to two beautiful languages! I'm very excited for the day I can read Naruda, Borges, and Marquez in the native language ❤❤❤

    • @nathalie1156
      @nathalie1156 Před 4 lety +29

      For me, it's probably the same. I have the level B2 in french and I'm just beginning to learn Spanish, I thought it'd be the easiest language to learn, but after 2 weeks or smth I began to worry as the vocab in the 2 langs are too similar that I may confuse between them... UGH

    • @mino3d1
      @mino3d1 Před 4 lety +35

      My lenguaje is spanish and I'm learning French; «ce est mon rêve» 💗💗💗

    • @nathalie1156
      @nathalie1156 Před 4 lety +15

      @@mino3d1 Good Luck for youuuu!!

    • @carlinalinares6401
      @carlinalinares6401 Před 4 lety +1

      Are you learning by yourself?

    • @e.matthews
      @e.matthews Před 4 lety +26

      @@nathalie1156 Just learn the patterns between them and it'll help a lot! It helps me even with my French, which has grown a little rusty. Learning, for example, that many words that end in -ema or -ma are of Greek origin and must carry the masculine gender has helped me so much. I make less mistakes with problema y sistema, and it helps me rationalize un problème 😅

  • @olyashalnova4562
    @olyashalnova4562 Před 4 lety +134

    When you studied French, are studying Spanish and watching video in English, which is also not native to you. Perfect combination

  • @Sherm128
    @Sherm128 Před 2 lety +78

    The French word "aujourd'hui" is like the Spanish phrase "en el día de hoy". I hear it somewhat regularly in Spanish when people are referring to the present day in speeches, talks, news reports, or other similar settings

    • @IM_AYKHARAAD
      @IM_AYKHARAAD Před rokem +16

      Well in French, people sometimes use the pleonasm “au jour d’aujourd’hui”, meaning “nowadays” or “hoy en día” in Spanish. “Au jour d’aujourd’hui” literally means “on the day of today’s day”, or “en el día del día de ese día”. 😂😂

    • @lissandrafreljord7913
      @lissandrafreljord7913 Před rokem +5

      au = al
      jour = dia (jornada)
      d = de
      hui = hoy

    • @sam_9228
      @sam_9228 Před rokem +5

      À + Le + Jour + De + Hui = aujourd'hui
      En + el + día + de + hoy = Yes

    • @kevintapias7783
      @kevintapias7783 Před rokem +1

      Actualmente en la actualidá actualmente

    • @dangercat9188
      @dangercat9188 Před 5 měsíci

      Spanish is my first language and I don't hear it at all lol. But I guess there's some similarity.

  • @AdaTauleMina
    @AdaTauleMina Před 2 lety +48

    Actually in some French dialects and especially Meridional French, the final e's always pronounced thus making them more similar to Spanish.

    • @artrack15
      @artrack15 Před 2 lety +7

      I'm not really informed but if you mean occitan, it's not a dialect

    • @justames5979
      @justames5979 Před 2 lety +6

      @@artrack15 they mean the French variety in the south of France that is heavily influenced by Occitan, not Occitan itself

    • @artrack15
      @artrack15 Před 2 lety

      @@justames5979 i understand

  • @antoinemathis8999
    @antoinemathis8999 Před 5 lety +772

    As a French-native speaker, I can say that French ppl usually understand Spanish well, cause as you said we share a lot ! It’s ten times easier understanding than speaking though !

    • @davidkriegerman6387
      @davidkriegerman6387 Před 4 lety

      ca jakte anglais

    • @betelgeuse7322
      @betelgeuse7322 Před 4 lety +39

      Yeah you're right! As a spanish native speaker I can confirm that! At least the wrotten language is not that difficult to catch because of the lot of similarities!

    • @SWBGTOC
      @SWBGTOC Před 4 lety +25

      And lots of french take spanish as their third language during middle school

    •  Před 4 lety +14

      Ouais mais nan, tenir une conversation, et s'exprimer c'est autre chose

    • @baudouinmualaba5717
      @baudouinmualaba5717 Před 4 lety

      czcams.com/video/vsqvOA_ZHZM/video.html

  • @ggarzagarcia
    @ggarzagarcia Před 5 lety +538

    Native Spanish speaker. Yes, my reading of French is 60% or so. I studied some Latin and Italian, so that percentage is up. But listening is quite hard, because of the vocal sounds, changes the game completely.

    • @Xergecuz
      @Xergecuz Před 5 lety +35

      Es solo al principio, solo tienes que escuchar mas el idioma, lo mismo me sucedia con el portugues brasileiro.

    • @marcs9451
      @marcs9451 Před 5 lety +28

      @@Xergecuz Como um falante de português eu entendo 90% do que espanhóis falam mas quanto aos franceses meu entendimento mal chega a 20%

    • @raulm5794
      @raulm5794 Před 5 lety +29

      @@marcs9451 es increíble lo mucho que se entienden el portugués y el español mutuamente, a veces me entran ganas de aprender el portugués jaja

    • @bobbrawley2612
      @bobbrawley2612 Před 5 lety +11

      Right on. What is intelligible in print is unintelligible listening t0 a french speaker . German speaker. Spanish. Holy cow . Etc

    • @josivaldogaldino3318
      @josivaldogaldino3318 Před 5 lety +1

      @@bobbrawley2612 Do you speak only english?

  • @desanipt
    @desanipt Před 3 lety +228

    Actually, as a Portuguese I find it harder when it is the cognates that have different genders.
    Not that non cognates with different genders are easy to remember, but not so confusing at least. It is easier when we do have a cognate but we just don't use it as much or we use it with a different meaning. Because even if the use/meaning was somewhat lost in the way, the gender is the same.
    Taking the examples in the video "lit" is masc and "cama" femn. However (in Portuguese at least) there is "leito" which is a cognate to "lit", it is masc and it does mean bed (just a more formal/archaic way).
    "Viatura" also exists in Portuguese and has the same gender as "voiture" (even if we use "viatura" more broadly to describe motor vehicles in general).

    • @frangomares
      @frangomares Před 2 lety +9

      The same thing happens in Spanish with "lit". We have, as you do, the most common word "cama" which is feminine, but we have the, rather literary, word "lecho" which is a cognate of "leito" and "lit" and it's masculine. The same thing happens with other word, but not "voiture". Portuguese is much more similar when written, but it is hard for me to understand because it is stress timed and Spanish is syllable timed. It may seem it's not such a big thing... but I'm always looking for all the syllables to be pronounced clearly and reduced ones disappear for me... hahaha.

    • @Edits_Panic0
      @Edits_Panic0 Před 2 lety +10

      Cá no Brasil, usamos "viatura" apenas pro carro da polícia xd

    • @Edits_Panic0
      @Edits_Panic0 Před 2 lety +8

      @@frangomares Brazilian Portuguese is much more like Spanish in this matter, our accents are not stressed at all.

    • @andredecs6509
      @andredecs6509 Před 2 lety

      Regardez LA vidéo mdr. 😂

    • @realharlow
      @realharlow Před 2 lety

      @@Edits_Panic0 haha

  • @theblondieone
    @theblondieone Před 3 lety +65

    As a Portuguese native speaker who have learned Spanish and can speak it fluently, then have learned Italian, and now is currently learning French, I have to say I used to mix up Italian and Spanish much more than with French. I often mix up the French with English though, which is kinda weird, but understandable. However, the previous knowledge of Portuguese, Spanish and Italian definitely help when learning French. I risk saying I took a quite good path. Awesome video! Thanks

    • @johnathangoncalo4971
      @johnathangoncalo4971 Před rokem +6

      Hmmm sort of...French is very different from other Romance Languages. In my case, Spanish and Portuguese only ended up confusing me while learning Italian. Though, I understand what you mean.
      Grammatically Italian and French are much closer to one another. The phonology of Spanish and Italian may be similar, but French and Italian share more common cognates in terms of vocabulary and verbs- avoir- avere, être- essere, trouver-trovare, parler-parlare, manger-mangiare, laisser- lasciare etc etc (both in form and the way both sets are constructed, most notably passé composé and passato prossimo). I could go on forever, but I understand people all have their own experiences or opinions
      Also, the reason as to why you relate English words to French is because English contains an enormous amount of Latin based vocabulary (Norman French influenced the English language for centuries. Without that long period of change, English would be nothing like it is today. It would have ended up maintaining noun cases, most likely, like German, for example. And the vocabulary would have been a lot more "Germanic" than Romance based. English, is, after all, a Germanic language at it's core. Anyway, I digress, but in my experience at least, French helped a lot more with Italian, for me, since the lexical similarity is much higher (89%), same goes for Spanish and Portuguese. But Spanish vs French or Portuguese vs French, the similarity is much lower...around 75% in writing and lower still in speech. Languages are complex. They certainly don't live in a vacuum

    • @Afrocreolebombshell
      @Afrocreolebombshell Před rokem

      How long did it took you to learn these languages

    • @dxkaiyuan4177
      @dxkaiyuan4177 Před rokem +2

      Félicitations! Tu sais toutes les langues romanes. Apprendes-tu le roumain prochaine?

    • @NuisanceMan
      @NuisanceMan Před 9 měsíci +1

      @@johnathangoncalo4971 You're mostly right on, but English lost noun cases in early Middle English, before there was much French influence.

  • @ThePatricio116
    @ThePatricio116 Před 4 lety +1224

    Why can't everyone else pronounce all the letters like we do in spanish? Sigh.. it makes it so much easier.

    • @devandevano7678
      @devandevano7678 Před 4 lety +171

      I am from Indonesia can read the spelling of the Spanish language because the way to spell it the same

    • @torahdelcielo
      @torahdelcielo Před 3 lety +37

      That's a good question hahahahaha

    • @ja4309
      @ja4309 Před 3 lety +64

      Same for English now that I think about it. I'm learning French but at least you can most of the time tell where a sound will be silent or not if its a consonant at the last letter or if the following word will start with a vowel. English is my first language yet I'm calling it a hodgepodge here and Spanish is not really a headache to learn and read and speak and French although difficult to pronounce is a little easier to learn once you get Spanish down

    • @EliMernce
      @EliMernce Před 3 lety +57

      But it will lose the charm of other languages like French...

    • @RammusTheArmordillo
      @RammusTheArmordillo Před 3 lety +33

      But where's the flavour in that 😗

  • @BassicVIC
    @BassicVIC Před 4 lety +103

    I’m a native Spanish speaker learning French for a few months now. Although a Romance language, french phonetics are very alien to our Spanish ears. Italian and Portuguese are definitely more intelligible for us than French. Also, French grammar posses quite a few tricky dissimilarities that are counterintuitive for us Spanish speakers. Once you get the hang of the differences, the similarities become more and more apparent. One must make a very conscious effort to pronounce French correctly. It’s hard, but very rewarding!

    • @agilenjeyamraj1739
      @agilenjeyamraj1739 Před 4 lety +2

      Je suis Eduardo. Yo soy Eduardo
      Tu es una loca. Tu est une folle
      😁😁😁

    • @m.awvtwi0
      @m.awvtwi0 Před 3 lety

      For me portuguese is not more intelligible

    • @jeanmarcphilippe1
      @jeanmarcphilippe1 Před 3 lety

      @@agilenjeyamraj1739 tu eS... ; )

    • @nicoloco1971
      @nicoloco1971 Před 3 lety

      @@agilenjeyamraj1739 Btw, in French and Spanish slang Loca/folle have the same meaning ;-)

    • @HyCris
      @HyCris Před 3 lety

      @@agilenjeyamraj1739 ''Tu es una loca'' is wrong (está mal), lo correcto es: ''(Tú) estás loca'' o ''(Tú) eres una loca''

  • @andrewfusco7824
    @andrewfusco7824 Před 3 lety +24

    As someone who speaks french, it's very heartwarming to speak with a spanish speaker speaking french too. It's hard to explain but the conversations tend to create a "pyramid" effect of understanding and the end result is very satisfying.

  • @andresmora5192
    @andresmora5192 Před rokem +78

    I'm Mexican 🇲🇽 my native language is Spanish, the French language for me is a difficult language to learn, I think it is the most difficult of Romance languages.
    I consider the Portuguese easier, I can understand Portuguese without difficulty.

    • @theodorecarter6601
      @theodorecarter6601 Před 10 měsíci +5

      I understand Portuguese better, but in particular the Brazilian version.

    • @SirKemzieGodle
      @SirKemzieGodle Před 5 měsíci +1

      @@theodorecarter6601Yes! I understand certain Brazilian Portuguese dialects more than Portuguese from… well, Portugal

  • @Kusamezi
    @Kusamezi Před 4 lety +402

    As a Chinese whose first language is mandarin, I've learned French as my 2nd foreign language for 2 years (Obviously English is my second language). Now I've been learning Spanish for 2 months and I'm gradually saying goodbye to my poor French! Especially when pronouncing French words. I can't help but start to pronounce the parts that shouldn't be... Mi Espanol is not good enough to form up sentences correctly so now I'm sometimes mixing Spanish, English et Francais together when talking to my Spanish friend who's fluent in both French and English. It's quite funny to learn these languages. Thanks for the video it's quite interesting and helpful. Also gracias for the Espanol subtitles, it also helps when reading it at the same time listening to the English version!
    谢谢~
    Merci beaucoup!
    ¡Muchas gracias!

    • @gabrielalejandroibarragali4317
      @gabrielalejandroibarragali4317 Před 4 lety +35

      Wow. It's truly remarkable to see a Chinese person speaking and learning languages that originated from linguistic roots completely different and separate from those of their mother tongue. I'm a Spanish native speaker, English is my second language and right now I'm in the final process of mastering French as my third language. I tried to learn Mandarin once but gave up on the first attempt, but I'm definitely considering giving it a second chance now that I came across your comment. You're the living example that no matter how far apart languages can be from each other, that doesn't impede you from acquiring proficiency in one or the other. Congratulations on your perfect English btw ;). Keep up the good work in your French and Spanish learning process! I've always said and now I can reaffirm that speaking multiple languages unite people and help us understand each other better to live in unity and make this world a much better place. ¡Saludos desde México!

    • @Felhek
      @Felhek Před 4 lety +16

      I'm learning your language! Mandarin
      Or at least I'm trying.
      Slowly but firmly.
      I'm from Argentina though. So i speak Spanish.
      And at the same time I'm learning French too.
      😄

    • @salomez-finnegan7952
      @salomez-finnegan7952 Před 4 lety +4

      加油 💪🏼

    • @VinyZikss
      @VinyZikss Před 4 lety +3

      @Felix Carpio well I'm learning French but I also speak Portuguese and conjugations are always a pain in the ass no matter what romance language we are talking about :(

    • @seanmcgonegon
      @seanmcgonegon Před 4 lety +2

      Dosent it take 3 months to be fluent in a language

  • @lukethomeret-duran5273
    @lukethomeret-duran5273 Před 4 lety +134

    As a french Spaniard. Having to know 2 languages that are very similar makes things much easier for me. Unlike remembering English vocab which is mainly German based. Latin brothers 🇪🇸🇫🇷🇮🇹🇵🇹

    • @Merry19ss
      @Merry19ss Před 4 lety +5

      English es German -Latin lenguage.

    • @Kanal7Indonesia
      @Kanal7Indonesia Před 4 lety +9

      @Steven PINEL omg THIS. i'm not a native english speaker (indonesian) but when i read french words i recognize many words instantly thanks to english.

    • @juniore101
      @juniore101 Před 4 lety +20

      Luke T The main problem with English is that it adopts words from so many different languages (French, Latin, German, Greek, etc.) from so many different time periods that it’s become an inconsistent mush. It’s essentially a Germanic ‘backbone’ with heavy influence from Romance languages to the point that it’s more closely intelligible with French and Spanish than German.

    • @Falanu
      @Falanu Před 4 lety +25

      🇷🇴 and Romanian the forgotten romance language. I was born there, but I speak English and know a lot of Spanish. 😂😂😂😂

    • @noaccount9985
      @noaccount9985 Před 4 lety

      We don't say ' Spaniard ' in Europe. Es'pingouin .. es'pingu .. hmm.. no suena tan bueno

  • @taelenfl27_
    @taelenfl27_ Před rokem +21

    Para responder a tu pregunta cómo nativa de español.
    Entiendo solo un aproximado de 40% escrito del francés y casi nada hablado, pero creo que saber español me ayuda al menos un 20% más a aprender con facilidad, pues sus similitudes me ayudan a memorizar y aprender :).
    Saludos hermanos 💜

  • @n0us.
    @n0us. Před 2 lety +7

    There is a person in my French class that took Spanish up to the 4th year and decided to take French for the last 2 years, and they are like super far ahead and get everything pretty quick, so it really seems like knowing one really helps with learning the other.

  • @EspanishAlB
    @EspanishAlB Před 5 lety +94

    Hi! Here it's a Spanish native speaker who also speaks French. Before I started to learn French, I wasn't able to understand spoken French. In fact, that's a difference when comparing Spanish with other Romance languages: Spanish native speakers normally understand a lot of Catalan, Italian and sometimes Portuguese (especially Brazilian Portuguese), but not French. On the other hand, written French is much more comprehensible than the spoken one, and I agree with the estimate of 60% or even more. That happens because French phonology is quite different.
    I think written French is even more understandable when you speak both Spanish and English: there are a lot of similar words in Spanish and French, but when not, in many cases the French word is similar to an English one. In example, the word for table in French is also written "table", but in Spanish is "mesa" (in Spanish, the usual meaning of "tabla" is "wood plank"). And of course, being a Spanish native speaker makes it easier to learn French (than, in example, learn English), as we have a similar grammar and vocabulary.
    What I said about English and French, also happens with French and Catalan. I'm Castilian, and I learned Catalan after I learned French. Catalan vocabulary is "between" the French and the Spanish ones, and so French helped me to learn Catalan. The problem when speaking several languages, especially when they're related, is that you might mix or confuse them. If two languages share a cognate, sometimes you don't know if you're puting other language's word in that language.

    • @andrebeautifulmarin6378
      @andrebeautifulmarin6378 Před 5 lety

      🤣 happens to me all the time

    • @martincito1662
      @martincito1662 Před 4 lety +1

      Una pregunta, QUIEN te pregunto o pidió tanta información??

    • @youtuytumaddrre
      @youtuytumaddrre Před 4 lety +2

      Esas similitudes entre inglés y francés es por la invasión francesa de las islas, hasta tal punto que los reyes y nobleza inglesa no hablaban inglés sino francés.

    • @youtuytumaddrre
      @youtuytumaddrre Před 4 lety +5

      @@martincito1662 Una pregunta, ¿a ti que cojones te importa?

    • @johanlatin8956
      @johanlatin8956 Před 4 lety +2

      @@martincito1662 lo mismo para usted! a usted que le importa! lo leyó todo para al final hacer este tipo de comentarios odiosos! madure!

  • @roniimontfort536
    @roniimontfort536 Před 5 lety +231

    As a fluent speaker of both French and Spanish, you absolutely hit the nail on its proverbial head. Congrats on a great video. 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

    • @patrickhodson8715
      @patrickhodson8715 Před 5 lety +14

      Except his pronunciation of the word “pretérito” 😂

    • @soyderiverdeliverybeaver8941
      @soyderiverdeliverybeaver8941 Před 5 lety +2

      @@patrickhodson8715 it sounded so italian lol, it was technically not wrong tho, just weird.

    • @patrickhodson8715
      @patrickhodson8715 Před 5 lety +1

      Soy de River soy de River yo soy Spanish is a syllable-timed language, not stress-timed, so it’s “wrong” to vary the length of syllables in Spanish.

    • @soyderiverdeliverybeaver8941
      @soyderiverdeliverybeaver8941 Před 5 lety +1

      @@patrickhodson8715 my bad, its easily confusable with accent stretches or even normal ones from questions and enumerations.
      But yeah, i can see why the very long and monotonous "e" is wrong now

    • @patrickhodson8715
      @patrickhodson8715 Před 5 lety +1

      Soy de River soy de River yo soy is Spanish your native language? If so, I could see not noticing something like that in your native language.

  • @PhDMario
    @PhDMario Před 3 lety +9

    The verb "habiter" in french can also translate to "habitar" in Spanish. That's why I never forget that one. Also, I'be been told by french speakers that "Au" is equivalent to "à le"; and in Spanish we have "Al", which is equivalent to "a el", so "aujourd'hui" would be equivalent, word by word, to the Spanish expression "al día de hoy", but it has a different use in Spanish. As a Spanish speaker, this video has been really helpful, as it comer neither from a native Spanish nor french speaker, so it is not biased as other similar videos I've seen.

  • @Olivetree80
    @Olivetree80 Před 2 lety +17

    Spanish is much easier for me to learn than French as an English speaker, even though English took a lot from French. I don't really struggle with French pronunciation, but it just seems like Spanish has more consistent and sound logic. I love the French language though. Growing up learning Spanish has made learning French easier, but sometimes I mix them up.

  • @lukrem420elominoso4
    @lukrem420elominoso4 Před 5 lety +617

    Je suis espagnol et j'étais en train de finir mes devoirs de français.

    • @Tylobic
      @Tylobic Před 5 lety +74

      Bon courage :p

    • @nicolascuevas-segura2254
      @nicolascuevas-segura2254 Před 5 lety +24

      Trés bien mon ami, bonne chancé avec tu devoirs de français!

    • @butterflyspinart
      @butterflyspinart Před 5 lety +38

      Bonne chance!

    • @qqn4531
      @qqn4531 Před 5 lety +66

      J'espère que tu prends du plaisir à apprendre notre langue!

    • @maltager5106
      @maltager5106 Před 5 lety +35

      j’espère que tu as terminé tes devoirs sans passer trop de temps en regardant la vidéo :P

  • @escspain6257
    @escspain6257 Před 4 lety +85

    🇪🇸 As a Spanish native speaker, I think French is really easy to understand when you read something, but the pronunciation is completely different from Spanish. French native speakers have a lot of different vowels and I struggle to learn them.
    ¡Buen vídeo! ♥

    • @ecologiadederecha4844
      @ecologiadederecha4844 Před 3 lety +7

      Exacto, eso mismo, esque no tenemos sonidos nasales por eso se nos complica la pronunciación 😣

    • @lclem6082
      @lclem6082 Před 2 lety +2

      Les francais du sud roule le (R) quand il parle comme les espagnoles

    • @jeanrichard6340
      @jeanrichard6340 Před 2 lety +1

      @@ecologiadederecha4844 - ¿No sonidos nasales en español? No es la verdad. No hay vocales nasales pero hay consonantes M N Ñ. Consonantes son sonidos...

    • @gax8321
      @gax8321 Před 2 lety +1

      Es más fácil entender portugués o italiano que francés en mi opinión

    • @SlendermanDf
      @SlendermanDf Před 2 lety +1

      Los franceses entienden las lenguas romances como cualquiera de esas mismas lenguas entre sí pero las otras lenguas no entienden al francés xd

  • @alexplummer8852
    @alexplummer8852 Před 3 lety +32

    I studied both French and Spanish at school and am proud to be fluent in both but this video has taught me so much new information. I also found Italian to be the perfect mid-step between the two! Thank you your channel is incredible

    • @ClotildeJimenezArt
      @ClotildeJimenezArt Před 2 lety +1

      I always speak both languages and for me the perfect mid step between the too is Portuguese

    • @baronmeduse
      @baronmeduse Před rokem +1

      You're "fluent" in both, but regular grammar in a video 'taught you so much'?

  • @Maelys_ACNH
    @Maelys_ACNH Před rokem +9

    As a French speaker, I can say with some level of confidence that I can understand most sentences in Spanish fairly easily.
    Having some notions in Italian and English def helps, but I feel like other French people can still get the point of a sentence in written Spanish.
    The moment they open their mouths Im completely lost though.

  • @zarrouguilucas2585
    @zarrouguilucas2585 Před 5 lety +52

    I'm a native french speaker, I have learned Spanish for many years now, and yes it feels often very familiar. You often can guess a word you don't know once you've understood the structure of the langage and the similarities with french. The side effect is that there are many false friends or different genders for similar words.

  • @andresarguelles6507
    @andresarguelles6507 Před 4 lety +613

    11:02 "vosotros y vosotras" pronouns are only used in Spain, while "Ustedes" in Latin America is used in both formal and informal contexts

    • @tp230
      @tp230 Před 4 lety +84

      Andrés Argüelles meanwhile French Canadians often say “vous autres” which is pretty similar to “vosotros”.
      In France, saying “Vous autres” sounds very old-fashioned

    • @antoniomoreno8045
      @antoniomoreno8045 Před 4 lety +72

      Not only in Latin America. "Ustedes" for informal contexts is used in Spain also, by several millions andalusians and canarians.

    • @edwardcricchio6106
      @edwardcricchio6106 Před 4 lety +23

      Andres Arguelles, even though I learned Latin American Spanish, I made sure to learn verb endings for vosotros. Since I also studied Italian and French, it was easier for me to learn the vosotros form.

    • @giovannicozentura8075
      @giovannicozentura8075 Před 4 lety +29

      For a while, vosotros was used by Italian immigrants in Argentina, because it is the Spanish equivalent of voi in Italian, which is widely used.

    • @jackparsons8396
      @jackparsons8396 Před 4 lety +28

      "Usted" as I understand came from "vuestra merced".

  • @Emilia-wv1kj
    @Emilia-wv1kj Před 3 lety +16

    I'll say this: I once helped someone with their French homework despite not speaking the language and only having a sketchy intermediate understanding of Spanish. That person aced their homework.

  • @chrisharte6604
    @chrisharte6604 Před 3 lety +58

    It never occurred to me that 'hui in French and hoy in Spanish were cognates. Some real food for thought in this video. Fascinating.

    • @sephikong8323
      @sephikong8323 Před 3 lety +6

      Also, the modern French term for today (aujourd'hui) literally translates to "to the day of today", you don't realise it when you say it normally that it's the contraction of two words meaning the same thing (though most people know it) but it always blows your mind when you stop to think about it, especially when people say "au jour d'aujourd'hui" (literally to the day of the day of today) which is extra redundant, and personally (and like many people) I really really dislike that way of speech anyway, way too cumbersome to say nothing, you can put weight on the fact something is concurrent without being this heavy.

    • @juliosalazar6924
      @juliosalazar6924 Před 3 lety +4

      I think the Spanish word ayer and the French ier, both meaning yesterday, are also cognates

    • @43timespersec
      @43timespersec Před 2 lety +4

      @@juliosalazar6924 *hier

    • @rsnankivell1962
      @rsnankivell1962 Před 2 lety +4

      In Old Castilian it was said: en el día de hoy=aujourd'hui

    • @Gachiya
      @Gachiya Před 2 lety +3

      Je trouves ça marrant « au jour d’aujourd’hui » ça fait un double pléonasme

  • @orchidtreasure1484
    @orchidtreasure1484 Před 4 lety +62

    ROFL I will never forget quand un garçon de l'Amérique latine a pleuré quand je lui ai offert un morceau de gâteau! Il a dit "maman! Ella come gato!" jajajajajaja

  • @AB-or5ml
    @AB-or5ml Před 5 lety +779

    FRENCH AND SPANISH ARE GREAT LANGUAGES 💕💕💕

  • @Elibel77
    @Elibel77 Před 3 lety +13

    As a French speaker, I found that Spanish was easier to learn than Italian. For many words I didn't know, I realized I often could "hispanize" it (ie: pronouncing it the Spanish way) and I would hit bull's eye or at least be understood.

  • @garydu356
    @garydu356 Před 2 lety +10

    language is wonderful. i acquired mandarin and english by mother tongue, learned spanish with english, and now i'm learning french with spanish and english. it gets confusing at times, but how european languages link with each other is fascinating as hell

  • @wilsonanderson1415
    @wilsonanderson1415 Před 4 lety +284

    Spanish seems easier to learn than French because Spanish has fewer vowel and fewer accents.
    And by the way, I’m Indonesian.

    • @MigalaTz
      @MigalaTz Před 3 lety +64

      I agree. I am a native french speaker but I live in Spain for some years now and one thing that I love about spanish is that, regarding pronunciation, it is not a tricky language. Once you know a few rules, you can read any new word without constantly asking yourself how you should pronounce it.
      French pronunciation is not so fair, there are a lot of counterintuitive rules, silent consonants, and a lot of exceptions generally inherited from old french, which make it much less logical. As I have known these pronunciation rules my whole life, they don't bother me, it feels normal and natural but I completely understand that for a foreigner french pronunciation can be a nightmare ^^

    • @mohamadfaqihakbar5972
      @mohamadfaqihakbar5972 Před 3 lety +10

      Je suis indonésien, and i learning both of them, and also russian a bit, salut 👋

    • @James-ow3qt
      @James-ow3qt Před 3 lety +3

      @@MigalaTz Just a tip, when talking about where you’ve lived say, “I’ve lived in Spain for a few years.” 👍🏼 I hope it helps a little

    • @MigalaTz
      @MigalaTz Před 3 lety +4

      @@James-ow3qt thank you. Actually i should write "I've been living" because I am still living in Spain and don't plan leaving it ^^

    • @James-ow3qt
      @James-ow3qt Před 3 lety +8

      @@MigalaTz I’m a native speaker of English and some weird things happen when talking about the present tense. You can say the sentence in two ways, it depends on which you prefer.
      1) “I’ve been living in Spain for a few years.”
      or
      2) “I’ve lived in Spain for a few years now.”
      The second one is a little weird, but I’ve heard people say it before, the only reason it works is because you say the word Now at the end of it. English is difficult even for me. 😭

  • @Loulyon69
    @Loulyon69 Před 5 lety +99

    Autres similitudes : CH en français = CA en espagnol (vache= vaca, cher= caro, chemise=camisa, chaleur=calor, chèvre=cabra, chameau=camello, cheval=cavallo) et ^en français est un s en espagnol (île= isla) et les 2 règles ensemble (château= CASTILLO)

    • @hectora.peniche6706
      @hectora.peniche6706 Před 5 lety +3

      Good examples!!

    • @tong_thanh5837
      @tong_thanh5837 Před 5 lety +5

      Bons exemples de la palatalisation.

    • @melissaanderson664
      @melissaanderson664 Před 5 lety +6

      Loulyon69 cheval is caballo with “b”

    • @JCMcQueenOfficial
      @JCMcQueenOfficial Před 4 lety

      Great examples! Ahora entiendo. 😊

    • @quoileternite
      @quoileternite Před 4 lety +4

      ^ in French shows that there used to be a s in old French : forêt (forest) which is still there in déforestation for example, or hôpital (hospital) still there in hospitaliser.

  • @morganrickards3811
    @morganrickards3811 Před 3 lety +5

    i've been binge watching you for a week! I LOVE languages since I was a child and taught myself basic french words from the encyclopedias since I was 4. This is awesome! and now I dont feel crazy being fascinated by language similarities and differences!

  • @miltonjonathan9147
    @miltonjonathan9147 Před 3 lety +3

    I really enjoy these comparison videos of the Romance languages! I always find myself learning something I didn’t know! Thanks 🙏🏼

  • @savato103
    @savato103 Před 4 lety +514

    La información de este video es maravillosa y el inglés que habla este compa es de lo mejor que he escuchado.

    • @mexicovisionalmundo3898
      @mexicovisionalmundo3898 Před 4 lety +11

      Tienes razón

    • @martinherrera4593
      @martinherrera4593 Před 4 lety +21

      Canadiense 👌🏼

    • @edwine6139
      @edwine6139 Před 4 lety +6

      Toda la razón pero la pregunta es ¿por qué pone los títulos en español?

    • @martinherrera4593
      @martinherrera4593 Před 4 lety +14

      edwin quezada creo que es porqué el español es el segundo idioma más hablado del mundo, entonces es solo una estrategia de marketing.

    • @osasunaitor
      @osasunaitor Před 4 lety +44

      @@edwine6139 A mi el título me sale en inglés. A veces youtube traduce por cuenta propia los títulos de los vídeos, deberías mirarlo en ajustes

  • @kubazaleskii577
    @kubazaleskii577 Před 5 lety +158

    I thought: "Paul hasn't uploaded any video for some time"
    ...
    In that second I saw the notification :D

    • @jjwp-ql5rv
      @jjwp-ql5rv Před 5 lety +10

      He doesn't upload that often, it takes research and time to make something that's actually of value. It's not another channel that can churn out five videos a week. It's quality.

    • @guilhermehx7159
      @guilhermehx7159 Před 5 lety

      😮

  • @luisg.5885
    @luisg.5885 Před 2 lety +14

    Se puede entender el frances escrito diria en un 60%, pero el hablado es dificil más que todo por la rapidez del hablante, pues he visto entrevistas de extranjeros hablando un francés más pausado y se le entiende muy bien.

  • @gabrieletrovato3939
    @gabrieletrovato3939 Před 2 lety +7

    7:10 I totally agree. They should add this feature in Italian (my language) as well. Like you said, one should know at the beginning if that is a question or an exclamation. And maybe the exclamation/question marker at the beginning is even more important that the one at the end, so maybe one should use it only at the beginning.

  • @im0rtalpunk
    @im0rtalpunk Před 5 lety +25

    Native speaker of French. In your example of gracias and merci take note that in French we have the word "grace" often used in the sentence "grace à" which means "thanks to" which comes from gratitude and is the same in English. In English you also have the word "grateful" from the same origin.

    • @samykiani944
      @samykiani944 Před 5 lety +2

      Grace is also a feminin first name. Personally I love this name.

    • @ichbinhier355
      @ichbinhier355 Před 5 lety +1

      in Spanish too! Gracias a mis amigos= grâce à mes amis but basically if you only say "gracias" so the translation is "merci"

    • @im0rtalpunk
      @im0rtalpunk Před 5 lety

      @@ichbinhier355 great to learn new stuff :)

    • @ichbinhier355
      @ichbinhier355 Před 5 lety

      @@im0rtalpunk oui, comme tu peux le remarquer, entre ces deux langues il y a beaucoup de ressemblance ;)

    • @im0rtalpunk
      @im0rtalpunk Před 5 lety

      @@ichbinhier355 tout-à-fait ça m'occupe la comparison des langues :D. J'aimerai bien apprendre l'espagnol après avoir appris le russe :p

  • @augustovargashemeryth896
    @augustovargashemeryth896 Před 5 lety +70

    As a Spanish speaker and a fluent French speaker, I find you covered all of the possible cases both languages feature in an outstanding accurate way. Your vids are great. Congratulations on the good work

  • @wayfaringshaman
    @wayfaringshaman Před 3 lety +15

    When they say it's easier to learn guitar if you already know piano, it's the same with French & Spanish.

  • @saulenriquegarcia1971
    @saulenriquegarcia1971 Před rokem +9

    Thank you for bringing so much knowledge in such a consistent and fun way to all of us ! i am a big fan of linguistics and language learning and I speak spanish, french, english and now learning German. I absolutely applaud you dude ! Good on ya ! (I learned english in Sydney where I live since 2002!)

  • @samircolovic7579
    @samircolovic7579 Před 4 lety +151

    Le français contient beaucoup de lettres muettes. Ce qui fait une langue difficile à apprendre pour les étrangers.
    Merci beaucoup pour la vidéo. Ces deux langues sont incroyables et passionnantes !
    As you can see, I'm french.

    • @baudouinmualaba5717
      @baudouinmualaba5717 Před 4 lety

      czcams.com/video/vsqvOA_ZHZM/video.html

    • @santiagopedernal583
      @santiagopedernal583 Před 4 lety +12

      "Tan frances como cualquier samir colovic puede ser" por tu nombre yo diria que eres bosnio o algo asi

    • @gerardm66
      @gerardm66 Před 4 lety +7

      @@santiagopedernal583 A lo mejor tiene ancestros eslavos, no creerás que todos los franceses son originarios de Francia o Si?

    • @santiagopedernal583
      @santiagopedernal583 Před 4 lety +1

      @@gerardm66 ¿Como a lo mejor? ¿Donde? Supongo que no sabras que los que terminan con "ic" son yugoslavos, jaja y como se llama samir lo mas probable es que sea bosnio, ya que los croatas son catolicos y no se ponen nombres musulmanes y los serbios son ortodoxos y se ponen nombres prorusos los q son algo musul son los bosnios. Es obvio q no es de antepasados franceses, como sarkozy era hungaro.

    • @odeagloriae1461
      @odeagloriae1461 Před 4 lety +3

      In France we are from everywhere and that’s what makes our country beautiful. Who cares about where your family comes from when you ARE actually French (born here, living here, speaking...) ? For more, saying that in video comments of a guy who is from Canada, with 99% of people with “foreign” name, is pretty strange.

  • @ImAliveAndYouAreDead
    @ImAliveAndYouAreDead Před 4 lety +326

    Funnily enough, "ç" is originally a Spanish letter: it is the evolution of the Visigothic "z".

    • @shaide5483
      @shaide5483 Před 4 lety +31

      Well, it would’ve made Spanish look more like French & Portuguese

    • @murrayaronson3753
      @murrayaronson3753 Před 4 lety +36

      @@shaide5483 The cedilla was used in Spanish, it was used in the first of a double c as in
      leccion (sorry about that). But there a Spanish orthography change and I don't know what year, and adios to the cedilla.

    • @generalpopcorn6427
      @generalpopcorn6427 Před 4 lety +31

      That is why Spanish keyboard layouts still include the "ç". It is located where the "\" is in English keyboard layouts.

    • @projetoe1117
      @projetoe1117 Před 3 lety +14

      Yeah, and the letter ç was created to make the sound /ts/ in all these languages. Now it sounds like only /s/.

    • @rebeccam.7249
      @rebeccam.7249 Před 3 lety +1

      no it not in french our Ç is pronounce like an S like the word Ça va bien it means are you go. the Ç sounds like a S

  • @AntonioJA25
    @AntonioJA25 Před 2 lety +14

    We can understand some writing phrases in French, but our pronunciation are some different in many situations. But once you take some French lessons then you can understand much better cause as you mentioned before... We have a lot of similarities. Thanks so much for this video, I'm learning French and this video teach me things I haven't knew.

  • @leeanntan9030
    @leeanntan9030 Před 2 lety +28

    I’m Filipino who self studied French last year, this year I started studying Spanish. Since we were conquered by Spain, we have Filipino words that are similar in vocabulary. Usual Spanish sentence structure are similar with French. I guess this is what people say… the more language you know, the easier for you to learn a new language.

    • @usagiii9337
      @usagiii9337 Před 2 lety +3

      That's nice, I learned that there is a place there in the Philippines that people still speaking Spanish and That's cool :)

  • @sps6374
    @sps6374 Před 5 lety +53

    As a French native speaker, I found that the 4 years spent learning Castillan Spanish at school were more than enough to read any book in its original version. Though I don't understand 100% of the words, I'd say that with the context of surrounding sentences, there's no difficulty at all. Especially since we learn which words are faux-amis, and most distant cognates are actually easy to spot (they usually correspond to a second or archaic meaning of their French equivalent).
    When it comes to colloquial Spanish, it's usually pretty easy to understand too, since it has pretty systematic rules regarding the tonal emphasis within each word : to me Spanish basically sounds like French spoken ultra-fast with extra final vowels and a southern accent (from Perpignan, for example - since people in the South tend to pronounce each and every letter and add a tonal emphasis on some syllables, unlike in canonical French, and some still use the rolled 'r' that was lost in standard French in the second half of the XXth century and is now associated with old singers like Piaf or Brel) ;
    I can't understand Latin Americans as easily as Spaniards : I never know whether they're using singular/plural - familiar/formal forms, and there are many small differences in pronunciation that add up. They're still intelligible, but listening to them requires an effort, unlike listening to people from Spain (provided they speak Castillan, and at medium speed).
    Spanish grammar seems more straightforward than French grammar to me, but it might be because apart from the condición realizable/irrealizable, there was barely anything that I hadn't already had to learn in French.
    Spanish conjugation was a pain in the a** though, because unlike in French, there's no verbal form that you can afford to forget (excluding forms using an auxiliary and the imparfait du subjonctif, each verb could theoretically have 45 different declinations in French, but, mainly thanks to homophones, the highest number of different forms - which belong to the verb savoir - is "only" 38 ; and since we only commonly use about a dozen of those, we forget the others as soon as we're done with primary school).
    Irregular verbs are to be learnt by heart (as we already have many in French, I didn't need any more, but again, one has to digest them to speak Spanish), and though we do use the subjunctive mood a lot in French, we stick to the present tense, as you said.
    It goes even further than that : I'd say we only ever use 7 of our 'temps' (mood+tense) in spoken French (présent de l'indicatif, passé composé, conditionnel présent, impératif présent, subjonctif présent, infinitif, gérondif) and generally prefer using the present tense and its numerous "valeurs" instead of any other "temps" ; to signify that we're in fact talking about the past or the future, we'd rather add time indicators ("je le fais ce week-end" instead of "je le ferai") or use extra verbs to evoke a tense rather than actually use it ("il va lui dire" instead of "il lui dira")... whereas in Spanish verbs are systematically conjugated in a way that reflects the sentences' timeframe.
    So yeah, knowing the whole conjugation table is (unfortunately for us lazy francophones) a must to speak Spanish.
    When it comes to vocab, I have been told by several people that I tend to mix casual/familiar and formal words in the same sentences in Spanish. I think it's because many of the words that are commonly used in French are not in Spanish, tough they exist (like your "fatigué" example : "fatigado" is gonna be understood by a Spaniard, though they'd probably go for "cansado").
    The same happens in English : if a francophone goes for cognates to translate individual words from French, they'll end up using "commence" for "start", "tempest" instead of "storm", "entire" for "whole", "permit" for "let" and "allow"...and won't realize they're talking as if they were born in 1824.
    PS : in French the present tense has several "valeurs", including présent d'habitude, présent de vérité générale, présent de description, présent d’énonciation, présent de narration, présent du passé récent, and présent du futur proche.
    The *présent* *d'énonciation* is the exact equivalent of the English present progressive : it means the action that is described is currently happening...so we don't have to use "être en train de + verbe" : "je mange" already means "je suis en train de manger".
    I was surprised by this inaccuracy in the video, but it is a minor one.
    French also has a 'gérondif' mode that can be used to express either simultaneity or continuity/progression, as well as the participe présent... I think we simply don't use them as much as we could because it would require an extra mental effort to form entirely different sentence structures and...we're lazy.
    Spoken French is really a lazier and simpler version of French that's full of grammatical mistakes and drops most of its formalism (which is why non-native speakers tend to sound quaintly literary... they speak standard written French, not the oral language).

    • @diegoborlini6840
      @diegoborlini6840 Před 4 lety

      I bet your spanish pronunciation is terrible.

    • @Nik-jq4tx
      @Nik-jq4tx Před 4 lety +1

      Thank you very much for this explanation! In which part of France do you live?

    • @thethrashyone
      @thethrashyone Před 4 lety +4

      @@diegoborlini6840 I bet you don't have many amigos, amigo.

    • @Rugalb2k
      @Rugalb2k Před 4 lety +3

      Thanks for being so very informative. I find your comment very interesting. I am a native Spanish speaker studying German, but I studied French in elementary school. I love spoken French. I think it is one of the most beautiful languages in the world, but I do not like the spelling. It needs a bit of work, too many homophones. It is not as bad as English spelling though.

    • @jaysterling26
      @jaysterling26 Před 4 lety +1

      One always takes delight in how English is spoken by those from foreign soil over the white cliffs.I bid you a good night.

  • @simonditomasso9868
    @simonditomasso9868 Před 5 lety +113

    I live in Canada Québec, so my native language is French. I went on a tour with my choir to France and Spain. I had some background in spanish since I learned it at my school two years before the trip. Obviously, two years with 1 class a week ditdnt make me trilingual (french english and spanish). We got hosted by a spanish family and when we tried to speak to eachother, it was suprising how well we could understand eachother. As a native french speaker, most of the words in spanish are the word in french with a random vowel at the end

    • @elias2hc
      @elias2hc Před 5 lety +94

      As a native speaker of spanish, I find you observation funny, - a random vowel at the end ... hahaha. To me, most of the words in french sound like the words in spanish chopped off at the last syllable with an Extraterrestrial sound at the end.

    • @simonditomasso9868
      @simonditomasso9868 Před 5 lety +9

      Heliogábalo AdBellum lol, I presume that’s the other way round, sorry if it sounded rude 😟

    • @alejandraaguilera3977
      @alejandraaguilera3977 Před 5 lety +6

      @@elias2hc hahahaha you're so right.

    • @elias2hc
      @elias2hc Před 5 lety +23

      @@simonditomasso9868 oooh nooo! not at all. I actually thought it was funny! :)

    • @dxabier
      @dxabier Před 5 lety +2

      In most cases that vowel is an "o".

  • @Acnasheen
    @Acnasheen Před 3 lety +7

    excellent travail, très impressionnant!

  • @moses1ful
    @moses1ful Před 2 lety +1

    Very well explained 👏🏼 thanks for posting.

  • @deborahbrooks2333
    @deborahbrooks2333 Před 4 lety +121

    I live in the US. The first language I studied in school was French. I started studying Italian while I was studying French, and being familiar with French gave me a definite advantage over the students for whom Italian was their first foreign language. Looking back on those days, I'm amazed that I had no trouble keeping the two languages separate. When I started studying Spanish, about 50 years later, I often threw in an Italian or French word. I guess my mind just functioned better when I was 13.

    • @EdwardRock1
      @EdwardRock1 Před 2 lety

      Ok Karen, but i assure you that your mehican help won’t understand French, they can barely speak proper Spanish

  • @krassilverfang5504
    @krassilverfang5504 Před 4 lety +83

    "Constipado" actually means constipated, but most commonly understood on the context of "Constipated Nose"

    • @shaide5483
      @shaide5483 Před 3 lety +2

      I would’ve thought it’d mean stuffy in other contexts

    • @28peruvian
      @28peruvian Před 3 lety

      @@Ozkurl , as well as in Spanish. The correct description is nariz congestionada.

  • @josimarscott1729
    @josimarscott1729 Před 3 lety +13

    As a student of both Spanish (first) and French (second), I find Spanish to be a bit more straightforward and phonetic than French , which is far more nuanced in pronunciation. However, the number of tenses and moods in Spanish can be a bit much to remember and conjugate, especially with stem/radically changing verbs and reflexives.

  • @KaliYugaSauce
    @KaliYugaSauce Před 2 lety

    Excellent video. I have been studying Spanish and French for several years and this cleared up some questions I have had for some time.

  • @theo4Christ
    @theo4Christ Před 4 lety +59

    I'm a native English speaker. I learned French to an intermediate level. As soon as I started learning Spanish, I saw SO many cognates. I can practically guess at a lot of words in Spanish based on the French word, just with a different ending or beginning (as pointed out).
    Learning French has DEFINITELY increased my rate of learning Spanish.

    • @Musicienne-DAB1995
      @Musicienne-DAB1995 Před 3 lety +1

      Same thing for me.

    • @Candyrock15
      @Candyrock15 Před 3 lety

      Same here

    • @alexlveperez7210
      @alexlveperez7210 Před 2 lety

      French and Spansh are not particularly close within the romance family. French is actually closer to Italian.
      I don't think learning French and Spanish simultaneously is a good idea. Nor do they reinforce each other.

    • @JuanCarlos-et3ks
      @JuanCarlos-et3ks Před 2 lety

      It's not Spanish based on a French word. It's two languages based on Latin roots

  • @darachill11
    @darachill11 Před 4 lety +224

    French is my first language. I learned English and I just started to learn Spanish and I can’t assure you that Spanish is wayyyy more easy to learn than English and this video is very accurate! He nailed it !

    • @AbonnesSansVideos-cb4hl
      @AbonnesSansVideos-cb4hl Před 4 lety +7

      l'élite choisit allemand en langue 2 , entschuldigung :(

    • @mikeomalanga709
      @mikeomalanga709 Před 4 lety +4

      Exact 😹. Mais les français croient que l'anglais est plus important

    • @andila716
      @andila716 Před 4 lety +10

      @@mikeomalanga709 tu la regardes en anglais cette vidéo nan ?

    • @unefille5msp
      @unefille5msp Před 4 lety +8

      100 Abonnés Sans Vidéos ? grand fou j’ai fait 12 ans d’allemand et 3 ans d’espagnol et je parle mieux espagnol qu’allemand

    • @andila716
      @andila716 Před 4 lety +2

      @@unefille5msp pareil et le pire c'est que je suis alsacienne...

  • @Liruzhen
    @Liruzhen Před 2 lety +4

    Dear sir, thank you for yet another highly informative and useful video. I have been a teacher of French, Spanish and Mandarin Chinese at the high school level for many decades. I am grateful for the abundant resources on language learning that are available online these days, especially on this website.

  • @garsplittah9549
    @garsplittah9549 Před 3 měsíci

    Thank you for your time and effort in these videos. Very interesting stuff and your videos are always the go to.

  • @darkgamershadow7675
    @darkgamershadow7675 Před 5 lety +110

    I love Spanish and French! Greetings from Bulgaria guys! :)

    • @Namunamunamu
      @Namunamunamu Před 4 lety +5

      And I totally love the Bulgarian language. Sadly it's really hard to find courses and studying material.

    • @konstantintonchev3959
      @konstantintonchev3959 Před 4 lety +1

      @@Namunamunamu You can try here, it's free: fsi-languages.yojik.eu/languages/FSI/fsi-bulgarian.html. Old, but a lot of content. Paul from Languafocus has got video about FSI courses and he finds them very good.

    • @Namunamunamu
      @Namunamunamu Před 4 lety

      @@konstantintonchev3959 thanks a lot for the information, I'll check it out

    • @elpolog.7163
      @elpolog.7163 Před 4 lety

      Been in Bulgaria once when I was 13, I had a great time :)

  • @HenryNavarroManof2moro
    @HenryNavarroManof2moro Před 5 lety +69

    I guess that means French compared to Portuguese is next in the romance comparison series

    • @luke211286
      @luke211286 Před 5 lety +10

      Or Portuguese/Italian, Italian/Romanian, Castillan Spanish/Catalan, or Classic Latin/Italian. Whichever it is, I am excited for it.

    • @HenryNavarroManof2moro
      @HenryNavarroManof2moro Před 5 lety +6

      luke211286 I’m also excited for all those! Especially Latin/Italian

    • @Rogerioapsandrade
      @Rogerioapsandrade Před 5 lety +7

      I believe that French and Portuguese may be the extremes of the Romance languages. Probably these are the two languages of the latin family with less lexical similarity. That would be really interesting

    • @nerowantsmetal
      @nerowantsmetal Před 5 lety +5

      Romanian wants some love too ;-;

    • @julientheriault9150
      @julientheriault9150 Před 4 lety

      @@Rogerioapsandrade I think that Spanish and Portugese are so close one to each other that most of the video could be adapted to portugese easily. In fact, in some ways, French and Portugese share common evolutions, compared to Spanish. They both use nasal vowels (but French does not have nasal diphtongs). Frech dropped final unstressed vowels: the letter e in the word "case" is mute. In Portugese, the final a in "casa" is not as clear as in Spanish (at least in Portugal). They share the same sound for the lettre j and the digraph ch.

  • @rossindiravillavicenciocar3236

    Thank you so much. I've learned a lot! ☺️

  • @TedJohnson85
    @TedJohnson85 Před 3 lety +31

    You mention the French word “habiter” which is a cognate of the english word “inhabit”. Such as “birds inhabit the island in the summer months.” But I like to equate it with the word “dwell” which sounds archaic in English like “I dwell in the land west of Washington DC”. LOL On a separate note when I was a linguist in my college days a professor at the University of Maryland in College Park gave a lecture called “French or Spanish? Which is more difficult for English speakers?” and the gist of the lecture was that French starts out difficult but actually gets easier by the third and fourth year of college level French, while Spanish starts off simpler but gets very intricate and more difficult grammar-wise especially in the third or forth year of college level Spanish. He blames the subjunctive as Spanish has more subjunctive cases than French and uses most of them more often than French does. In regard to pronunciation Spanish can be sorely mangled yet understood, but French requires more careful pronunciation. Thank you for an informative and fun video!

    • @BrandonClaridge
      @BrandonClaridge Před 3 lety +3

      I've studied a little bit of both Spanish and French and I do feel this is true. French pronunciation is definitely tricky at first, but once you master it, things tend to get easier from there. Even though English and French are from different language families (Germanic and Romance respectively), historical French-to-English borrowings and a simpler grammar do greatly help English speakers in learning French. I also wonder about the extent of Germanic influence (namely Frankish) on making French closer to English and more distant from the rest of the Romance family in other ways; it is often said that French is more distant from its parent language, Latin, relative to other languages in the Romance family.

    • @tylersmith3139
      @tylersmith3139 Před 2 lety

      Cognate means they come from the same older word. Inhabit comes from the Latin words 'in-(in) +habitere(dwell)'. Habiter also comes from Habitere as well, meanwhile dwell is from Old English 'dwellan' which means to lead astray or delay and doesn't even come from Latin let alone has the same word origin.

    • @novelero03
      @novelero03 Před 2 lety

      As someone who’s bilingual in English and Spanish, and also a teacher of both languages, this is completely true. Spanish starts very easy, but as you progress, the grammar gets a lot more intricate and complex. The preterite tense vs. the imperfect tense is another topic that gets complicated, just like the subjunctive mood.

    • @wertyuiopasd6281
      @wertyuiopasd6281 Před 2 lety

      your word in+habit comes from old french, because it has latin etymology.

  • @clemteff6476
    @clemteff6476 Před 4 lety +163

    Hey :)
    As a native French speaker, I just want to say that this video is great !
    Btw, the imperfect subjunctive in French is, indeed, very formal and literary, but should you be able to use it properly in a speech, people would probably see you as eloquent, like you really truly master the language
    Good luck to anyone learning French: I admire your courage

    • @edouardmoulin1269
      @edouardmoulin1269 Před 4 lety +7

      À moi ce n'est pas une affaire de courage, c'est un besoin vital en habitant un pays franco. Merci du compliment

    • @mikeomalanga709
      @mikeomalanga709 Před 4 lety +5

      Mais non...on vas croire que tu est fous

    • @lonelyjesse85
      @lonelyjesse85 Před 4 lety +6

      I have to disagree with you on sounding more eloquent when using the imperfect subjunctive in French, for me it sounds either outdated or plain weird to the point where I would correct the person (and I admit that I would be in the wrong) because what they said wouldn't sound French to me

    • @Danielfelipe6
      @Danielfelipe6 Před 4 lety

      Can you please explain me that?

    • @CounterFragger
      @CounterFragger Před 4 lety +8

      @@lonelyjesse85 As a French native speaker, I totally agree ! Nowadays, imperfect subjunctive is rarely written, if not never. It would seem like you came from XIXth century...

  • @oscarespinosa9264
    @oscarespinosa9264 Před 5 lety +372

    I am Spanish speaker, and I think French is the most difficult romance language for a Spanish speaker.

    • @madridista777hala8
      @madridista777hala8 Před 5 lety +75

      Have you ever heard about Romanian?

    • @oscarespinosa9264
      @oscarespinosa9264 Před 5 lety +51

      @@madridista777hala8 Yes, I have. Perhaps Romanian is the second most difficult romance language for me.

    • @marioloja96
      @marioloja96 Před 5 lety +55

      I agree with you as a Spaniard. French and Romanian are the most difficult. Pd: I already speak Italian and Portuguese. I understand galician and catalan so good. French is hard to me, even if I studied for 5 years and I can't master it yet, I gave up at the end.

    • @nicollyfarao2401
      @nicollyfarao2401 Před 5 lety +2

      Xq?

    • @guilhermehx7159
      @guilhermehx7159 Před 5 lety +15

      I am a native Portuguese speaker and i agree with you. And Portuguese is more different from French than Spanish is...

  • @jeremyroch4496
    @jeremyroch4496 Před 3 lety +20

    Brilliant video! I speak both French and Spanish and yes they're very similar in writing, but orally very little intelligible, especially for a Spanish speaker, as French pronunciation has undergone massive changes since the two languages diverged from Latin. Nonetheless if you have a good knowledge of the two languages, you can easily read Catalan and Portuguese and understand spoken Italian. It also helps if you start learning Romanian or smaller romance languages such as Reto Romantsch or Occitan.

  • @DaveLopez575
    @DaveLopez575 Před rokem

    Man, these videos are tight! Love them all!

  • @Langfocus
    @Langfocus  Před 5 lety +510

    Hi everyone! A couple of comments on this video:
    -In the video I said the French word "large" means "large" in English, and it can be translated that way in some contexts (for example when clothing is too large), but it more generally means "wide".
    -I used Castilian as the main basis of comparison, so some points are a little different for Latin American Spanish. In Latin American Spanish, "vosotros" and "vosotras" are not used for the informal 2nd person plural pronoun, but rather "ustedes" is used as both the informal and formal pronoun.
    Also, regarding the simple past and present perfect, in Latin America the simple past (pretérito) tends to be used more often in contexts where the present perfect might be used in Spain. This depends on the exact area.
    Also, people in some Latin American countries have pointed out that "bombón" means "a candy" where they live (whereas it's "a chocolate" in Spain, and "a marshmallow" in Mexico).

    • @Adrian-sj3vt
      @Adrian-sj3vt Před 5 lety +31

      Another thing, 19:04 I know they're different, but in Castilian we DO have a similar word for the French "hier" and it's "ayer", ayer means yesterday. Of course, anoche is "the last night", but if you say "hier" (ayer in Spanish), everyone will automatically understand you, also in Castilian we DO have "fatigado" similar to "fatiguee" it's rarely used, but everyone knows "fatigado" means being extremely tired, both physically and emotionally

    • @bgtgwazi
      @bgtgwazi Před 5 lety +7

      There is also a separate 2nd person plural verb form that vosotros/as uses. Only Ustedes takes the 3rd person plural conjugation. The video says both vosotros and ustedes use the 3rd person plural conjugation, which is incorrect

    • @malfriv
      @malfriv Před 5 lety +8

      Also, Constipado is used in latin america too. Ant it means not to have a cold but to have a stuffy nose from a cold.

    • @MaximilianoHerrera72
      @MaximilianoHerrera72 Před 5 lety +2

      In Costa Rica bombon is like a chocolate. Latin american countries have their own words.

    • @Phagocytosis
      @Phagocytosis Před 5 lety +6

      Also 12:07 the Spanish sentence spoken is different from the one written on the screen. Minor point, no big deal, but I still thought I'd point it out.

  • @oliverioy9439
    @oliverioy9439 Před 4 lety +114

    ¡Felicitaciones! Buen trabajo. Soy profesor de español en China. Incluso se han mencionado el fenómeno lingüístico de pro-drop, la diferencia entre los verbos inergativos y inacusativos al formar el pretérito perfecto (haber p.p.). De hecho en el castellano antiguo, había diferencia entre ser y haber con diferentes verbos como la situación actual en francés. Pero ahora (ser p.p.) simplemente es la forma para formar la voz pasiva.

    • @jamatifsam
      @jamatifsam Před 2 lety

      Translator I know you using because I know it's incorrect grammar weird non sense

    • @ktdoty9921
      @ktdoty9921 Před 2 lety

      The grammar is actually pretty sound for the most part. I don't think that Google translate can actually translate very well between Mandarin and Spanish anyways.

    • @felipeaz9561
      @felipeaz9561 Před 2 lety

      Yo soy nativo de Epañol.

  • @sarahsaavedra197
    @sarahsaavedra197 Před 3 lety +2

    Hiciste un excelente trabajo, te felicito

  • @sahidcm
    @sahidcm Před 2 lety +4

    8:05
    Also, there's the verb "habitar" in spanish, and it's a synonym, but it's much more common to use "vivir" when we talk about residence.

  • @lindaschreiber5932
    @lindaschreiber5932 Před 5 lety +29

    I'm a retired teacher of French and Italian and have a strong background in two Germanic languages. I find your videos extremely accurate, clear and fascinating. You scholarship is superb and it's a pleasure to see your work.

    • @roberttelarket4934
      @roberttelarket4934 Před 4 lety

      Then how do you account his supposed native French helper mispronouncing bien? Paul also misprounced simple. Or is it regional? I studied over 50 years ago French under a Ph.D. who has received a Legionne de Honneur! from France.

    • @oursenplus1
      @oursenplus1 Před 4 lety +1

      @@roberttelarket4934 Légion d'honneur

    • @roberttelarket4934
      @roberttelarket4934 Před 4 lety

      @@oursenplus1: Merci beaucoup!!!

    • @quoileternite
      @quoileternite Před 4 lety

      I agree.

  • @Vienna3080
    @Vienna3080 Před 5 lety +36

    I speak Spanish so for me it’s easier to read French then it is hearing it
    Since I’m also fluent in English it also helps me better read it and understand

  • @nounalmazyouna9567
    @nounalmazyouna9567 Před 3 lety +1

    Amazing effort u put in ur videos. Impressive really. I always enjoy them. Thank you Sir and Good luck 👍👏💪

  • @leyuqiu4339
    @leyuqiu4339 Před 3 lety +1

    Mil Gracias and merci beaucoup Paul. The video explained very clearly the differences among the 2 languages which I have tried to learn a bit. Recalled I was once extremely frustrated by the French grammar years ago. After I picked up Spanish, I noticed many similar grammar points, bringing me joy in learning instead of being defeated. This video well summarises and helps greatly.

  • @mcmlxxix
    @mcmlxxix Před 5 lety +71

    "Parler", in Spanish, not very common, but still used is "parlar", and specifically, when a person talks too much is a "parlador", in America the speakers are called "parlantes" and in my little village in Spain when you meet with friends we say "Vamos a echar un "parlao" that means "Let's talk".
    "Fatiguée" is the equivalent to the Spanish "fatigado", very common, but maybe more formal than "cansado".
    "Jour" equivalent to the Spanish "Jornada" that means "working day" or "day trip".
    "Vouler": Spanish dropped the verb "volere" used in the initial states of the language and started to use "querer" from Latin "quaerere" (to look for), but we still have the same root Latin root ("volere") for many other words. For instance: "voluntad" (will), "volitivo" (volitive), voluntario (voluntary) and so on.
    "Acheter" cognate of the Spanish: "adquirir" (buy, purchase, acquire). "Adquirir" is a common verb, but more formal than "comprar".
    "Habiter" cognate of the Spanish "habitar" (to live in or to dwell).
    "Lit" cognate of the Spanish "Litera" (bunk bed).
    "Vous" cognate of Spanish "vos" (old fashioned in Spain, but used in Argentina and Uruguay instead of "tú").
    Conclusion: as a Spanish speaker, I cannot speak French, and not even write it, but reading French is very easy because the words that at the first sight look totally different usually have a Spanish equivalent that belongs to the same semantic field.

    • @jeffkardosjr.3825
      @jeffkardosjr.3825 Před 5 lety +4

      Not common in English, but we have parlance. Which refers to how something is spoken.

    • @paranoidrodent
      @paranoidrodent Před 5 lety +4

      I have a very similar experience, albeit mirrored, when I read written Spanish. So many cognates to my native French.

    • @mcmlxxix
      @mcmlxxix Před 5 lety +4

      @@jeffkardosjr.3825 And parlament.

    • @sps6374
      @sps6374 Před 5 lety +5

      @@jeffkardosjr.3825 and 'parlay'.
      OP, in French we also have 'acquérir', which doesn't mean 'to buy', merely 'to acquire' (by any possible means).

    • @clementeperez2870
      @clementeperez2870 Před 5 lety +3

      Creo que la traducción más exacta al francés de jornada es "journée", ¿no? Es también palabra femenina.

  • @marianacastillo4555
    @marianacastillo4555 Před 5 lety +19

    I'm a native Spanish speaker and I'm currently learning French but (funnily enough) in English. Because of this I often find myself translating French into Spanish (instead of English) because it is more similar to it, therefore easier to remember. It is definitely easier to read French, than to listen to it, but that happened with English as well, so it is just a matter of getting used to the sounds. But as someone said in another comment, it is a great advantage to know both English and Spanish when learning French, because it has cognates with both languages, plus many other benefits. Also, it's always fun to discover phrases in French that are the same in Spanish, but don't exist in English.
    Thank you so much for this video, really thorough!!

    • @matf5593
      @matf5593 Před 5 lety +4

      Lol...I had a similar experience... I'm a native French speaker (Quebec) who was studying Spanish at a Canadian (English) University. The English explanations were actually a distraction. I just thought in French when studying Spanish and learned much more quickly.
      Mucha suerte con sus clases de francés! Bonne chance avec vos études de français!

  • @joseacosta374
    @joseacosta374 Před 3 lety +12

    Native spanish speaker here learning French and I'm just grateful that I already speak spanish, it seems so difficult learning it from 0 lol

  • @ouvie
    @ouvie Před 2 lety

    i actually learned quite a bit from this video! i like ur content, new sub

  • @Kgoulis89
    @Kgoulis89 Před 5 lety +43

    Native English speaker here. I learned Spanish first, and got to a pretty comfortable level before I started learning French. Having some proficiency in Spanish DEFINITELY helped with French, especially with subjects which are unusual to English speakers, such as the subjunctive mood or the various past/future tenses, etc. For example, the future tense is nearly identical in both languages. Take "will go" for example - FR: J'irai, tu iras, il/elle ira, SP: (Yo) iré, (tú) irás, (él/ella) irá... etc. That being said, there are still a lot of major differences that take a little effort to wrap one's head around.
    Great video, Paul!

    • @kekeke8988
      @kekeke8988 Před 4 lety +1

      Bizarre that French has Spanish words embedded in some tenses that otherwise don't exist in French.

  • @ren7293
    @ren7293 Před 4 lety +37

    I’m currently studying French and Spanish at the same time
    I love both languages!

    • @jflow5601
      @jflow5601 Před 2 lety

      That must be challenging to keep them apart.

  • @herknorth8691
    @herknorth8691 Před 2 lety +6

    I am a native English-speaker but I was placed in French immersion in school at the age of 4 and remained in that immersion program until I was about 13. I can still speak French but have forgotten a bit of it. I've been trying to learn Spanish for a few years now and there's been some benefit to knowing French but there are enough differences that I still struggle with Spanish. Still, I'm probably better off than if I didn't know French when it comes to learning other languages.