# Is French more similar to English or Spanish?



## rafaelgan

I didn't know where to post this question, but is French more similar to English or Spanish? In grammar and pronunciation.


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## enoo

If I'm correct, I think it's said to be more similar to Spanish.

And based on my personal experience, I remember when I was a kid I could absolutely not understand English (spoken or written) whereas Spanish sounded and looked less "weird", and I could understand a few words and sometimes sentences.

There's quite a number of words from French or Latin origin in English, but often not enough to make a sentence understandable without any previous knowledge of the language.

 (Maybe this should go to the Cultural Discussions forum? Not sure)


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## Tim~!

French and Spanish are both daughters of Latin.  Go back not even two thousand years and the languages that we now call French and Spanish would have been one and the same.  (Well, nearly.  There would have been localised elements, a bit like how we have the same language English in England and across the world, but there are slight differences.)

I've just noticed that you mention pronunciation.

French has far fewer vowel sounds than English, so is closer to Spanish than that.

However, neither English nor French sound anything like Spanish.  All three are very distinct in how they sound.  The particularly hard part about French is that you have to learn that the great majority of consonants at the end of a word aren't pronounced.  Other than that, it's fairly routine.


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## gallhammer

French is closer to Spanish by its roots ("French is a descendant of the Latin language of the Roman Empire, as are national languages such as Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Romanian, and Catalan")(1) and its words are generally more similar to Spanish ones (porte/puerta/door), though occasionally an English term can be closer to French than the Spanish one (grand-père/avuelo/grandfather), or, for that matter, closer to Spanish than to French (mère/madre/mother). Let's not forget all three languages have common indo-european roots (2).

(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_language
(2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_languages


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## Miguel Antonio

In grammar, French is more similar to Spanish.
In pronunciation, it is very different to both.


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## Meyer Wolfsheim

There are some areas of grammar in French which might make you say: Hey, it's pretty similar to English!  That is partly due to the Germanic influence on the French language (usage of "on", only romance language to not be a pro-drop, etc.)

However, in the roots and core of French grammar, it is far closer to Spanish and this should be no surprise. 

In terms of pronounciation, there are some similarities between French and English; both have multiple vowels where as Spanish only has 5 and English has both many Latin loan words and French ones too (which occasionally have a similar pronounciation to their original French).  I would definitely find it more advantageous to be learning French with a strong background in English phonology versus having a strong background in Spanish phonology. 

But again, the very essence of pronounciation in French is much closer to Spanish in feeling, sound, and rhythme.  If you have studied or speak both of these languages, you should notice that they have a very similar accent to them, despite what appears to be phoneme inventories that differ greatly. 

The three languages are all quite similar in grammar but ultimately Spanish is more similar to French than English is to it in all manners.


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## sokol

Miguel Antonio said:


> In grammar, French is more similar to Spanish.
> In pronounciation, it is very different to both.


I agree on the first count, but on the second one I'd like to add that French pronunciation still is closer to Spanish (or Italian for that matter) than any Germanic language, first and foremost because of accent (vastly different between French - syllable timed as well as Spanish - and English - stress timed as most if not all Germanic languages; see Wiki).

Of course Spanish and French prosody still sound vastly different, but they're still closer than French and English.


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## Hulalessar

Tim~! said:


> French has far fewer vowel sounds than English.



I have not counted but I would have said French has a few more vowels than English.


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## Kevin Beach

I'm going to court controversy here by suggesting that French and English are greatly similar in one respect: they have both become perverse in their pronunciation, through centuries of accumulated laziness in speech. The sound of each language differs from the orthography so much that each language's spelling has become a joke. French has departed so much from its Romance origins, and English from its German, that each now sounds like a language without relatives.

Spanish pronunciation, on the other hand, is much truer to its spelling. On being heard, Spanish is still recognisably one of the Romance languages.


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## Mishe

I agree that they are quite far apart from other languages in their respective language families, especially phonetically, but I doubt it's because of "the laziness of speech".


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## Kevin Beach

Well, as I understand it both French and English words are spelt as they were once pronounced. That so many of them are so different from their spellings suggests that something has gone wrong. Some of it may be due to one or other dialect or accent prevailing over another, but how is it that letters in so many words are simply ignored?

In English, the silent -e is ubiquitous at the end of words; -tio- has become -sh-; -gh- has become many things, but is never its original guttural sound.

In French ... where do I begin? There's -el that has become -eau (with an almost exact replica in contemporaneous common London speech); -e unpronounced in all sorts of places; -ent silent at the end of third person plural verbs; -m often serving as a nasal -n.

For me, they bear all the hallmarks of change caused by people speaking sloppily and the errors becoming the norm. Even now in BrE, we have the glottal stop for -t- moving its way up the social strata so that our last Prime Minister used it.

I know that other languages have the same phenomenon (Danish comes to mind) but, for me, it is a way in which French and English are much closer together than French and Spanish.


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## Alxmrphi

*Moderator note:
Post moved to start a new thread.*


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## Meyer Wolfsheim

Kevin Beach said:


> I'm going to court controversy here by suggesting that French and English are greatly similar in one respect: they have both become perverse in their pronunciation, through centuries of accumulated laziness in speech. The sound of each language differs from the orthography so much that each language's spelling has become a joke. French has departed so much from its Romance origins, and English from its German, that each now sounds like a language without relatives.
> 
> Spanish pronunciation, on the other hand, is much truer to its spelling. On being heard, Spanish is still recognisably one of the Romance languages.


 
I agree with you for the most part, but I do not agree with your statement that "each now sounds like a language without relatives." While some of the sounds and vowels in both French and English may seem far off from the general phoneme inventory of their sister languages, the core essence of both remains in tact. When I hear English (especially in songs), it sounds very much like German; I could almost imagine replacing all the English with German and having the rhythme very much intact without much work. The same goes for French as well.


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## HUMBERT0

Since it was mention in relation to French and Spanish spellings, my comment is regarding Spanish in comparison to the other two.
Could it be that Spanish has less phonological sounds to reduce?. We only have five vowels how much can we reduce it now. Spanish went thru a very important sound reduction, standardization and stabilization of sounds before the XV by having a very strong contact/competition with other closely sounding Iberian romance language standards, and as Castilian asserted itself all over of what today is Spain, by the time Spanish propagated to America it was a very phonological stable language. The only great issue was, that there were still basically two distinct variants, an official Castilian standard and the Castilian that Andalusia and other regions exported, both leaving a profound mark on how Spanish is spoken in America.


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## Sepia

Hulalessar said:


> I have not counted but I would have said French has a few more vowels than English.


 
You never counted how many ways the letter "o" is pronounced in English, did you? 

However, if you include some of the vowel sounds that the Scots have, I don't think I would proclaim neither language a winner.


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## Hulalessar

Sepia said:


> However, if you include some of the vowel sounds that the Scots have, I don't think I would proclaim neither language a winner.



I've counted now. I make the score: English 12, French 16.

(Please note that this is for vowels and not diphthongs.)


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## Tim~!

Well include diphthongs, then.  Considering the context of this question I think it should be abundantly clear that they fit into the category of "vowel sounds" that the Spanish-speaker would have to learn, which are more numerous in English than in French.

Don't be so pedantic.  It was obvious what was meant.


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## Hulalessar

It starts to get a bit complicated because if you are going to include diphthongs what about triphthongs and long vowels? If you do that the score starts to get a bit more even and like Sepia I would not proclaim either language the winner. Whether they are included or not, it is certainly not the case that "French has far fewer vowel sounds than English" - unless it pedantic to insist that "far fewer" means more than two or three fewer.


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## nic4

French and Spanish are *Latin* languages.
English is a *Germanic* one.

Bye!


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## The Traductor

Kevin Beach said:


> French has departed so much from its Romance origins, and English from its *German*, that each now sounds like a language without relatives.



I take it you mean *Germanic* or, better still, *West Germanic* origins.


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## nic4

No, English should be an_* East*_ Germanic languages.


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## Alxmrphi

It's _West_, the only branch of Germanic that was East was Gothic, which is now extinct.
[See here]


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## sokol

Hello guys,

obviously you've been carried away; back on topic please, yes? 

Now that we've established that English is West Germanic there's no need to go further into it in this thread here.

I hope that we can now return to the original topic. 

Cheers
sokol


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## Sepia

Hulalessar said:


> I've counted now. I make the score: English 12, French 16.
> 
> (Please note that this is for vowels and not diphthongs.)


Did you include the Scottish ones that the English don't have?


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## Hulalessar

Sepia said:


> Did you include the Scottish ones that the English don't have?



No.


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## ampurdan

It is true that both English and French have evolved much more than Spanish, but it is also a true that Spanish spelling has been kept more up-to-date than any of the other two, especially English. Perhaps English and French grammarians did not adjust the way their languages were written too much to the way they were spoken because they perceived that their languages were evolving very fast and all the reforms needed would make the written language look unrecognizable.

Having said that and though it's true that French has different letters or combinations of letters for the same sound (for instance, "au", "eau" and "o"), many silent vowels and consonants, many different rules of pronunciation, still, it is regular: once you know the rules, you know how to pronounce any new word pretty well. That's not the case with English. 

Leaving all English spelling irregularities aside, in that language you can never be 100% sure where to put the stress in a particular word, whereas in French it's very easy: you just need to stress the final syllable of a word or all of them (no matter what you do, it will sound just the same). Spanish is a little bit like English, but written accents help foreigners a great deal.


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## koniecswiata

Deeming a language as more or less similar to another can be difficult.  Especially when comparing English, French, and Spanish.  French and Spanish share more basic Latin roots which technically makes them more similar etymologically (and in this case grammatically, too).
However, pronunciation is another matter.  French shares with English a certain number of phonemes it does not with Spanish, as well as vowel reduction (with English).  Also, this vowel reduction would seem to point to a degree of syllable timing.
The most shocking thing, though, is that in the area of phonology, French has the most in common with... Flemish, Dutch, and German, which along with some NW Italian dialects, and excluding some Eastern German dialects  and the languages of Southern France.  These languages form a "Western European Sprachbund" in the area of pronunciation.  The vast majority of the same vowels and consonants are present in all of these.  Of course, there are differences.  Anecdotally, a French teacher once told me that the foreigners who tend to gain the best accent in French are German speakers--due to these phonetic similarities.


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## Angelo di fuoco

Meyer Wolfsheim said:


> There are some areas of grammar in French which might make you say: Hey, it's pretty similar to English!  That is partly due to the Germanic influence on the French language (usage of "on", only romance language to not be a pro-drop, etc.)



If you are alluding to the circumstance that in French you always (except in very informal registers) have to use the personal pronouns when they are subject of a sentence, it is a fairly recent development, dating back only to the seventeenth century, when also the obligatory use of "pas" as the second main element of negation was made obligatory. It cannot be considered a Germanic influence because it was the consequence of a quite hot inner-French linguistic dispute (don't forget, it was Louis XIII who founded the Académie Française) and the origin of the debate was the fact that French had become a "post-drop" language, i. e. had lost (in pronounciation, not in spelling) most of its final sounds - mostly consonants and also the unstressed vowels (by that time already reduced to the sole "e muet") - in general and endings in particular, except when the final sounds reappeared due to the _liaison_.

"On" (originating from "homme") could perhaps be traced back to Germanic influence (cf. the German "man", derived from "Mann").

However, the grammatical influence of the Germanic languages on the Latin languages is rather insignificant, if you don't consider the loss of many synthetic forms and their replacement by analytic forms (but that "simplification" often takes place when a language comes into very intensive contact with another), whereas it is rather significant in the vocabulary (in almost all Romance languages except Romanian and, perhaps, Sardinian).
On the other hand, one of the two possibilities to form comparative and superlative adjective forms in English - using "more" and "most" respectively - is clearly a Romance influence.


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## Meyer Wolfsheim

My apologies you are correct. What I should have written is that it makes French seem more Germanic because its not a pro-drop language like English or German and thus seem more user friendly to a native of a Germanic language versus the pro-drop status of Spanish verbs.

But I don't see how French could ever have been a pro-drop language AFTER it dropped the endings, it is far too ambiguous in spoken form and if liason were still preserved it would have to be required to give a hint of the subject. Some forms are of course naturally pro-drop, like those of avoir, être, etc. but they are irregular and in English, we can't just say "am" and have it be equal to the Spanish "soy/estoy" (even though "am" is completely unambiguous). Same with "is" too. I don't know how the endings were actually pronounced when this change occured that you spoke of, but I am sure that they were pretty weak.

I learned Spanish before French so I sometimes make the mistake of dropping pronouns, like I'll say "le voulez?" instead of "le voulez-vous?"

The fact that French is not pro-drop does indeed make it more familiar to an English speaker, as there is an obsession with some kind of pronoun to complement each verb. This is especially more apparent in dummy setups, like "il pleut", "ça fait", "c'est" which seem to mirror the usage of "that" and "it" another great selling point. However, I find that they complicate things actually, because then you have to know which pronoun is the correct to use in each situation and the whole pronoun system gets more complex when you add in passé composé forms along with inversion; that is where Spanish is much more friendly and easier. There is an obvious trade-off for having or not having a pro-drop pronoun system.

Nevertheless, the two are amazingly similar to English despite the fact that English developed on a seperate landmass and doesn't even come from the same family but still serves as a testament to the relation between European languages. However, as I have stated, in the core, the very heart of the language, French will and always has been more similar to Spanish.


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## Blas de Lezo

Spanish, French and English are all indo-european languages, *but *Spanish and French are LATIN languages, and english is a GERMANIC languages with a highly degree of latin influence (40% of vocabulary according to Wikipedia).

So, French is in grammar closer to Spanish, that's very easy to see even if you didn't know the info above. However, French pronunciation is _very_ different from Spanish or English, although if we had to choose one, it would be closer to Spanish.


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## koniecswiata

That's true Blas, but the pronunciation is debatable.  In phoneme inventory, French is probably more like English.  But, really in pronunciation French is more like German than either Spanish or English as it belongs to a West European Pronunciation Sprachbund characterized by such things as vowel reduction of the "e", and opposition between closed and open vowels.  Pronunciation is fairly independent from language family issues, for example, despite being so similar Spanish and Portuguese pronunciation are really different.


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## Ajura

rafaelgan said:


> I didn't know where to post this question, but is French more similar to English or Spanish? In grammar and pronunciation.



The Langues d'Oil are most similar to Arpitan group the next to that is Lengas(Llenguas/Lenguas) d'Oc then Iberian Languages and GalloItalian.


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## Meyer Wolfsheim

That is true that French consonants and vowels are very much like the ones in English on a basic analysis. More or less than is a 1:1 correlation of consonant sounds between the two. Standard Spanish does not consonants which are in French like "ch", "j." However, nasal vowels in French prove to be tricky (they can exist in Spanish but only in certain instances, commonly in words ending in ión). I am pretty sure that between English, German, and Spanish, all the vowels and consonants in French are covered (excluding nasalized variants). 

The vowel reductions in French aren't really present in Standard Spanish. 

Even so, French still sounds much more like Spanish than it does to English. The rhythm and stress (the core features of a language) are very much the same. When I first learned French I had difficulty in not sounding like a Spanish speaker. The vowel qualities aren't too difficult to notice but sometimes I can mistake French for Spanish if not listening carefully enough. The real trouble is learning not to sound French when speaking German, especially with the r's...

The similarities can be noted in how the word "la" is pronounced in all three.  The English one is instantly a give away, even if the l isn't darkened.  The difference between Spanish "la" and French "la" has a lot to do with the vowel as well but an English speaker couldn't tell you which one is French and which one is Spanish.


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## Hulalessar

No one can doubt that the landscape of French grammar is much more similar to that of Spanish than English. Anyone who has studied French and then Spanish (or vice versa) will feel that he is on familiar territory.

When it comes to how languages sound there is more to it than comparing their inventory of phonemes. How the sounds can be combined is also important. Two languages may have similar phoneme inventories, but one may allow consonant clusters and syllables that end in consonants and the other may not. Apart from that, there are other factors that give the sound of any language its characteristics such as rhythm, pitch and stress. When you speak a foreign language with an accent you carry to it the prosodic features of your own language just as much as your pronunciation of the phonemes will be coloured by the phonemes of your own language. That is what helps us identify the mother tongue of non-native speakers especially if they have a strong accent.

There is I think something about any language that enables you to identify it even if you cannot hear what is being said. I confess I am a little surprised therefore that Meyer Wolfsheim says he sometimes mistakes French for Spanish especially when he knows both. I certainly cannot agree that "the rhythm and stress...are very much the same". Spanish has a strong stress accent whilst French only has a weak one.

A Frenchman once told me that English sounded like milk, German like biscuits, Spanish like potatoes and Italian like needles, but that he did not know what French sounded like. It is difficult to weigh up what languages you know sound like. I do though venture to suggest that anyone who had never heard English, French or Spanish and had recordings of all three played to him would say they were equally far apart from each other and would not be able to identify that French and Spanish were in fact more closely related to each other than either is to English.


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## sound shift

Here are a few thoughts. They are not exhaustive or systematic, and they may repeat what others have said.

The English *conditional *is a compound tense: "would sing".
The French *conditional* consists of a root and an ending: "chanterais".
The Spanish *conditional* consists of a root and an ending: "cantaría".
French is more similar to Spanish.

The English *future *is a compound tense: "will sing".
The French *future *consists of a root and an ending: "chanterai".
The Spanish *future *consists of a root and an ending "cantaré".
French is more similar to Spanish.

In English, the *adjective*, when used attributively, precedes the noun.
In French, the *adjective*, when used attributively, usually follows the noun.
In Spanish, the *adjective*, when used attributively, usually follows the noun.
French is more similar to Spanish.

In English the *definite article *is specific: "I like the sandwiches" refers to particular sandwiches, not to sandwiches in general.
In French, the *definite article *can be generic: "Je n'aime pas les sandwichs" can mean "I don't like sandwiches (in general)".
In Spanish, the *definite article *can be generic: "No me gustan los bocadillos" can mean "I don't like sandwiches (in general)".
French is more similar to Spanish.

English has long *vowels* and short vowels.
French *vowels *are all the same length.
Spanish *vowels *are all the same length.
French is more similar to Spanish.

English tends towards stress-*timing*.
French tends towards syllable-*timing*.
Spanish tends towards syllable-*timing*.
French is more similar to Spanish.

English possesses *phrasal verbs* (Dutch and German possess something similar).
French does not possess *phrasal verbs*.
Spanish does not possess *phrasal verbs*.
French is more similar to Spanish. 

English /p/ and /t/ are aspirated.
French /p/ and /t/ are unaspirated.
Spanish /p/ and /t/ are unaspirated.
French is more similar to Spanish.

The English verb requires a subject. "She is my mother" is correct. "Is my mother" is not correct if it is intended as an affirmative declaration.
The French verb requires a subject. "C'est ma mère" is correct. "Est ma mère" is not correct.
The Spanish verb does not always require a subject. "Es mi madre" is correct.
French is more similar to English.


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## mugibil

sound shift said:


> French *vowels *are all the same length.


That's not exactly true. French vowels can be short or long, but since it's almost entirely allophonic, foreign learners aren't usually taught that. People are more commonly taught the differences between open and closed vowels, which are also often, but not always allophonic and correspond to the English short vs long or lax vs tense distinction, but have no parallel in Spanish. See French phonology - Wikipedia


sound shift said:


> English tends towards stress-timing.
> French tends towards syllable-timing. Spanis tends towards syllable-timing


True, but French shows historical evidence of stress timing - huge vowel reductions and elisions, while Spanish is more conservative. In terms of preservation of vowels, French is to Spanish as English or German are to Swedish or Icelandic: everything after stress has been either turned into schwa or deleted. In the same way, French orthography has evidence of huge amounts of diphtongs arising in stressed syllables, similar to English; Spanish has very little of that (although there is some). I already mentioned the lax/tense distinction. All in all, I'd say French looks like a language that originally looked like Spanish, then passed through an English-like phase, and finally went back to a Spanish-like phase while preserving the results of the English-like one.


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## Cynical

In terms of grammar, vocabulary etc (also provide some examples, like simple phrases, sentances)?

I hear native English speakers saying Spanish is much easier to them then French. But would a native Spanish speaker have a better advantage learning English or French much easier?


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## WannaBFluent

Spanish is for sure, closer to French than English. Its conjugation is closer to French than English, because in English the verb does not change in accordance with the person (except for 'it/he/she').

Spanish : el problema es que no puedo correr.
French : le problème est que je ne peux pas courrir.
English : the problem is that I can not run.


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## Dead Pictures

Spanish and French are closer. English is somewhat removed from them being a Germanic language. 


dormir-dormir sleep 

nadar-nager swim 

amigo-ami friend 

culo-cul ass

ayudarme-aidez-moi help me

fuego-feu fire

piscina-piscine pool

amor-amour love

me fui a la playa- 
je suis allé à la plage, 
I went to the beach(I think, something like that..someone correct me?)
Quiero irme a dormir-
Je veux aller dormir, I want to go to sleep

Spanish: La suavidad de su piel es como una caricia del viento
French: La douceur de ta peau est comme une caresse du vent
English: The softness of your skin is like a caress of the wind 

They also have the same sentence structure, in terms of certain adjectives before a noun or after. they also make things plural the same way (with agreement endings) and direct and indirect objects are written the same way.
several examples, those are just off the top of my head.


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## lingpil

Cynical said:


> I hear native English speakers saying Spanish is much easier to them then French.


I'm not sure about that. I know about this urban legend also from German speakers pretending it, but the only one thing in Spanish that is easier to both is the pronounciation. The system of time tenses is definitely more complicated in Spanish.


Cynical said:


> But would a native Spanish speaker have a better advantage learning English or French much easier?


In terms of French it's of course quite easy for a native Spanish speaker to understand the basic grammar rules, since both languages are from the Romance family. Also the vocabulary is at least partially related as my two predecessors stated above.
If we talk about English, a Spanish speaker might have advantages compared to a native Japanese speaker, but since English is a Germanic language, you can learn it at the beginning much better if you already speak another Germanic language (German, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, etc.).


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## francisgranada

Compare the following:

Spanish:
_Padre nuestro que estás en los cielos, santificado sea tu nombre. Venga tu Reino, sea hecha tu voluntad, como en el cielo así en la tierra. Danos hoy el nuestro pan de cada día, y perdónanos nuestras deudas, como nosotros perdonamos a nuestros deudores. Y no nos metas en tentación, más líbranos del mal._

French:
_Notre Père, qui es aux cieux, que ton nom soit sanctifié, que ton règne vienne, que ta volonté soit faite sur la terre comme au ciel. Donne-nous aujourdhui notre pain de ce jour et pardonne-nous nos offences comme nous pardonnons aussi à ceux qui nous ont offensés. Et ne nous soumets pas à la tentation, mais délivre-nous du mal. _

English:
_Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread,and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. _

P.S. Even though the Spanish and the French translations and the word order differ in some expressions, they can be intuitively mutually understood, e.g.  "..._à ceux qui nous ont offensés_"  could be in Spanish  "..._ a los que nos han ofendido_" etc... while in the English version only the words _trespass_, _temptation_ and _deliver_ (_traspaso_, _tentación_ and _deliberar_) could be "guessed" by a Spaniard.


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## francisgranada

Dead Pictures said:


> ...Spanish: La suavidad de *t*u piel es como una caricia del viento
> French: La douceur de ta peau est comme une caresse du vent ...


Even more, _suavidad _and _douceur, _though different words, they can be mutually understood: see the French _suavité_ and Spanish _dulzura_.


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## vince

In terms of spelling, French words look more like English words than Spanish words do, since a large portion of English vocabulary comes directly from French. However Spanish is a lot more regular in spelling and grammar than French, which means English speakers, or anyone else for that matter, don't need to memorize as much. Therefore Spanish is easier, but neither is very close to English because they're Romance languages, while English is Germanic, although less inflected than other Germanic languages.


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