[joehoya]

One of the nice things about having a Spanish instructor who also speaks French is that she can give you a heads up on how to exploit the similarities between French and Spanish to your advantage, and can also tell you where most folks who speak French trip up when learning Spanish.

In my own case, French was my second language, and I got reasonably proficient at it (enough to travel around Paris for extended periods, without having to speak English to anyone other than other tourists), When I decided to learn Spanish, my French kept invading my attempts at Spanish speech. Eventually, my focus was so heavily on Spanish (I almost never use French, other than to talk to the occasional Haitian girl in the DR) that the Spanish completely took over.

I recently had an experience where a French tourist was staying at my hotel in Costa Rica, and it was extremely difficult to talk to him because my Spanish kept invading. I think that had I continued to maintain my French (by watching French movies, reading French newspapers, and listening to French music) while focusing on Spanish, my Spanish development would have been a little slower, but in the end I would have retained my French proficiency.

As it stands now, I am going to refresh my French in the Fall.