[Bad Hussar]

Any native English speakers out there who have learned both these languages as adults? If so, what are your thoughts on which should be attempted first?

I have studied French in a group setting, which wasn't all that helpful, and can manage a few phrases in both languages, but would be starting pretty much near the beginning for both.

Am interested in peoples views because Spanish is clearly the easier one to learn for an English native speaker, but I don't know whether this makes it the best candidate to approach first, or whether it just doesn't matter.

Cannot move to either a French or Spanish speaking country right now, but could have access to native speakers prepared to act as tutors, in person and via internet.

[HiFlo]

choose which you you feel is more useful.

A lot more countries speak spanish than french (20 or so spanish speaking countries vs 1 France). Spanish will open more doors.

[Technics]

Hussar,

If you're approaching it from a gaming stand-point, I guess it depends a bit on your preference for women, but I believe the answer still is almost always going to be Spanish.

It's easier, more sexy women, more native speakers, more total speakers, and even more useful for business.

That said, I have written previously that I believe french is underrated as it gives access to such a variety of women: 1) White french, swiss, and belgian women, 2) Bootyful francophone west africans, 3) Lebanese girls (best in the middle-east, imo), and 4) North African maghrebs who can be fantastic as well.

I would say get a good grasp on Spanish first, then start french as well.

Re: HiFlo's comment, he's totally off. I don't know where he's basing his comment that only 1 country speaks french. It's more like 20+.

[Bad Hussar]

Mmm, Spanish is definitely spoken in more countries I'm likely to visit than French, so maybe that is the better one.

Was just wondering whether there's any, I don't know, technical reason to learn one before the other if your intention is ultimately to learn both. I think people have opinions regarding which of Portuguese or Spanish is best to study first for example.

But to be honest it's probably best just to choose one and get started anyway.

Technics:
Maybe a stupid question, but how prevalent is French in Lebanon? Does almost everyone there speak it? A lot of Lebanese chicks are very cute, and they seem to really be making something of their country after the devastating wars.

[scotian]

I speak both, but still have a ways to go with the Spanish and I would recommend Spanish for both ease of learning and for travel purposes.

[el mechanico]

(07-18-2012 12:59 PM)scotian Wrote:  

I speak both, but still have a ways to go with the Spanish and I would recommend Spanish for both ease of learning and for travel purposes.

As someone who's met me Scotian what should be my plan of attack with Spanish? I can't find anything that can keep me motivated

[johnwu]

I learned French first and I am in the process of learning Spanish.

Both languages are extremely easy to learn (compared to other ones), however Spanish is for SURE way way way easier than French.

Like everyone else said, it all depends on what you are looking for. It also should depend on what is most viable for you. Just because there are more Spanish speaking countries doesn't mean you automatically disqualify French, especially if you live closer to the French speaking regions.


But assuming that spanish speaking regions and french are both equally far from you, I would go with Spanish first.
You can pick it up extremely fast, and there are a ton more places where you can use it.

Don't worry about mixing up languages once you master Spanish and start learning French, that won't happen, your brain won't let it happen. (What DOES happen is if you don't know a certain word while you are speaking in french, but you are proficient in spanish, you might just say the word in Spanish)

Motivation: Business.

Your primary purpose for learning a language should be business. Women should always be a secondary objective.
So if you look at it from that perspective, every single minute you spend learning your language is slowly accumulating you MONEY (and pussy if you are one of those guys who puts women first). Every sentence you read is adding to your value.
This should be your outlook on ANY learning. When I see books, I see money. Of course you have to have some type of direction, but the general idea is knowledge utilized in a directed manner is power and money.

If you are motivated to improve and learn things in other fields, languages should be no different. In fact learning languages should provide you even more motivation because it can open up infinity more connections than other things you might be studying.

If that doesn't motivate you, force yourself to learn it. Give one of your best friends 30% of your networth, in cash, totally hand it over to them, or whatever is extremely valuable to them. They check up on to you make sure you're progressing. IF you have not reached the agreed upon advancement point at each time interval, they REMOVE/KEEP a previously agreed upon portion of your money/items, which they get to keep for GOOD. This works..... for anything you need to accomplish.

Anything can be done if you put your mind to it.

If you STILL can't accomplish it, after trying different things I listed, you are a waste of space and should remove yourself from society as the only useful thing you can do is to remove yourself from the human gene pool.
Get up off your ass and actually accomplish something.

[Moma]

El mechanic, are you fluent in Greek?

[el mechanico]

(07-18-2012 03:05 PM)Moma Wrote:  

El mechanic, are you fluent in Greek?

Greeklish I speak which is a mix.

Refrigerator = iceboxi

Shit like that. They actually hate it in Greece

[YoungGunner]

Spanish

[Technics]

(07-18-2012 12:51 PM)Bad Hussar Wrote:  

Mmm, Spanish is definitely spoken in more countries I'm likely to visit than French, so maybe that is the better one.

Was just wondering whether there's any, I don't know, technical reason to learn one before the other if your intention is ultimately to learn both. I think people have opinions regarding which of Portuguese or Spanish is best to study first for example.

But to be honest it's probably best just to choose one and get started anyway.

Technics:
Maybe a stupid question, but how prevalent is French in Lebanon? Does almost everyone there speak it? A lot of Lebanese chicks are very cute, and they seem to really be making something of their country after the devastating wars.

Personal experience: I can't recall having personally met a girl from Lebanon who didn't speak french.

However, my lebanese friends tell me that maybe slightly over 50% of people in Lebanon speak french regularly, and even more have some knowledge of it. More exact numbers can probably be found online.

[Neo]

Business or women hands down Spanish wins. Many more countries speak Spanish, and even in the states it gives you an in with some girls(mostly puerto rican girls around where I am)

[R Smoov]

Spanish my friend, you'll thank me later.

I had taken 2 years of Spanish in high-school and felt that it was easy to catch on to.

When I learned Basic French in college it became a lot more complicated. For instance, the vocabulary in French will be more of a pain in the ass because they have English cognates just like Spanish, but they will be spelled differently. Basically, cognates are the same word just in a different language. For example banana in English is la banana in Spanish. However banana is spelled banane in French. It might seem like a minor change, but it still can be annoying and confusing for beginners.

You know what to do amigo.

[johnw28]

Spanish first as you have a lot more oportunities to use it in the world. Than french. For that matter italian would be a better choice than french to learn. It is a nicer sounding language and chicks dig italian.

[Aliblahba]

I spoke 10 words in French one time and suddenly had the urge to sit pee. Start with Spanish and if you're sweating ME chicks grab some Arabic as well.

[Cookie]

I would recommend Spanish first. I'm actually learning a little bit of French (a very little bit), in case I ever want to visit Africa or Haiti. But I'd go for learning Spanish first, you'll get (and pardon the pun) more bang for your buck when traveling.

[finton_the_toole]

(07-18-2012 12:38 PM)HiFlo Wrote:  

choose which you you feel is more useful.

A lot more countries speak spanish than french (20 or so spanish speaking countries vs 1 France). Spanish will open more doors.

Huh? France, Belgium, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Canada, French Guyana, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, New Caledonia, Reunion, Martinique, Gaudeloupe, Benin, Mali, Burkina Faso, Congo (both of them), Ivory Coast, Haiti, Equatorial Guinea, Senegal, Andorra... and others.

But yeah, the OP should probably start with Spanish, based on the info he's given here.

[Sketness]

Id always go with Spanish, its a easy language to learn and also once you learn you can branch of into other languages such as Portuguese, Italian. You will use spanish more often in North, Central and South America, so in learning spanish you can easily travel on whole side of the plant with ease.

[Sourcecode]

It it means that much to you
Just learn enough french to make dumb hoes think you can actually speak french.
aka..
a couple phrases.
Then memorize a paragraph in french...if you ever need to speak french.. just pulll out random words from this paragraph and string them together.

No bitch will call you out cause they don't know what your saying.
I do the same with russian(even though my fake russian sounds lke polish to actually russians)

Moral of the story.
Learn Spanish

[Tresor]

I don't see why Spanish would be easier than French.

The grammar of the two languages is basically the same.

And English shares more vocabulary and idioms with French.

Learn Spanish first though.

[Bad Hussar]

OK. Spanish it is then. My thing with French is that I want to learn it as well as Spanish since I'm a native English speaker and being able to speak English, Spanish and French well means you can get by almost everywhere outside of Asia and the Middle East.

@Johnwu:
Ha. Not that I'd actually do it, but you're right. Having 1/3 of my assets on the line would motivate me to learn freakin anything, at breakneck speed. I do speak two languages well, and have minimal French and more minimal Spanish, so I'm not completely useless when it comes to languages, but doing it properly does require quite a lot of motivation.

[Technics]

(07-19-2012 01:17 PM)Bad Hussar Wrote:  

OK. Spanish it is then. My thing with French is that I want to learn it as well as Spanish since I'm a native English speaker and being able to speak English, Spanish and French well means you can get by almost everywhere outside of Asia and the Middle East.

@Johnwu:
Ha. Not that I'd actually do it, but you're right. Having 1/3 of my assets on the line would motivate me to learn freakin anything, at breakneck speed. I do speak two languages well, and have minimal French and more minimal Spanish, so I'm not completely useless when it comes to languages, but doing it properly does require quite a lot of motivation.

What are your two languages besides english?

[Bad Hussar]

(07-19-2012 01:24 PM)Technics Wrote:  

(07-19-2012 01:17 PM)Bad Hussar Wrote:  

OK. Spanish it is then. My thing with French is that I want to learn it as well as Spanish since I'm a native English speaker and being able to speak English, Spanish and French well means you can get by almost everywhere outside of Asia and the Middle East.

@Johnwu:
Ha. Not that I'd actually do it, but you're right. Having 1/3 of my assets on the line would motivate me to learn freakin anything, at breakneck speed. I do speak two languages well, and have minimal French and more minimal Spanish, so I'm not completely useless when it comes to languages, but doing it properly does require quite a lot of motivation.

What are your two languages besides english?

I meant two languages including English.

The other is Afrikaans (variant of Dutch spoken in South Africa).

[UgSlayer]

(07-18-2012 01:11 PM)el mechanico Wrote:  

(07-18-2012 12:59 PM)scotian Wrote:  

I speak both, but still have a ways to go with the Spanish and I would recommend Spanish for both ease of learning and for travel purposes.

As someone who's met me Scotian what should be my plan of attack with Spanish? I can't find anything that can keep me motivated

Haven't met you, but I recommend classes at your local community college. Cheap and there will probably be hot chicks in your class.

[UgSlayer]

(07-19-2012 01:50 PM)Bad Hussar Wrote:  

(07-19-2012 01:24 PM)Technics Wrote:  

(07-19-2012 01:17 PM)Bad Hussar Wrote:  

OK. Spanish it is then. My thing with French is that I want to learn it as well as Spanish since I'm a native English speaker and being able to speak English, Spanish and French well means you can get by almost everywhere outside of Asia and the Middle East.

@Johnwu:
Ha. Not that I'd actually do it, but you're right. Having 1/3 of my assets on the line would motivate me to learn freakin anything, at breakneck speed. I do speak two languages well, and have minimal French and more minimal Spanish, so I'm not completely useless when it comes to languages, but doing it properly does require quite a lot of motivation.

What are your two languages besides english?

I meant two languages including English.

The other is Afrikaans (variant of Dutch spoken in South Africa).

The French speaking African nations are right by. That would be the only reason I'd choose French. If you lived closer to South America, I would choose Spanish hands down, as it is easier and very close to Portuguese.