| A friend told me recently her goal in life is to learn | | | | languages. Similarly, the lexical similarity between |
| all the major romance languages, namely French, | | | | Spanish and French/Italian is around 80% and with |
| Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and Romanian. This | | | | Romanian, 60%. Obviously, a solid grounding in the |
| sounds like a great goal to me. Just imagine being | | | | Spanish language will give learners of the other |
| able to travel anywhere in Latin America and large | | | | romance languages a huge head start. |
| swaths of Europe, being able to speak to the | | | | Vocabulary isn't the only attribute romance |
| locals in their native tongue and really getting to | | | | languages have in common: they also share many |
| know the culture! Fortunately for her, she already | | | | grammatical similarities. The subjective tense in |
| speaks Spanish. | | | | French works much the same as in Spanish, and |
| Every romance language shares a common trait: | | | | Italian verb tenses are conjugated in much the |
| they are descendants of Latin. Even today, the | | | | same way as in other romance languages. Since |
| romance languages have far more similarities with | | | | these two characteristics are often the most |
| each other than they have differences, most | | | | difficult for speakers of English to learn, mastering |
| notably vocabulary. About 85% of the vocabulary | | | | them in Spanish will give you a leg up on the |
| between Spanish and Portuguese, for example, | | | | competition learning them in say French or |
| are similar enough to be mutually intelligible in both | | | | Catalan. |