FRENCH VS. SPANISH: Mixing Up My Two Second Languages

[@simplypositive6690]

Haha I understand your struggles. I started to learn Spanish when I was 11 and when I was 16, I started to learn Italian as well. And even though I was learning Spanish first, I started to forget it and replace it with Italian. And in February, I wanted to go back to my Italian to go to Italy and I tought it'd be easy, but the only things that came up in my head were Spanish^^

[@AndreaHeckler]

It always seems to be the language you need the least in the moment that springs to your mind 😂

[@yingyizhou3801]

I once leart French and Spanish at the same time in my junior year at university. Now my French is getting better and better because I keep teaching myself it despite leavinng university, but for Spanish I have forgotten a lot. I agree with you practice is very important and by watching many youtube contents related to French, we can pick up many new vocabulary!

[@Glockzillafiresox]

So much yes in this video! Primarily spoke Spanish growing up then English in school and now learning French. Needless to say, the struggle is real 🤦🏽‍♂️

[@ineb4475]

Hello!!!!!! Un in spanish and une sound different though. If you pronounce "une" right it sounds pretty different. Its a sound we dont have in spanish; the phonetic sound "y"

[@ABiteBetterbyEva]

Wasn't conciously aware of the lo thing! Thanks! I learned something :D

[@AndreaHeckler]

😃 I discovered it by repeatedly making that mistake in Duolingo hahaha

[@annakatharina_]

I'm from Germany, so German is obviously my first language, but I consider myself pretty much fluent in English too. (I've been learning it in school for years and I read/watch a lot of stuff in English.) My third language is Spanish which I've been learning for seven years at this point - and while I can express myself in it, it's still this typical "school Spanish" and I'd love to get better at it. I also started learning some French this year, but I'm teaching it to myself with Duolingo and KZbin, so it's a slow progress. I'm thinking about studying either Spanish or French at university and/or going abroad as an AuPair since I'm sure that would help me a) become more or less fluent in Spanish or b) understand French and be able to respond in it. :D

[@user-wj8hc2yu1z]

You’re funny! Interesting topic, I speak some Spanish and it’s interesting to see how the two Romance languages compare

[@uneviefrallemande]

I learn Spanish too and can fully relate to what you are saying. Next year I'll start Italian, the confusion will get even worse then ;)

[@AndreaHeckler]

Ooo sounds fun... Good luck! 😆

[@ouramoloss]

I can confirm, I learned Spanish at school and I have a decent level, now I'm starting to learn Italian full time on Duolingo before going back to advanced Spanish. Because I'm learning Italian full time, I really lost a lot of my Spanish... I can still understand it fine, but speaking has become soooo hard since I always want to put the Italian word which is fresher in my memory. I hope that once I have a good level in those languages I'll be able to differentiate them better in my brain

[@Firetech2004]

4:35 I had trouble learning English because of this. In my native language (Tamil) just like Spanish and French and Kannada, adjectives come after the pronoun but in English it’s the opposite. So this took me time to get it right in English. But now I naturally put adjectives before noun in English and at the same time naturally put them later in French Spanish Kannada and tamil

[@dannydanny9875]

Welcome Back Andrea

[@sorenmpeterson]

Loved this! I took Swedish in college and then studied abroad in Ecuador. I might have confused a few things between the two languages (definitely longed for the simplicity of Swedish verb conjugations!), but what I really remember is speaking Spanish with a slight Swedish accent-fortunately that went away fairly quickly. 🇺🇸🇸🇪🇪🇨

[@AndreaHeckler]

Yes, accents are a strange thing too! I felt like I had a Spanish accent in French for the longest time, but now I suspect it's gone the other way 😅

[@crystaloona]

I can relate quite a bit! I'm French, fluent in English and have tried to learn Spanish from age 12 to age 23. And I still can't talk in Spanish because my brain can't cope with the similarities between my native language and Spanish. I tried once to learn Italian too and it was so much harder than I thought it would be, only because of the similarities between Spanish, Italian and French. So now I focus on non-romance languages, it's actually way easier to learn completely different languages (like Korean). But I never had a good Spanish teacher who would acknowledge these difficulties and try to teach how to remember those things. That was very annoying as a struggling Spanish student. I took a break of two years during my Spanish studies, and when I came back to it, I went from having 16/20 in the baccalaureate exam to having less than 10/20 in most exams, just because my brain hadn't had to deal with Spanish for two years and forgot everything. I never gained back my knowledge...

[@SarahNorris]

As someone who's studying German and Italian, this is so interesting to watch and pretty relatable (I must confess that in one of my first uni assignments after having just started learning Italian, I somehow accidentally said an Italian word in a German assignment as I had been so intensively learning Italian 🤦🏻‍♀️)! In Italian I think there are also technically two words for 'to be': 'stare' and 'essere', although in my experience you do use 'essere' in most cases I think, but I'm still trying to get to grips with that! Also I'm pretty sure that in Italian you can say either "lo voglio dire" or "voglio dirlo" for direct objects with a modal verb and another verb so seeing how it's the same kind of idea in Spanish is pretty cool!

[@AndreaHeckler]

So interesting to see how Italian relates to French and Spanish in different ways! 🤩

[@personalbrandsynergy]

Giiiiirrrl you’re amazing for learning and becoming fluent in French. Just listening to this is mind boggling 🤪🤪🤪 BRAVO for attempting this!

[@zemirukaiba]

i don't get why non italian people say bravo, an italian word, to a girl lol it's brava the feminine version. BRAVA 😁

[@DrWoofOfficial]

@@zemirukaiba cuz we are using it the english way

[@KatrinaEames]

German and Spanish are my second languages and I definitely have a lot of the same experiences.

[@AdemA8254]

Hello, I am happy to watch your fun videos. I encourage you ..👌

[@Pau-ih4cm]

I just come here because I want to practice my "english listening" and I realice that... Pronuncias bien el Español 👍

[@beckyaa100]

This video was really interesting! I studied Spanish and French in school and the vocabulary has always come quite easily to me. I started learning German recently and I'm finding it so much more difficult! The words just don't seem to stick in my brain as well! But maybe it's as you say about learning languages in school - vocab is drilled into you more! Hopefully the German will start to click soon!

[@pierreabbat6157]

Some verbs are irregular in French but not Spanish, or vice versa. So I may say "dube, mise, poní" instead of "debí, metí, puse", even though that tense in French is not conversational and I learned it in school. Also, "pondre" in French is used only of eggs, while "meter" means specifically "put into", the other verb being the usual "put" in each language. I used to get "vendrá" and "venderá" mixed up. French "viendra" is Spanish "vendrá"; French "vendra" is Spanish "venderá". Using "software" in Spanish irritates me. I say "logicial". I also say "corriel" for email and "robinete" for faucet. I once told someone I buy henna from a vepecista. The acronym VPC makes equally good sense in both languages. Many words have different genders in the two languages. La sal en el mar es más que en la sangre, mas le sel dans la mer est plus que dans le sang. Also second declension feminines turn masculine in Spanish (p.ej. el método), but stay feminine in French. Then there are -ma (fr: -me) and -sis (fr: -se) exceptions like "la diadema" and "el análisis" that bug me. I read the NT in Greek, so I know which is which and that "la paloma" isn't one. Once I was talking in Spanish at full speed and suddenly stopped. The notion of subjunctive and some common irregular verb (I think it was "hacer") came together and produced a blank. My native languages are English, French, and Spanish, though Spanish I picked up hearing my mother on the phone, as my father didn't speak it. I had lots of books in French.

[@stephanobarbosa5805]

Bon dia, quantes llengües llatines parles? Saps parlar una altra llengua germànica?

[@clarysage1298]

are we the same person? lol just found your channel through your cat tips because i'm adopting soon, but i also speak spanish and french (currently studying korean) and will be moving to france in a few years for my graduate degree! subscribing for sure

[@djbslectures]

Very interesting and helpful. I've spoken French for years but am just learning Spanish. I hadn't noticed the adverb issue yet, do you have example sentences where it's different between the two?

[@sarumanork-orphanage5612]

In Germany the French teachers would usually also teach Spanish. You'd know they're coming from a Spanish class if they answered your questions with 'si' witout even noticing ^^ And that's a bit trippy in the beginning, before you realise that, because 'si' exists as an affirmation, after somebody negated something: So if someone asked ---- "est-ce-qu tu as l'heure" (do you have the time?) ----- you answer "oui, il est ..." (yes, and you give them the time) If they asked ---- "est-ce que tu n'as pas l'heure?" (you don't happen to have the time?) ----- you answer "si, il est..." (yes I do, it is....) So there's a difference in 'yes', depending on if you're insisting after a negation, or just answering an open question. Except I never negated anything, I was just asking openly, and my teacher comes out with 'si'? What is ---- ohhhh Spanish classes XDD And we would have the same problem as soon as we started Spanish ourselves XDDD

[@jasonschuchardt7624]

I studied Spanish in school for 14 years. I'm not sure I would say I was fluent, because we didn't get enough speaking or listening practice, but I was a high intermediate level reader and writer. After that, in college, I studied Japanese. My spoken Spanish instantly dropped several levels. I don't know for sure what it is, but I tend to think it's the phonological similarities between the two languages. Japanese words just sound like they fit into Spanish sentences, so every so often I'll say a Japanese conjunction or add a Japanese sentence ending particle to a Spanish sentence. It also sort of messes with my thought process for Spanish, because I'm now more used to forming sentences in Japanese. It's a mess, but I'm going to give it a little while still before going back and trying to sort it out, since I think it'll go better if my Japanese is at a higher level. I also recently started learning Mandarin, so I've also got to wait on that to get to an intermediate level before going back to Spanish, but so far not much of an issue there with Japanese or Spanish.

[@sammyytube5999]

So true the struggles of switching off one language to learn another. I'm an american but used to be part of a french community 4 years ago. Particularly you would think that since I had not been speaking nor studying french since my exit from that community, that I would be able to separate or just not recall so much of what used to be regular to me. Absolutely not. The french rules and vocabulary keeps getting in way of learning spanish and it is so darn frustrating. When I did my run with chinese, it was no problem to turn off french on something so different. But in languages with english cognates, forget it. Any ways, I am getting better a separating the two. And I think it is b/c I have allowed myself to embrace the french recalls just for a little while. I found some youtube videos with french and spanish phrases. Taking a break from the focus of grammar rules and learning commonly used phrases helps me to feel that I am making more progress. And now when I do take couple of days out of the week to concentrate only on Spanish, the french recalls are not a bothersome and sometimes does not come up at all. So now I feel that I will make the progress that I want in spanish within a year.

[@MahaloLuz]

5:33 hmmm.. interesting... I'vce cme across this while reading in spanish and now I finally know what was all about hahah thanks !!!

[@maximilianoadl]

Spanish is my mother language. I am fluent in English, even though I am still learning it. I am learning Português, Français and Svenska. I have a different level of reading and talking skills in each one. I mix concepts and words from one language to another all the time. I share your struggling.

[@kheirabadiamin8735]

I totally understand what you say. I know Italian and Spanish and French. When I speak in spanish my words become a mixtures of all these three languages without realizing that. But it is very funny in my opinion.

[@d.j7370]

Heyy quick question ! Is it ok to learn a language using more than one language to learn it? I plan on learning italian using Portuguese ( recent language I learned) but there are a few sources, so I can use English too, a combo of both languages ?

[@bunnies8773]

I do with French. I use English and Spanish to learn them since they're both my native languages, but using the Romance language to learn French was much more helpful since the grammar and structure more or less transfers well from Spanish. It should be similar with Italian and Portuguese.

[@d.j7370]

Bunnies thank you so much for responding I was just curious if it was going to make it more confusing !

[@AndreaHeckler]

Yes to what Bunnies said! 😊 I think it depends on the similarities between the languages, as well as your own comfort level in the base language(s) you use. Let me know how it goes for you!

[@d.j7370]

Andrea Heckler thankkk youuuu

[@moisepicard3417]

🇫🇷🇭🇹 FIERTÉ FRANÇAISE

[@sa21g22g23]

I like learning and understand the beautiful french and english grammar and french and english vocabulary , but my native language is spanish

[@Firetech2004]

I understand your struggles. I know Tamil and Kannada (Indian languages) ever since I was born (idk when 😂) Spanish was my first language in play school, so I learnt Spanish before English. During my school days, I had English as first language Spanish as second language till 5th grade, Hindi as third language till 8th grade (since I’m icse, I have 3 languages till 8th, for 9th and 10th only 2). I switched to Kannada at 6th grade since I was always getting low marks in English due to Spanish English confusion. Though I was getting good marks in Spanish, my parents decided it would be best if I learn English fluently since it’s very much important. By 6th grade, I was already fluent in Tamil Spanish Kannada and Hindi. English was the only language I wasn’t fluent in. During 8th grade, I found this app called duo lingo which helped me learn English through Spanish. I was somewhat better after 6 months. Later, I started to learn French using duo lingo. 3 years have passed, je parlèr français à peu! I’m trying to break away from Spain and it’s language to speak English fluently, but no matter what I do I’m unable to forget Spanish. I’m addicted to Spanish to such an extent, I can’t even think in English! I think of what to write in Spanish and then I’m translating them in English to write this comment. Years of speaking Spanish has taken a toll on mi. I also want to forget Kannada Tamil and Hindi since they’re native languages and I won’t need them but it’s just not possible. Even though I rarely speak Kannada I’m still able to read Kannada sign boards and comprehend them without any issue. Same goes to Hindi too. I’m multilingual!

[@JosephCoenMason]

Toda una mezcla en idiomas! Hay algunas similitudes entre los dos, no es así? ...Un mélange de langues! Il y a des similitudes entre les deux, n'est-ce pas? ...Quite a mix in Languages! There are similarities between the two, aren't there? ;D Haha ...Currently practicing Español myself! It's like clockwork, learning a new language is! ^^

[@turkeyboy327xd8]

I understand what you mean with the un/una and un/une. Je suis louisinais et ici c'est très commun prononcer "un" comme "ahn." Et avec "une" on dit "ahne." Alors, quand je parle l'espagnol, je le prononce comme je le dis dans français. Tal vez, no está bien pero no me importa jaja. Great video btw😊

[@turkeyboy327xd8]

I made a mistake here. I said "ahne" but we pronounce it the same as you normally would in french "une" (with long oo sound). Ou

[@colombiran1968]

thanks for sharing your experiences... i am in the same boat but even english is not my native language..... and now in french and spanish i mix up the genders and subjunctives mode and conditional forms !!!! i would love it if you teach spanish in french in your channel or teach french in spanish

[@jml7916]

Yes, French is a nice simple SVO language…. Voulez-vous le lui donner? Conjugated verb, subject, object (direct), object (indirect), verb infinitive. Facepalm.

[@carloseduardovegaperez7534]

I OFTEN MIX FRENCH AND ENGLISH TOO. CAUSE I SPEAK SPANISH AS FIRST LANGUAGE.

[@nixylynx4510]

Your problems with mixing up Spanish and French may stem from the situation that you have been "forced" to learn French (a beautiful language !) and have left Spanish (another beautiful language !) in the back of your brain. I am a Spanish speaker, so I don't have many problems with mixing Spanish and French. But I certainly have problems building sentences in English (a super language !). So, well, we all do mistakes . I like your videos a lot, just for facing the problems of the transliterality of your languages! Keep on Andrea !

[@andimusicjunkie3990]

As a German I can't see any phonetic similarity between the Spanish "un" and the French "une" because the French "u" sounds exactly like the German "ü". It's very interesting that it sounds similar to English native speakers.

[@sarumanork-orphanage5612]

French "être" is very closely linked to both "ser" y "estar" être - estar - (estar) -------------------------------------------------------------------- je suis - yo soy - (ser) tu es - tu estas - (estar) il est - el esta - (estar) nous sommes - nosotros somos - (ser) vous êtes - vosotros estais - (estar) ils sont - ellos son - (ser) So this confusion is only natural

[@GavStaR79]

Je suis d'accord avec vous. Je voulais appendre l'espagnol dans le même temps de mes études en francais.....mais j'était trop confus entre les deux langues......Elles sont trop proche....du coup.....je suis arrêté a étudier l'espagnol. Dommage.

[@MaestroSangurasu]

Je suis français j'ai eu le même problème avec l'italien et l'espagnol mais je pense qu'avec le temps ça peut aller Concernant l'espagnol et le français je sais que sont des langues similaires mais il y a une différence quand même

[@eefaaf]

If you mix Castilian and French, Catalan and French is even worse :)

[@edwinsparda7622]

Both are Latin Languages so it's easy to mix it up sometimes. I'll probably piss off alot of Italians but French is the best Latin Language.

[@moisepicard3417]

+Edwin Sparda Why is French the best "Latin" language?

[@MaestroSangurasu]

Le français et et l'espagnol sont similaires mais il y a une différence je pense que si tu avais pris l'italien et l'espagnol ça aurait été encore beaucoup plus compliqué haha

[@Firetech2004]

Her - learnt only 3 languages at 22 Me, only 16 - fluent in Kannada, Tamil, Hindi (Indian languages) English, Spanish and learning French - wtf I don’t know French as Fluent as her!

[@tiadeets]

I have a problem with my German and my Swedish that you haven't mentioned in your video. I learned German for 8 years before I started learning Swedish and I was at the cusp of being fluent when I stopped. I moved to Sweden and started learning Swedish and I'm now fluent in Swedish, but I have had to stop German completely because I mix both languages in my head. Because the grammar is sort of similar and a lot of the vocabulary is (and also isn't) similar, my brain just puts them in the same spot. It's a lot of the small words like I'll say "och" when I mean "und". I'll forget whether "weniger" is German or Swedish and forget the word "mindre" (which is the Swedish word). I want to get my German back on track, but I don't feel confident enough in Swedish yet to risk mixing them and I'm annoyed. (And I'm French and speaks English and I haven't had a problem with either of those, it's just Swedish and German)

[@Ricky_Evans1611]

Cry me a river. I'd kill to be at your levels of French/Spanish comprehension 🤣

[@jackcheung4301]

Why doesn’t your husband never show up in your videos??? Just curious.

[@AndreaHeckler]

Because he doesn't want to 😊

[@jackcheung4301]

Andrea Heckler don’t be shy lol btw I really wish to live in France and Switzerland sigh the world has been a mess anyway.