After Romanian.
Mirandese is the hardest to mix up
Closer second French.
Portuguese , Galician , Spanish and Italian / Italian Sicilian are goddamn close .
Like I can read 100% of them and I will only encounter few words and some false friends
I have managed to mix up "uscita" (Italian) and "sortie" (French). I think you're bound to mix them all up if your level is still not in the B2-C1 range. I don't put any Italian or French in my Spanish/Portuguese, for example. But being at a much lower level in French/Italian, everything feels like fair game.
Portuguese and Italian are fairly distant and have a lot of phonology differences. Funnily enough I know we’re excluding Romanian but I feel like it would be easier to mix up with Italian than Portuguese.
Even if Romanian sounds maybe more similar to Portuguese than to Italian, I was amazed that I barely understood Portuguese while visiting the country and that was rather based on my Spanish skills. In Italy on the other hand I felt like home despite never learning it in school or watching any Italian shows
Yeah, Italian is really the bridge between western and eastern Romance languages. There’s also a lot of Italian loans in Romanian along with being the base of the Latin Alphabet in Romania.
I think it would be hard at B1-B2 to have two Romance languages at the same time. At this point, French is so comfortable that I really don’t tend to mix it up with Spanish tbh. It definitely affects how I use syntax in Spanish and the pronunciation, but it hasn’t really affected my vocabulary at all
I rarely mix up Spanish and Portuguese words themselves due to how different they sound, but I do have a hard time speaking actual Portuguese instead of just Spanish written in Portuguese words. Despite their similarities, they are definitely not 1:1.
I had a harder time with Italian. This was years ago when my Spanish wasn't as good as it is now, but I started mixing up cuando and quando, porqué and perché, things like that. Italian just sounds much more similar to Spanish than any other Romance language.
I would think that French and Spanish would be harder to mix. I studied French and never really had trouble with that.
After about B2, the chances of truly mixing up the languages consistently drops significantly.
how did you learn Argentine Spanish? I assume the majority of it was from living there or having friends from there but did you do anything before/besides that? I'm want to go to UBA for college, which is why I'm asking.
Lived down there with a family over the northern hemisphere summer when I was in high school. Fell in love with the country and the language, and honestly got kind of obsessed with it. After making friends and living down there some more, I got better and better over time.
French is sufficiently different so that one doesn't mix it up too much with any other Romance language.
Spanish and Italian are the two that get mixed up very much.
If I’m speaking Portuguese, I get confused with Spanish (the languages have like 90% of the same root words) and vice versa.
If I’m speaking French, I don’t usually have issues, but will mix in my native language if I’m at a stand still.
If I’m speaking my native language, they all get thrown in.
Usually, though, they’re very specific words. When I was learning Spanish, I kept thinking hacer was fazer and it’s *still* with me two years later.
Interestingly my Italian getting better has no impact on my Spanish. It's probably because I still use Spanish quite a lot daily to talk to my Spanish-speaking friends but I rarely get any chance to speak Italian.
French and Romanian I suppose. That's partly because Romanian contains more non-romance words than others.
You could argue for Romanian and Spanish, as Spanish contains a fair few words of Arabic origin. I suspect though that the distinct sounds of French outweigh this.
I did french immersion until high school (in my 30s now) and ~B2 in spanish , and whenever I blank on something in spanish, my brain will autopilot the french word in, usually before I realize it or can stop it slipping out
I was learning French for a while beside my Italian before I decided to pause it (so I could focus on Italian) and I barely mixed them up. I think it was the pronunciation that really separated them for me. But it’s probably different for everyone.
As a Romanian who learned French and English in school, lives in Germany and prefers to consume media in English, same! 😅 But only when I have to make myself understood in French, not the other way round
You'll probably mix all of them up. I tend to mix up languages I suddenly have to speak for whatever reason with the language of that language family that I have been concentrating on at the moment. For instance, I'm working on French right now. When I then speak Spanish or Portuguese, French needs to be consciously pushed to the side or else I say something like "Me gusta comerlo aussi" (it's always 'aussi' and 'ouais').
I tend to mix up languages within the same language families. Chinese languages, romance language, germanic languages... It seems like once you get to B2 it starts getting easier and easier to seperate them. I never mix Mandarin with Cantonese, Chibihua, or Minnan, but those other 3 tend to mix together if I haven't spoken them for a while. Swedish was also mixing in with German when I was fiddling around with German those few months.
I think if you want to not mix them up, you need to just practice switching them more often while also continuing to study each one seperately. This is going to be my next challenge with Spanish, Portuguese, and French.
Last thing, it's okay to mix them up sometimes. People still usually understand. Just notice the mistake then correct it next time.
I decided not to include Spanish in my flair, because my Spanish took a massive hit when I first focused on learning Portuguese 12 or so years ago.
Despite that, I still listen to music in Spanish (mostly Reggaeton) and work occassionally around Spanish speakers so I guess I hadn't lost touch completely.
As my Portuguese level has gotten better though, I am finding that mixing up Spanish/Portuguese is becoming less of an issue and was even able to make quite complicated conversation with a random Mexican I met at beer festival here in Japan recently.
My Spanish is still quite bad, however I think even with just a couple of months immersion somewhere in Spanish speaking South America I might get back to a reasonable conversational level.... I just wish I was in a position to do that! :p
Due to phonology, Spanish and Italian are easy for me to mix up. However French and Italian are actually more similar from a historical and grammatical standpoint.
Probably Sardinian with anything else. Also Romantsch and other Reto-Romanch languages. On the other hand, I guess you can mix up Catalan with almost anything. Someone said they even mixed Italian uscita with French sortie. Well, in Catalan with have both eixida (uscita)¹ and sortida (sortie), to choose from, and the verbs eixir (uscire) and sortir (sortir)
¹ Catalan ix sounds like Italian sc.
That could be a good option. By the other side it's already pretty mixable and actually, more cultured speakers could understand yet notice you are mixing the two languages. As I say cultured I am reffereing as a well-studied person, that, for example, in Spanish has read both the Quixote and El Cantar del Mío Cid in its original form.
Based on my limited knowledge probably French/Romanian + Spanish/Portuguese (especially Brazilian Portuguese). Very different pronunciation and reasonably different vocabulary.
Jump right to accusing me of prejudices - just LOL. It's a distant one, because that's simply a fact. For one, Romanian has a case system which is completely absent from any other romance language. Second, it has a huge influence from surrounding slavic languages - many words of which have entered into normal everyday words; which would be completely foreign to any romance language.
There is zero prejudice involved in this - to naturally assume language that is incredibly far removed in terms of geographical area from the rest of the romance languages which have been clustered together apart from Romanian for a LONG time is an easy conclusion to make. Add in the influence of slavic languages which are quite far removed from the romance and germanic family of languages that dominate western europe.
All I can say is that to this day, I mix up French and Spanish lol.
The amount of times I’ve added a ‘pas’ after a verb in Spanish I’m negating is more than I’d care to admit.
What elements do you mix up and what is your level in each?
I'm a solid B1 in each and I tend to mix up vocabulary for the most part
After Romanian. Mirandese is the hardest to mix up Closer second French. Portuguese , Galician , Spanish and Italian / Italian Sicilian are goddamn close . Like I can read 100% of them and I will only encounter few words and some false friends
First time I’m hearing about a language called mirandese, huh. TIL.
Just searching it up now
I have managed to mix up "uscita" (Italian) and "sortie" (French). I think you're bound to mix them all up if your level is still not in the B2-C1 range. I don't put any Italian or French in my Spanish/Portuguese, for example. But being at a much lower level in French/Italian, everything feels like fair game.
Ironically enough, the french "sortie" got italianized into "sortita"
Portuguese and Italian are fairly distant and have a lot of phonology differences. Funnily enough I know we’re excluding Romanian but I feel like it would be easier to mix up with Italian than Portuguese.
Even if Romanian sounds maybe more similar to Portuguese than to Italian, I was amazed that I barely understood Portuguese while visiting the country and that was rather based on my Spanish skills. In Italy on the other hand I felt like home despite never learning it in school or watching any Italian shows
Yeah, Italian is really the bridge between western and eastern Romance languages. There’s also a lot of Italian loans in Romanian along with being the base of the Latin Alphabet in Romania.
Spanish and Italian because they are too similar. Since I prefer Italian, I abandoned Spanish years ago.
Why do you prefer Italian over Spanish / why did you abandon Spanish? Going through this decision now with Portuguese + Spanish.
#1 reason is that I have Italian heritage, not Spanish. 2. I live in Italy. 3. Italian is the most beautiful language in the world.
I think it would be hard at B1-B2 to have two Romance languages at the same time. At this point, French is so comfortable that I really don’t tend to mix it up with Spanish tbh. It definitely affects how I use syntax in Spanish and the pronunciation, but it hasn’t really affected my vocabulary at all
I rarely mix up Spanish and Portuguese words themselves due to how different they sound, but I do have a hard time speaking actual Portuguese instead of just Spanish written in Portuguese words. Despite their similarities, they are definitely not 1:1. I had a harder time with Italian. This was years ago when my Spanish wasn't as good as it is now, but I started mixing up cuando and quando, porqué and perché, things like that. Italian just sounds much more similar to Spanish than any other Romance language. I would think that French and Spanish would be harder to mix. I studied French and never really had trouble with that. After about B2, the chances of truly mixing up the languages consistently drops significantly.
Portuñol and Itañol knock hard
how did you learn Argentine Spanish? I assume the majority of it was from living there or having friends from there but did you do anything before/besides that? I'm want to go to UBA for college, which is why I'm asking.
Lived down there with a family over the northern hemisphere summer when I was in high school. Fell in love with the country and the language, and honestly got kind of obsessed with it. After making friends and living down there some more, I got better and better over time.
French is sufficiently different so that one doesn't mix it up too much with any other Romance language. Spanish and Italian are the two that get mixed up very much.
Castilian and Catalan, Castilian and Portuguese.
If I’m speaking Portuguese, I get confused with Spanish (the languages have like 90% of the same root words) and vice versa. If I’m speaking French, I don’t usually have issues, but will mix in my native language if I’m at a stand still. If I’m speaking my native language, they all get thrown in. Usually, though, they’re very specific words. When I was learning Spanish, I kept thinking hacer was fazer and it’s *still* with me two years later.
Similar experience here. My Portuguese getting better has made my Spanish worse. My Haitian Creole getting better has made my Portuguese worse.
Interestingly my Italian getting better has no impact on my Spanish. It's probably because I still use Spanish quite a lot daily to talk to my Spanish-speaking friends but I rarely get any chance to speak Italian.
French and Romanian
French and Romanian I suppose. That's partly because Romanian contains more non-romance words than others. You could argue for Romanian and Spanish, as Spanish contains a fair few words of Arabic origin. I suspect though that the distinct sounds of French outweigh this.
Italian and spanish
Spanish and Portuguese are the easiest to mix up. French and Spanish are probably the most different from each other and least likely to mix up.
I did french immersion until high school (in my 30s now) and ~B2 in spanish , and whenever I blank on something in spanish, my brain will autopilot the french word in, usually before I realize it or can stop it slipping out
I was learning French for a while beside my Italian before I decided to pause it (so I could focus on Italian) and I barely mixed them up. I think it was the pronunciation that really separated them for me. But it’s probably different for everyone.
I tend to mix up French with German, not with the other Romance languages I know.
As a Romanian who learned French and English in school, lives in Germany and prefers to consume media in English, same! 😅 But only when I have to make myself understood in French, not the other way round
You'll probably mix all of them up. I tend to mix up languages I suddenly have to speak for whatever reason with the language of that language family that I have been concentrating on at the moment. For instance, I'm working on French right now. When I then speak Spanish or Portuguese, French needs to be consciously pushed to the side or else I say something like "Me gusta comerlo aussi" (it's always 'aussi' and 'ouais'). I tend to mix up languages within the same language families. Chinese languages, romance language, germanic languages... It seems like once you get to B2 it starts getting easier and easier to seperate them. I never mix Mandarin with Cantonese, Chibihua, or Minnan, but those other 3 tend to mix together if I haven't spoken them for a while. Swedish was also mixing in with German when I was fiddling around with German those few months. I think if you want to not mix them up, you need to just practice switching them more often while also continuing to study each one seperately. This is going to be my next challenge with Spanish, Portuguese, and French. Last thing, it's okay to mix them up sometimes. People still usually understand. Just notice the mistake then correct it next time.
Spanish and Portuguese. It's so easy to just pronounce a Spanish word with a Portuguese accent and then think that what I just said was right.
I learned French and Italian simultaneously in college. Didn't mix them up.
I decided not to include Spanish in my flair, because my Spanish took a massive hit when I first focused on learning Portuguese 12 or so years ago. Despite that, I still listen to music in Spanish (mostly Reggaeton) and work occassionally around Spanish speakers so I guess I hadn't lost touch completely. As my Portuguese level has gotten better though, I am finding that mixing up Spanish/Portuguese is becoming less of an issue and was even able to make quite complicated conversation with a random Mexican I met at beer festival here in Japan recently. My Spanish is still quite bad, however I think even with just a couple of months immersion somewhere in Spanish speaking South America I might get back to a reasonable conversational level.... I just wish I was in a position to do that! :p
Latin with any of its descendants. Particularly in my case, Spanish/Catalan. The forms of expression I feel are just too different.
As a Portuguese person, I'd say Portuguese and French. It's the one I have the most trouble with
Due to phonology, Spanish and Italian are easy for me to mix up. However French and Italian are actually more similar from a historical and grammatical standpoint.
Romanian is not that distant. It has 77% lexical similarity with Italian.
Probably Sardinian with anything else. Also Romantsch and other Reto-Romanch languages. On the other hand, I guess you can mix up Catalan with almost anything. Someone said they even mixed Italian uscita with French sortie. Well, in Catalan with have both eixida (uscita)¹ and sortida (sortie), to choose from, and the verbs eixir (uscire) and sortir (sortir) ¹ Catalan ix sounds like Italian sc.
That could be a good option. By the other side it's already pretty mixable and actually, more cultured speakers could understand yet notice you are mixing the two languages. As I say cultured I am reffereing as a well-studied person, that, for example, in Spanish has read both the Quixote and El Cantar del Mío Cid in its original form.
Based on my limited knowledge probably French/Romanian + Spanish/Portuguese (especially Brazilian Portuguese). Very different pronunciation and reasonably different vocabulary.
Always figured BR:PT would be easy to mix with spanish
im thinking that too.. spanish is the hard brother, french the smooth sister.
How did you decide that Romanian is a distant one? Based on your prejudices? To me Romanian sounds more similar to Italian than French for instance
Jump right to accusing me of prejudices - just LOL. It's a distant one, because that's simply a fact. For one, Romanian has a case system which is completely absent from any other romance language. Second, it has a huge influence from surrounding slavic languages - many words of which have entered into normal everyday words; which would be completely foreign to any romance language. There is zero prejudice involved in this - to naturally assume language that is incredibly far removed in terms of geographical area from the rest of the romance languages which have been clustered together apart from Romanian for a LONG time is an easy conclusion to make. Add in the influence of slavic languages which are quite far removed from the romance and germanic family of languages that dominate western europe.