French and Spanish Language Comparison

Do you wanna know how the two most passionate languages are similar?

Let’s talk about the differences and similarities between these romance languages!

Welcome to our French and Spanish language comparison!

About the Spanish language

Before going deeper, let’s talk about the Spanish language. It is a Romance language derived from Vulgar Latin, which in turn came from Classical Latin. It arose in Castile between the 6th century BC and 900 BC, which is why it is also known as the Castilian language.

Spanish is only 20% distance from Latin, being the third closest, after Sardinian and Italian. Of course, Spanish gained a lot of popularity, becoming the second most spoken native language in the world.

Meanwhile French

Meanwhile French is also a Romance language, belonging to the Gallo-Romance group. It emerged in northern France between the 6th and 9th centuries, where the document of the Strasbourg Oaths serves as evidence of its existence.

It´s the oldest written in Proto-Romance and dates from the year 842, an oath of respect for the division following Louis the Pious’ death. The document was written in Latin, Germanic, and a Romance language between Latin and French.

The main European language, spoken in countries such as France, Belgium, Switzerland, Monaco, Luxembourg, and Canada. Slightly less popular than Spanish, it has 77 million native speakers and 267 million French speakers worldwide.

The ninth most widely spoken native language in the world and the fifth most widely spoken language overall. Its growth is due to population increase in some French-speaking regions, such as Africa.

French and Spanish vs. English

Let’s make a comparison of French and Spanish vs. English. Taking into account that they are all Romance languages, i.e. derived from Latin, we can say that they belong to the same family.

Lexical similarities

• French Vs. English: 40 to 50%
• Spanish Vs. English: 30 to 50%
• French vs. Spanish: Close to 75%

This means that French and Spanish are much closer to each other than to English. The reason for so many similarities is that both share the same Romance origin.

French or Spanish more widely spoken

The popularity of both languages is huge, but we can still determine whether French or Spanish is more widely spoken. Through these super interesting data, we will see which of the two has more followers.

French

• Official Language in 30 countries.
• 77 million native speakers.
• 267 million French speakers in 2021.
• More-studied language.

Spanish

• The official language in 22 countries.
• 493 million native speakers.
• 98 million partially proficient speakers.
• 591 million Spanish speakers in 2021.
• More total speakers.

How they are alike

French and Spanish, besides being children of the same father, Latin, how they are alike. The Romans conquered France and Spain. During the Roman invasion, Latin prevailed over the native European languages.

Then, with the fall of the Roman Empire, the language also declined. As a result of the conquest, the native languages of these countries disappeared, except for Basque. Later, both countries became major colonizers of much of the world.

They have many similarities

Given that they have many factors in common, it´s normal that they have many similarities. However, aspects such as the French accent are different from Spanish and other European languages. It´s also true that there are many Spanish dialects, especially in the Latin American region.

French: Monde

French: Politique

French: Vin

French: Livre

French: Ecole

French: Arbre

French: Oeuf

Despite having the same origin, French and Spanish are not mutually intelligible. This means that by mastering one, you will not necessarily understand the other. This is possible in some words, especially in writing.

Spanish and French grammar

Spanish and French grammar has undergone major changes from their emergence to the present day. It´s inevitable to see words being born and dying. Let’s get to know a bit about the grammar of these Romance languages.

• In a simple sentence like this one, the differences are not so great.

French: Le vin est bon

• Making the sentence more complex, we can observe how the adjective changes places with the object.

French: Le vin rouge est bon, mais je préfère un verre d’eau.

• Questions: In English, you add “do” to the beginning of the sentence and close it with a question mark. In French, it begins with “est-ce que”, whose literal meaning is “it is that”. In Spanish, the voice is inflected to raise it and the written language is accompanied by an upside-down question mark at the beginning of the question.
• Negation: In English and Spanish, we just say “there is no” (no hay), but in French, it´s more complicated.

French: Est-ce que vous avez de vin? / Non, il n’y a pas de vin, excusez-moi.

Pronunciation

The pronunciation of French vs. Spanish is much more complex. This is because the French accent is very different from that of any other Romance language.

You can notice this when you see Hispanics getting along very well with Italians or Portuguese, which is not the case with French. Even if it´s possible to understand the written french language, pronunciation is not easy.

The difficulties start with the vowel sounds, French has 5-6 letters, but 13-15 sounds. English has 5-6 vowels and 19-21 vowel sounds. Spanish has only 5 vowels/vowel sounds.

Which language I should learn

Deciding which language I should learn between French vs. Spanish depends on several factors, mostly personal. The first is to think about why learn a new language.

Whether it is for academic credit, work, or just a hobby. In any case, a second language adds value to your resume.

The advantage is that the French, Spanish, and English alphabets are so similar that you won’t have a hard time learning new signs. And don’t forget that with a little extra dedication you can learn French and Spanish simultaneously!

Spanish vs. French: How similar are they?