Which language is better, French or Spanish?

yep, I did

Spanish is more widely spoken and by extension has a larger literature. I don't know what exactly you mean by "better".

Or he thinks that there is an objectively discernable aesthetic quality between the two, for which he is fucking stupid.

Depends what you're starting language is, and what you ultimately want to do.

People think French is easier for Anglos to learn.

Spanish is far more useful. Spanish has the highest number of native speakers after Mandarin. With Spanish you can speak to speak to the Americas. With French you can speak to French people, some Canadians and some African colonies.

*your

Apparently, I need to learn English.

There is a french colony in southamerica.

More books does not mean larger literary tradition. French historically has lasted the longest, has more great authors, more great works, longer periods of stability, has defined and refined more literary styles, etc. Arabic has more speakers than French, numbers means nothing.

If the OP is European, French is better is both regards.

If American (in that wider sense), then Spanish probably.

Are you telling me Russian landowners and aristocrats don't speak French anymore? That was my reason for wanting to learn it.

Spanish is far more practical and useful to actually speak.

If you're involved in literature/philosophy on an academic level French is exceptionally important as a READING language. You will likely never speak it if you live in America outside of French departments.

Spanish is more widely spoken, but also has some good literature. Everything from Cervantes to Borges. French in terms of daily usefulness is pretty much only a better option if you happen to live in Central Europe. In terms of literature it has a better and more extensive history than Spanish literature does, but that's debatable.

I don't know much about French, but I will give you my experience as someone who learned Spanish recently (in the last 5 years). If you know English well, learning Spanish will be extremely easy for you. You could be fluently reading and speaking in 1-2 years, and it will also increase your English vocab. The two work very nicely together.

I appreciate Spanish for its colloquial simplicity, consistency (I have heard French is the opposite, in that there are more exceptions than rules), beauty, and sentence flexibility. Also, the women are positively top-tier, and the countries are diverse and have interesting cultures.

I used Tu Mundo to start learning Spanish (3 months or so), then moved on to Enfoques, which took me another 3 months. Then, I started reading YA novels in Spanish. I spent about 2 hours studying a day, so if you devote yourself, you'll learn it very quickly.

The cursing is by far superior to english, though in french too.

French

In sheer inventiveness of swearing, British English is hard to beat. Even given French.

That's not really a curse, though. It's more of a funny, off-color simile if anything. Compare that Spanish "me cago en la hostia," which literally translates to "I shit on the body of Christ." That's a fucking curse.

I'm a semi-native Spanish-speaker, and I really don't enjoy reading in Spanish, and neither do many of my peers. I'd really like to be able to read Don Quixote or Bolano's works in Spanish, but I feel like I'll either not be able to handle them, or I'll feel like I wasted my time reading them in a language that I might not find enjoyable.

I'd say it's the opposite.

OP here, I live close to Canada in America, and my first language is English.

Not op, but if I'm interested in learning Spanish, should I learn "Mexican" or "Spain" Spanish? I've been considering learning the language but I'm not sure if I want to bother learning the extra set of conjugations when I will very likely never go to Spain (living in the US)

Are you an American who grew up speaking Spanish but never learned the language formally? If that's the case, your inability to enjoy stuff written in Spanish comes from the fact that you just find it more difficult. Once you practice it enough you'll find it as enjoyable as English.

I suppose so. The English, being Protestant and/or atheists, would never invent such a thing. Nice curse though.

You should learn Castillian Spanish. You don't really need to worry about the vosotros form though.

I learned the language both formally and informally. And no, the root of the problem isn't that I find it difficult, it's just that I don't really enjoy it, and neither do my peers who are more proficient in Spanish than English. It could also be that I've never really read any serious books in Spanish. I think I'm gonna download copies of Los Detectivos Salvajes y Don Quixote and give them a shot.

Curses are more woven together, regions affect which words are used but the structures remain the same
You have the short and concise "puta", "carajo", "mierda" (whore, damn, shit) which is similar to fuck, and then you have things like "me cago en la reconcha de mi madre, la puta que me pario" (I shit on the super vagina of mi mother, the whore that gave birth to me"

It's not the opposite, user.
I have known third world girls and they are way too different from the girls we have here. I don't know if they actually became like that (kind, modest, lovely) because of the shithole and the poverty out there but I find them peculiar.

Depends on the country user, spanish is the language with the biggest diversity of native speakers, someone from argentina is very different from someone from mexico, who is very different from someone from spain.

>I shit on the super vagina of mi mother, the whore that gave birth to me
Literally the best curse i've ever heard

Don't study Spanish.

foreignlanguagestudyoptions.blogspot.com/2011/04/why-not-to-study-spanish.html?m=1

>1. Very little of value has been written in Spanish. On the typical occidental Great Books reading list, only one piece of literature, Don Quixote, makes the cut. Minor languages, like Icelandic or Gaelic, have produced more enduring works of literature.
Article dropped. 100 Years of Solitude, Love in the Time of Cholera, By Night in Chile, 2666, Ficciones, Feast of the Goat, The Tunnel. Spanish is maybe 3rd or 4th in terms of language with the best literature. Latin America has kept the European tradition of the novel alive better than any other peoples in recent history.

Please be in London

kek, brilliant post-ironic shitpost; you almost made me respond.

French is a much better, and more sophisticated language. Spanish just sounds dirty and poor.

Castilian Spanish is objectively a more aesthetic language than French. French sounds like it's being spoken by mongoloids who can't pronounce consonants properly.

>1
Already covered by >2
>Implying the SAT tests for shit
>3
Undeniable, though that isn't a primary reason to learn any language.
>4
While I won't doubt the statistics, the conclusion doesn't make sense.
>5
That's a nitpick, and a shit one at that. Considering Spain controlled the largest portion of the Americas for a long time, I'd argue Spanish is one of the most relevant languages to study for an interest in the West, the only difference being that Latin texts would reflect more traditional ideas and Spanish texts would reflect more modern ideas.
>6
>"Learning Latin will improve your vocabulary guys!"
If your aim is to study grammar/etymology, study grammar/etymology. There's no need for a middleman.
>7
Not everyone lives in the ruling class. Middle class people get some nice luxuries, but we still get plenty of contact with the lower class.
>8
>Diversity
Fuck outta here.
>9
Spanish, like English, has some limited inflection, but I fail to see how that's a make-or-break deal. Again, if you want to study grammar, just study grammar. Learning a language grants you access to whatever body of literature and culture you choose. There's no sense touting any one culture/literature as better than the other, especially if your reasoning is "the grammar is harder" or some other bullshit like that.

Sure, but each and every one of those Spanish speaking countries sucks, whereas... ... oh, right.

>implying argentina isn't the greatest nation on earth and borges the only post-modernist and magical realist worth reading

Spanish is fucked.

youtube.com/watch?v=4LjDe4sLER0

It's unclear what you mean. In general it's best to communicate with your respondent in the language he know best, provided you can make yourself understood.

Tl;dnr? Stupid question.

fuck you

I'm glad you understood.

>Implying Argentina alone doesn't have a literature tradition better than almost any country
>Icelandic and Gaelic, what the fuck is this nigga talking about?
>Totally has nothing to do with Latin verbs being leagues above all those other languages
>Because Spanish speakers in those fields tend to write in English, while German and French are supported due to European hegemony
>Implying all of Latin America is Mexico
>Muh IQs
>That whole bit about Indo-European purity, when Spanish is literally the most conservative Romance language outside of Italy
>Yeah because Spanish doesn't have those Latinate roots lol
>What even is this aristocracy shit?
>Because you don't want to be able to talk as many people as possible, right?
>German >Having case outside of the retarded articles
>Ancestral roots? Those native peoples have their own languages you fucking ingrate
Cherry on top:
> New comments are not allowed.

incredibly meta

Argentina fan club: the thread

can a language really be objectively better than another? I'd say it depends on where you live, why not learn both?, and any language can be applied to something.

What books did you start with? What was your process for when you didn't know what you were reading?

>Arabic has more speakers than French, numbers means nothing
We're not talking about French demographics here.

Easily Mexican Spanish.
>150 million Mexicans vs 50 million Spaniards
>No stupid lisp
>No stupid vosotros form.
>You're American.

However, I suggest that you don't just settle for Mexican Spanish "accent", cuz I've heard their anime dubs, and despite having the same sounds in the language they totally fail at sounding cute. So find the cutest Spanish for your pronunciation guide.

Dubs always sound like shit tho, so maybe I should listen to some original Mexican shit.

Easily Mexican Spanish.
>150 million Mexicans vs 50 million Spaniards
>No stupid lisp
>No stupid vosotros form.
>You're American.

>
>
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I speak both.
There is nothing you can do in French that you can't do in Spanish, and vice versa (except minor stuff like Spanish having two verbs for being, Ser and Estar)

The same thing goes for all romance languages (although I dont know romanian)
They are grammatically similar, there isnt a romance language that is "better" for thinking in the same way Heidegger thought German was a superior language for Philosophy.
Romance languages, or at least, French-Spanish-Italian-Portuguese, have the same limitations.
They have longer, multisyllabic words, than English or German, creating compound words and neologisms is much harder than in English or German.
Romance languages are slaves to their dictionaries. You cant go creating words and concepts freely.

If French literature is superior to literature in Spanish (which I think it is, I think France is the best ever literary nation), is because there were more brilliant Frenchmen, especially in the XVIII and XIX centuries, than brilliant Spaniards. Not because the language is better.

I do prefer literature in Spanish for the XXth century (especially latin american), and up to the end of the barroque period, both literatures were great, perhaps with an edge for Spanish literature.

With regards to usefulness, Spanish is more useful nowadays. In Europe French may be more useful since France has 15 million more people than Spain, and French is also spoken in much of Switzerland and Belgium, but then, Spanish has a very large degree of mutual intelligibility with Portuguese, especially when reading.

german

Dude. Quijote. How is this even a question? Spanish is better in every aspect. Have you even seen a frenchie talk? They move thier lips like they are cleaning a door knob with their tongue. Also Spanish has less "Le boheme" charm so you are bound to be more respected if you know spanish rather than faggy french.

For francophone literature? French is better
For lit from Spain or Latin America? Spañolish

French sounds disgusting to me, but it has a larger pool of good literature.

>Russian aristocrats
user, it may pain you to learn this but something happened in 1917.

Wasn't that said by Buckaroo Banzai?