User blog comment:Razlem/How do you prefer to learn a language?/@comment-1917865-20100721042321

Well, learning a language was an entirely new experience, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't have trouble with Spanish at first. But I was actually referring to learning languages of the same family.

After 3 years of Spanish I decided to take French as well. The grammar and general vocabulary are, from my perspective, nearly identical. Just from studying Spanish and French I can read basic Italian and Portuguese without formal study. Swedish/Danish/Norwegian are even easier because they're so closely related. While English and French are similar (thanks to the Norman invasion), they're still very distinct languages. What I'm saying though is that once you learn a linguistic pattern, it's a cakewalk.