16 Mar 2022 13:18, you wrote to me:

[snip]
 SD> While your points about those languages being different, they indeed
 SD> do share a lot in common and if you understand that, you can make out
 SD> the jist of what is being said in all three languages.

Agreed, they are closer than e.g. Spanish and English. Only that I find Italian closer to Spanish than French. Even more if it is spoken, because of the pronounciation. (If I had studied French at school instead of English, it would be different for me, of course.)

 SD> I unfortunately lost my "tongue" for Spanish as I had no one to
 SD> converse in Spanish with though I think with a bit of effort, I could
 SD> bring myself back up to at least to a conversational level.  French,
 SD> to me, is overly complicated for the sake of being different. 
 SD> Spanish has always been easy to speak for me because it tends to
 SD> follow its own rules better than English.

You are welcome to ESP.GENERAL or any of our ESP.* echos...

Carlos

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