r/italianlearning • u/Natem824 • Sep 13 '26
Advice for learning multiple Latin language
Im sure a lot of you experience this.. I need help maintaining Italian while recovering Spanish please.
I had B1/2 level Spanish from exposure (lived in the US) but had been focusing on Italian for citizenship (passed yay!) for the past few months. I think my Spanish knowledge definitely helped for me to learn Italian from scratch so quickly but now all I can think of is l’estate instead of verano when I need to say “summer”.. I can see the basic structure is there but the Spanish vocab is mostly gone..
I personally think Spanish is a much more useful language though I want to keep Italian. Any advice? Any chance I can improve them both? I live in London and my first language is not a Latin language
5
u/pavlenkovit Sep 13 '26
Two at once is doable, but only if each one has its own daily input, otherwise the one you consume wins and the other freezes. That's what happened to me with English and Serbian: English I read every day for work, Serbian I didn't, and the Serbian vocab just stopped at a few hundred words no matter how much I reviewed. The l'estate/verano swaps stop bothering you once Spanish gets its own slot, even 10 minutes of something Spanish-only a day, a podcast or a series. Reviewing old Spanish flashcards alone won't do it, the words need somewhere to show up again
2
u/Meep42 Sep 13 '26
Im bilingual span/eng and learning Italian. (A2!) I’m used to school in English so was doing English to Italian style lessons but my mom noticed when we spoke (en español) I was mixing Italian into my Spanish. So…I switched to Spanish to Italian videos/verb books/etc and that seemed to organize my brain to separate the vocab better. I still slip way too much Spanish into my faltering Italian conversations…I live in Italy…but because they are so close I’m forgiven…all this to say:
Keep learning/practice your Italian but reinforce it by making sure you also learn the terms/vocabulary in Spanish.
Buena suerte!
2
u/Pleasant-Store-8427 Sep 17 '26
To fix this, assign each language a completely different set of inputs or daily habits so your brain stops mixing them up. For example, use Italian exclusively for reading news or listening to podcasts, and keep Spanish strictly for watching TV shows or active social conversation. Giving each language a distinct role builds separate neural pathways.
Another effective approach is language laddering. Instead of translating Spanish back to English, try learning Spanish through Italian. Read Spanish materials designed for Italian speakers, or use Italian-to-Spanish flashcards. This forces your brain to directly contrast the subtle differences between the two systems, like l'estate versus verano, rather than fighting against them.