Profiting from related languages. Depending on the languages we know, we'll have some strengths or weaknesses in learning another language. For instance, if we already know a Romance language, it will be easier to learn another one. Moreover, if we happen to know one with a richer phoneme base, French or Portuguese for instance, it will be easier to acquire the sounds of the other. Spanish, however, has a narrower phoneme base, which makes it difficult for Spanish speakers to correctly pronounce the sounds of French or Portuguese. As for the vocabulary, there are a few high frequency words that are quite unique to each Romance language, but the majority of words have a recognizable relationship among them. For instance, "avec" in French is unrelated to its synonyms "con" or "com" in Spanish/Italian and Portuguese. The bottom line is that a big portion of the vocabulary learning task is already done. Continuing with Spanish and Portuguese, we would probably understand a text, but we will not pronounce it correctly. So the first task to be undertaken may be learning pronunciation and practicing writing. Other languages pose a harder task if they are not so related to ours. Some say German is related to English, but I couldn't feel there was any such relationship, or at least not to strong as to be of great help.