Franch can help you with italian a little. The italian pronunciation is very easy, the grammar is as difficult as french grammar or maybe a little bit more. The US State Department (Foreign Office) has estimated how long it takes a native English speaker to learn a foreign language: Category 1A: 600 Class Hours Examples: French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese Category 1B: 900 Class Hours Examples: German, Indonesian, Swahili Category 2: 1100 Class Hours Examples: Hebrew, Hindi, Persian, Russian, Thai, Vietnamese Category 3: 2200 Class Hours Examples: Arabic, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin Chinese everyone can learn a foreign language -- it just takes a lot of time and patience. Continuing to take lessons with a teacher is a crucial part of learning a language. (from Italkii Team)

I found it pretty easy, and yes you'll recognise similar words in French (and English) which will help a lot. There are still a couple of grammar points which I'm not yet used to, and I still use dipthongs when I should use a clear sound (my bad habit from English), but for the most part it wasn't such a struggle. You might like to check these schools in Italy. I did the language + cooking/wine/tour course at Koine in Florence. The secretary I met there changed jobs from Koine to Italartlanguage, which seems to follow a similar format, ie. offer language courses plus cooking, sailing, opera, art, etc. www.koinecenter.com www.italartlanguage.com/home.php

Well, french can help you to learn italian because many verbs and words in french are similar to italians ones, there is only small different, conerning grammar there is big different between french and italian. Me too, I have tried to learn italian from natif speakers by exchanging it by english or frensh, it was great experience, but I didn't keep up because of some circumstance. But you must know something if you love something and you have a will be sure you can make it.