The difference in learning a same-root language and one "out of the family" Since I've chosen to learn language at the University I've experienced some different approaches to do so and, of course, during the years I've been noticing that the study of every language seems to fit in or reject them out of its specific features. The most outstanding difference that I'd like to talk here about is the great advantage of sharing the language root as well as its risks. First of all, it is to overwhelmingly clear that the great advantage of a shared ancestor is the possibility to grasp the meaning of some words for the similarities they have with your native lexicon. And even thought it doesn't happen all the time, it , at least, cheers you up when you're moped and tired of fighting with the foreign's way of formulate some thoughts or when you face a 300 words text in which you don't know not even the headlines. In a language as Russian or German or even English for an Italian speaker could be kind of a feat to infere the meaning of new words. Nonetheless it happens to me to be more analytic in this tree languages and rely more on context or morphology. On the other hand the very risk that one has to face when the languages are similar is to overlap them. As a consequence of that, it is likely that in the short period of time you reach a good pre-intermediate level, prompted by the nearness of the two languages. Then ,however, you have to start to discern progressively and notice the slight difference that there are. What is your experience ?