Which language is more important, French or Spanish?

It depends what does it mean "more important" : Spanish is spoken by more people while french is more used in international organisations.

Spanish, duh.. "Se habla español." lol

Vu le nombre d'hispanophones, c'est l'espagnol.

Je pense qu'il est plus important de connaître l'espagnol ET le français que de connaître l'espagnol SANS le français ou le français SANS l'espagnol. Et comme les deux langues se ressemblent, il n'est pas si difficile de connaître l'espagnol ET le français.

Guest,

tu dis n'importe quoi, le portugais = galicien. Le portugais n'est pas un dialecte mais une langue.

Portuguese is not a Spanish dialect. Actually, they are not mutually intelligible. (Portuguese-speaking people understand Spanish better than vice versa).

French and Spanish are both languages which seem to have past their prime though French still has some chance of becoming the lingua franca of a possible united Europe in the future.

Nevertheless, for anyone studying Romance linguistcs, I think it goes without saying that a knowledge of French and Spanish are indispensable.

Xatufan, I PARTIALLY disagree with u...

I don't think Portuguese is a dialect from Spanish, they probably have a "brother" relationship rather than a "father to son" relationship. Get it?

BUT, I know that both languages are intelligible to a great degree, many Brazilians in my country don't really speak Spanish, but don't face any major problems communicating. Also, when peruvian journalists go to Brazil they usually don't have any translators assistance. When President Lula (from Brazil) spoke about the construction of the Interoceanic Highway between Peru and Brazil, his speech wasn't translated because it was perfectly understandable, although I noticed that he was speaking considerably slower than most Brazilians and paused a lot.

I think it depends what kind of Spanish u speak, it's obvious that a Mexican will have more trouble understanding a Brazilian than a Peruvian. And it also depends of what Portuguese we are talking about, probably a Peruvian might understand better a Brazilian than Portuguese...

I grabbed this article (randomly) from Portuguese Wikipedia and well... I'm sure most Spanish speakers will understand what it says.
Castrapo (castelhano + trapo). Termo usado na Galiza para fazer referência ao castelhano popular dos galegos. O castrapo é um castelhano mal falado com muitas palavras autóctones galegas ou formas do idioma galego que não existem no vocabulário castelhano. É considerado socialmente vulgar ou própio de pessoas analfabetas ou sem formação. O uso do castrapo é muito frequente em cidades galegas como Vigo, Santiago ou Corunha onde convivem galego-falantes e castelhano-falantes em situação diglóssica. Nos núcleos rurais galego-falantes acontece o caso contrário, o idioma galego é por vezes deturpado com palavras castelhanas. Esta infiltração do castelhano no galego é chamada de "chapurreao".

Of course. I heard somewhere that "a language is a dialect with an army". I think Galician and Portuguese (and maybe Spanish and Portuguese) wouldn't have split if Portugal and Spain were the same country.

A similar thing happens with Scandinavian languages, but that's another story.

En tout cas la phrase de *CarloS* que tu as citée est tout à fait exacte, « Guest ».

Spanish is definitely more important than French on my side of the ocean. It's the #2 language in the US by a wide margin, and nearly every country from Mexico south speaks Spanish. I wouldn't call Portuguese a dialect of Spanish, but it should be very easy for a Spanish speaker to learn, and if you know English, Spanish, and Portuguese, you can get by in 99% of the Western Hemisphere.

I will say that all languages in the world are important, since if we don´t speak them, they will die out

But in trade and business? I don´t know!
Both French and Spanish are very important!

>>>Spanish is spoken by more people while french is more used in international organisations.<<<

Spanish is also widely used in International Organizations.

>>>I think Galician and Portuguese (and maybe Spanish and Portuguese) wouldn't have split if Portugal and Spain were the same country.<<<

Maybe... Maybe not. I wouldn't assure this...


>>>Quiet people a very educated linguist is talking LOL.<<<

"Merci beaucoup."

>>>I would say in Europe French is more important and in America Spanish is more important.<<<

I wouldn't underestimate Spanish in Europe...

If I had learned Navajo as my mother tongue, would it be easier to learn other languages, like Spanish or French or Romanian or whatever, because they are more simple?

I think the answer is NO: Romanian, Basque or whatever language would look really complex to me: they have other kinds of difficulty. Perhaps Navajo does not have words for modern things like "television" or "space ship", so if I had to learn Interlingua I'd have to learn lots of new concepts.

>I wouldn't underestimate Spanish in Europe...<

Oh I wouldn't OVERestimate Spanish in Europe 'CARLOSEer' LOL