@nonBInary@thelemmy.club

¿Por que no los dos?

Each language make it easier to learn the other because they share characteristics not present in English, characteristics of which are found not only in Italian and French, but also Spanish and Portuguese.

For example, conjugation of verbs: English is quite "simple" (I talk, she talks, we talk, they talk, I will talk, she will talk, I talked, she talked, I would talk, she'd talk, etc) whilst the so-called Romance languages (languages whose common ancestor is Latin, which includes French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese) have a more complicated system of conjugation, e.g. in Portuguese present tense "eu falo, tu falas, ela fala, nós falamos, vós falais, eles falam", past tense "eu falei, tu falastes, ela falou, nós falávamos, elas falaram", and many more conjugation forms.

As for which one should be the first, I'd personally likely pick Italian, but it's more of a personal choice depends on one's contexts and current set of knowledge/experiences (to me, Italian feels closer to my native Portuguese than French so it's what driving my answer when having to choose between the two).

There's also the Interlingua worth mentioning, which aims to be understandable across all Romance languages. I don't know how exactly to speak it, but I do get to understand when I hear/read it somehow.