/lit/ - Literature

>>20970476
Sandberg

>>20322327
This and Sandberg's French for Reading.

>>19209917

>>19095839
Yeah sure anon, here you go.

>>18527413
Going to have to go against the grain and say Italian is the most difficult of the three, at least for a native English speaker.

French is surprisingly close to English, given that much of the English language is borrowed from French (owing to the French having conquered and ruled Britain for hundreds of years). The only real difficulty at first is the pronunciation, but so as long as one does a short pronunciation course (like the free one from FSI) first you won't encounter much difficulty. French also has a wealth of resources for language learning for all levels.

Because of the above points, native English speakers who need to be able to read French for post-grad studies are consistently able to learn to do so with only a few weeks study (pic related).

German is much the same (English being a Germanic language, and there being a wealth of resources).

In comparison Italian is an extremely latinate, literary language that will trip the beginner up in all sorts of areas. It's viewed as "easy" partially because of the prestige of French.

For an example of some of the difficulties of Italian, here's a good overview:

http://www.asiteaboutnothing.net/w_italian-vs-spanish.html

He compares it to Spanish rather than French or German, but it will give you the general idea.

As for usefulness: French > German > Italian