ça y est

I don't think I can bring myself to deliver an exhaustive list of tips in learning a Romance language. It's too mammoth a task. So where does one go from the point of no return the moment one's decided, for example, oui ze french languiz iz for me; or,  l'italiano mi va bene.

There was this one time a professor at Sydney Uni advising all first years -assumption of no knowledge of the target language- that for a European language speaking student, it'd take about four/five years of a full time study to learn an Asian language (must be those of North Asian, or the super curly ones, can't be our Bahasa) and two/three years for an intra-European language (if you're an Anglophone).

So that's a bit of good news eh.

One's circumstances determine the mode of learning along with the motivation, opportunity etc. So to  get you up and running in the quickest time possible:

1. look for a class.
This is the most excellent way, try to get more than two hours per week for that acceleration that you'll want to happen, believe you me. if one's lucky enough, having a native speaker professor (as they're all called in all Romance language, referring to a teacher) helps heaps.

2. get a head start.
Romance languages are special, they have notably complex conjugation and grammar syntaxes and system that'd put a pain of migraine into shame. Only a few languages in the world are reputed to be harder than the Romance family.

What I did was a couple of months before my French class started, I invested in a couple of grammar books, one of those "idiot" titles. Felt like one too, truth be told. Idiot titles are way too self-paced, too leisurely to the point of tedium. If I had to recommend anyone, the «teach yourself» series are heaps better.

Books are not always available, the Web however proves to be an invaluable source of information, they come cheap and provide endless bits and pieces for a great self-study session.

3. get a grip.
Not to discourage anyone, the following will puzzle any student of the Romance language starting from nought:

gender (or genre, in French)

Each noun is either masculin or feminin (lucky, we have no neuter as in eg. German). Most of the time, there's a pattern, an ending that quickly tells you which one it is. Italian is quite consistent, most words ending
in -o are masc whereas -a are feminin. French takes a bit of an effort to get it right, structurally risque and silence (ending in -que and -ence) suggest they are feminin, they're not.

accordisation.

Romance languages insanely demand one accords everything that's to be accorded.

a red apple is eaten, two red apples are eaten.
(IT) una mela verde è stata mangiata » due mele verdi sono state mangiate

And when it comes to crunch time, this poses a lot of problems for the simpletons (like myself, LOL)

article

And plenty of it.

I like music. Music is my life. The music I like is ... -1 definite article
(FR) J'aime la musique. La musique est ma vie. La musique que j'aime -3 articles
(IT) Amo la musica. La musica è la mia vita. La musica che amo -4 articles [no wonder Italy is the land of bureaucrazy]

reflexive verbs

Perplexingly complicated for Anglophones. Simply because in English it is not required or exists in a simpler and more obvious form.

My name is.   Je m'appelle ... (lit. I call myself)
He wakes up.    Il se réveille ... (lit. he wakes himself)

conjugation.

a single verb, in each tense, may be conjugated six ways.
I eat, you eat, he/she eats, we eat, you eat, they eat.
(IT) io mangio, tu mangi, lui/lei mangia, noi mangiamo, voi mangiate, loro mangiono.
(FR) je mange, tu manges, il/elle mange, nous mangeons, vous mangez, ils/elles mangent.

It may be a case that in total, my French dictionary suggests, there are fifty one (51) different patterns to conjugate French verbs. Don't let the figure fools you, some are repetition with a slight difference or irregularity, they should be managable along the course of time.

tenses.

Romance languages endorse more tenses or composite tenses than the fingers in my two hands. Each tense has its own rule, forms, and conjugation pattern.

liaison, elision, contraction. No, these are not meant to be dirty words.

This is where the Gallic language showcases its monstrosity of rigidness.

Les amants amoureaux, pronounced lezamañzamureu - it's abosultely not wysiwyg.

You should uncover the rest of the puzzle.

mind-numbing orthography

French has no shortage of accented words, and sometimes an accented letter may transmute within a word just for the sake of pronunciation.

théâtre = theatre
préférer (to prefer), je préfère (I prefer), and finally j`ai préféré (I preferred)
espérer (to hope), j'espère (I hope)
recevoir (to receive), j'ai réçu (I received)

stress, emphasis and accented syllable

Italians speak as if they're on an opera stage and consequently their tongue stresses a particular syllable, just like in English, only nicer, more melodious. LOL

carattere, caratterische

simplicity. or lack of it.

English two out of three times is more efficient than Roman languages in terms of the number of letters used. This is compensated in a different way though, the French speak as if two whole blocks of paragraph a single sentence, whilst the Italians the whole text are strung by an invisible punctuation. Italian often omits the pronoun simply because the conjugated ending is as clear as the sky on a Sicilian summer day to indicate the subject, eg. che dici (what are you saying?)

irregularities or exception

No more than in English. But, again, we are looking at unique languages with a set of «secret codes» where logic is not the name of the game.

French, le vagin (vagina) is a masculine word.
Italian, un braccio (ar arm) masculine turns into due braccia (two arms) feminin word.

4. does the end justify the means
In this case, Absolutely. The endless possibility to explore the ruins, artefacts, an abundance of arts in those (european) Latin countries. The awesome culture. The sumptuous cuisine of each region. The dance. The music. The perpetual drama of life.

In bocca al lupo - bonne chance.

Enjoy the ride. It may get bumpy.

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Links for self-study on Italian and French grammar, may well possibly include those of other Romance family and even German (the European economic powerhouse)

Both :
BBC Languages    ─ excellent, with numerous examples
Language Guide   ─ excellent, with audio

Français	Italiano
About French Jump-gate Lefrançais.com	About Italian GWC Wikipedia Italian Harvard