"When you learn one Romance language, to a considerable extent you learn them all". Discuss.

In a way that is much less true for Germanic languages (except perhaps Dutch and German, which are indeed very close). If you learn only one of Portuguese, Spanish, Italian or even to a lesser extent French or Romanian, it does help you understand quite a lot of the other Romance languages, whereas the Germanic languages by contrast are much more separate and unique from one another.

I still think my knowledge of Dutch greatly aided my English, despite all of this. It's in interesting point of discussion either way. I believe you are right, however. Slavic languages are even closer to one another. They diverged later in history.

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Originally Posted by Dandelion

I still think my knowledge of Dutch greatly aided my English, despite all of this. It's in interesting point of discussion either way.

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Write that sentence in Dutch and see how it compares. On the other hand:

"Je pense toujours que ma connaissance d'hollandais vraiment aidait mon anglais, malgre tout ca. C'est un sujet a converser interessant de tout facon".
"Yo pienso todavia que mi conocimiento del holandes verdaderamente ayudaba mi ingles, a pesar de todo eso. Es un asunto para conversar interesante de cualquier forma".
"Eu penso ainda do que o meu conhecimento do holandes verdadeiramente ajudava o meu ingles, a pessar de tudo isso. E um assunto para conversar interessante de qualquer maneira".

As an example, here is a Celine Dion song originally done in French:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mL6G...lzdGUgZW5jb3Jl

Which years later she re-recorded in Spanish:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mY_1xamaPiw

Generally speaking, the more languages you know, the easier to learn a new one.

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Originally Posted by Incal

Generally speaking, the more languages you know, the easier to learn a new one.

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Sort of, though if you know Swahili will you learn Japanese faster too?

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Originally Posted by Tooting Carmen

Write that sentence in Dutch and see how it compares. On the other hand:

"Je pense toujours que ma connaissance d'hollandais vraiment aidait mon anglais, malgre tout ca. C'est un sujet a converser interessant de tout facon".
"Yo pienso todavia que mi conocimiento del holandes verdaderamente ayudaba mi ingles, a pesar de todo eso. Es un asunto para conversar interesante de cualquier forma".
"Eu penso ainda do que o meu conhecimento do holandes verdadeiramente ajudava o meu ingles, a pessar de tudo isso. E um assunto para conversar interessante de qualquer maneira".

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"Ik denk nog steeds dat mijn kennis van het Nederlands ondanks alles mijn Engels enorm heeft geholpen. Het is sowieso een interessant onderwerp om over te praten."
"I still think that despite everything, my knowledge of Dutch has helped my English enormously. It's an interesting topic to talk about anyway."

But language is so more than just lexicography alone.

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Originally Posted by Tooting Carmen

Sort of, though if you know Swahili will you learn Japanese faster too?

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Faster as if you didn't know any other language? Of course.

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Originally Posted by Dandelion

"Ik denk nog steeds dat mijn kennis van het Nederlands ondanks alles mijn Engels enorm heeft geholpen. Het is sowieso een interessant onderwerp om over te praten."
"I still think that despite everything, my knowledge of Dutch has helped my English enormously. It's an interesting topic to talk about anyway."

But language is so more than just lexicography alone.

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Of course. But still, doesn't my comparison above between Spanish and Portuguese and even between Spanish and French prove my point?

English is kind of an outlier though, I believe other Germanic languages could be closer to one another, even comparing West Germanic no North Germanic ones. Not only vocab but in parts grammar, pronunciation and syntax too.

I'd like to know how similar different groups of Slavic languages are, i.e. West, East and South Slavic languages.