Learning a third or fourth language gets easier — not because you get smarter, but because you stop starting from zero. I’m fluent in Spanish, conversational in French, and currently building Italian. Every time, the fastest gains come from hunting for overlap before I even open a vocab list. This is that overlap, laid out the way I wish someone had handed it to me on day one. A working map of where these languages line up, and where they don’t. Why Spanish helps with Italian at all Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Romanian all descend from Latin, specifically Vulgar Latin, with the word “vulgar” coming from vulgaris, meaning “of…