Don’t sleep on Spanish if it’s being offered, it’s the 4th most spoken language on the planet and is heavily woven throughout the US.

I took it in high school but didn’t solidify it until adulthood, when we had Venezuelans marry into the family. And it’s a fantastic and fun language. Can’t recommend it highly enough.

Esperanto

Do you only have those 2 choices?

For the future and education wise (Idk your age maybe you are young) I would choose mandarin.

But if you have to choose between the 2, french is more broad. Also once you learn one romance language (except for romanian) it’s usualy easier to learn the other.

中文

Flutter

I’d learn Mandarin but it’s very hard.

I learnt Spanish and use it every day, it is easy.

Don’t learn Italian as a way of learning French, just learn French. Language learning is very difficult, and the most useful language when it comes to learning French is English anyway.

I gave up on French because I couldn’t figure out the vowels (and because other languages were a priority), so it’s important to come up with a strategy for that.

Did you know? French, Italian, and Spanish are all Romance languages; they are part of a large family of languages that evolved from Latin over hundreds of years. That’s why they’re similar. While I don’t have the necessary citations on hand, learning a language might make it slightly easier to learn, or at least have a basic “I know a few hundred words” understanding of its sibling languages.

(I saw that other people have typed similar things but I already wrote it so I’m just gonna send it anyway.)

I’d go with Python.

Whichever interests you more. Flip a coin and when it’s in the air ask yourself which you’re hoping it lands on, pick that and ignore the result.

One will help you learn the other eventually though. It’s a very long process to learn a language though so take it one at a time.

If you do it for fun, pick Italian if you find it more appealing. It’s quite challenging coming from English, and probably you won’t go beyond a basic level for a lack of real-world chances to practice it, but it wouldn’t matter to enjoy the process.

If you want something you may have a chance to use, check Spanish which is remarkably similar to Italian.

If your goal was fluency, immigration, or finding employment, I would suggest learning the language of the countries where you would most like to go and which you have the most opportunity to practice in person. It sounds like you want to learn recreationally though, in which case I would say choose the one that excites you more, as you’re more likely to continue learning that way. You can also start by learning the very basics of both and see which you find more engaging before committing to studying one more intensively.

especially since i can’t yet differentiate what people are saying and the way things are spelled in french.

French orthography isn’t great, but if the whole nation of Canada learns it passively, you can figure it out too. Go for the more major one.

I took some French classes and picked up some Italian by spending some time in Italy. I wouldn’t say either language is easier, but I’d say Italians are (at least back in my day) incredibly patient with non-Itlalian speakers flipping through a dictionary in order to talk to them. Anyway, French and Italian are related (both Romance languages) and speaking either one will make the other easier.

I find spoken Quebec French almost unintelligible even though I can somewhat understand French from France. Even French people have some trouble with Quebec French, especially as you go further east and the dialect gets stronger. It’s a bigger difference than the difference between regional accents in the US. But, written French is mostly the same between France and Quebec, so at least you’ll be able to read the signs.

I also once had the idea of improving my French by spending some time in Quebec, but then realized I’d end up speaking the Quebec dialect, which apparently is comparable to hillbilly English in how it sounds to French people.

When learning a language it helps reading books and watching movies and shows in the language. Maybe thinking about which language has more books/movies/shows that interest you could help you decide.