After spending some time on Memrise and learning 272 words in French, I felt much more comfortable reading parallel texts in French. This comfort isn't something I can objectively measure, but the subjective difference is huge, and I think I could measure adherence rates if I were called on to be more scientific.
I own two lovely books that are anthologies of great French writers, with the left side being the original and the right being a translation.
I do not think, to be clear, that I could do the same thing with Turkish or Russian or such after so few words (my head hurts just thinking about it). French parallel text reading is possible so quickly because of 1.) cognates with English 2.) cognates with Spanish 3.) (the least important) words I have picked up from my flashcard-like study. Nonetheless, this has been a real confidence boaster. It makes me think I can read Italian classics one day as well.
Lastly finally giving in to my desire to learn French seems to have re-motivated me in Spanish. After the workout of a few pages of French, it is nice to be able to move to much more freely through another foreign language. It shows me how much progress I have made in Spanish.
