Romanica Intercom

Romanica is a fantastic website I've just come across, which is aimed at teaching language students to get to a certain reading level in FIVE romance languages at the same time.  Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese or Catalan texts are displayed simultaneously, so that you can see the similarities and differences between them.You will need a fairly good level of at least one of the languages, as I have not been able to find translation in English.

This is great if you are learning more than one Romance language at a time, the difficulties in learning say Italian and Spanish at the same time are reknowned, as learners often get confused with vocabulary, syntax and grammar, mixing the two when they speak or write it.

I think this is only really helpful to learn passive skills - do not expect to try it and learn to speak another language. I sometimes need to read in Catalan or Portuguese for my job, so I will try it for these languages and report back if it becomes much easier - at the moment I can just about read both with my knowledge of other languages and a lot of help from a dictionary!

There is also audio, so you can hear what the languages sound like and acquire and ear for them, and 'floating help' highlights certain words or features of the language and gives the equivalent in all five languages.

http://www.romanicaintercom.com/