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It’s Hard to Learn French in Middle Age

nytimes.com

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Re: It’s Hard to Learn French in Middle Age

#11

Post by bambax »

> And I revel in small triumphs, like discovering that a woolen ball on a sweater is a “boulouche”

It's not. It's "bouloche" -- https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/bouloche

> When my kids brought home notices telling me to check their hair for “poux” (pronounced “poo”), I correctly deduced that it meant lice. But later, in a first-aid course, I was perplexed when the instructor told us to immediately check an unconscious person for “poux.” He was telling us to check for “pouls” — a pulse, pronounced identically.

There are homophones in many (most? all?) languages; but in this case "poux" are almost always plural (les poux / des poux) whereas a pulse is always singular (le pouls).

"Check his pulse" would be said as "vérifiez son pouls" and "check if he's got lice", "vérifiez s'il a des poux": it seems hard or impossible for the author to mix them up.

Re: It’s Hard to Learn French in Middle Age

#13

Post by ekianjo »

bambax wrote: post #11

> And I revel in small triumphs, like discovering that a woolen ball on a sweater is a “boulouche” It's not. It's "bouloche" -- https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/bouloche > When my kids brought home notices telling me to check their hair for “poux” (pronounced “poo”), I correctly deduced that it meant lice. But later, in a first-aid course, I was perplexed when the instructor told us to immediately check an unconscious…

> It's not. It's "bouloche" -- https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/bouloche

That says a lot about the quality of peer review at the NYT.

Re: It’s Hard to Learn French in Middle Age

#14

Post by ido »

bambax wrote: post #11

> And I revel in small triumphs, like discovering that a woolen ball on a sweater is a “boulouche” It's not. It's "bouloche" -- https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/bouloche > When my kids brought home notices telling me to check their hair for “poux” (pronounced “poo”), I correctly deduced that it meant lice. But later, in a first-aid course, I was perplexed when the instructor told us to immediately check an unconscious…

    "Check his pulse" would be said as "vérifiez son pouls"
    and "check if he's got lice", "vérifiez s'il a des
    poux": it seems hard or impossible for the author to
    mix them up.
As someone who learned German as an adult (which also has lots of homophones + gendered nouns etc) I assure you it's not hard to make such mistakes.

Re: It’s Hard to Learn French in Middle Age

#15

Post by baud147258 »

bambax wrote: post #11

> And I revel in small triumphs, like discovering that a woolen ball on a sweater is a “boulouche” It's not. It's "bouloche" -- https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/bouloche > When my kids brought home notices telling me to check their hair for “poux” (pronounced “poo”), I correctly deduced that it meant lice. But later, in a first-aid course, I was perplexed when the instructor told us to immediately check an unconscious…

> And I revel in small triumphs, like discovering that a woolen ball on a sweater is a “boulouche”

I'm French and I discovered that word today.

Re: It’s Hard to Learn French in Middle Age

#16

Post by imtringued »

It's just a matter on how much time you spend learning the language.

Even if you only consider the time you spent in school merely learning your own native language those school lessons will add up to thousands of hours.

How many adults, who have already "learned" a foreign language, dedicate 6 hours per week purely on further improving their skills in that language for 12 years?

If you are worried about not knowing certain rare words then using a spaced repetition system with a word deck that contains the first 20000 or even 40000 words should help a lot. You will quickly rush through the words you already know. I can do 50 reviews in less than two minutes if I have memorized the words but 50 unknown words will take me at least 20 minutes. At a rate of 30 new words per day you can do 10000 words per year + half a year at the end to make sure every card reaches maturity.

Re: It’s Hard to Learn French in Middle Age

#17

Post by danieltillett »

mattmanser wrote: post #9
danieltillett wrote: post #5

I think the subtle thing missed here is the effort required to speak a second language well is not worth the effort. Just scraping by is good enough especially if you still have access to your first language. Why speak French well when for a fraction of the effort speaking poorly gets you 90% of the return.

People who rely on wit and charm as their social lubricant need it. I remember one place I worked had an exchange program between labs, we had a French girl in ours who seemed very shy and withdrawn, but the colleague who'd been to the French lab the year before (and was fluent in French) said she was an absolute riot and the soul of any party in France.

Well yes, but for most on HN I doubt that is an issue :)

Re: It’s Hard to Learn French in Middle Age

#18

Post by taoufix »

basetop wrote: post #12

Not sure how this is news. Learning anything, especially a new language, in middle age difficult. What am I missing here?

Nothing. Learning a new language at middle age is hard and demands a lot of effort.

Some languages are harder than others though. I leaned English in my twenties (20-25) it was easier than learning German (at 25+). Maybe that's because there is a lot of material in English compared to German (TV shows, Movies, Music).

I also tried Japanese, it's fairly easy to pick up daily phrases but reading/writing was almost impossible for me.

Re: It’s Hard to Learn French in Middle Age

#19

Post by coldtea »

basetop wrote: post #12

Not sure how this is news. Learning anything, especially a new language, in middle age difficult. What am I missing here?

Nuance? The article (behind a paywall alas) talks specifically about French, which could pose particular problems as a language / accent / etc.

Learning Italian for example could be much easier, even in middle age.

Re: It’s Hard to Learn French in Middle Age

#20

Post by coldtea »

adrianN wrote: post #3

Learning a language at any age is hard. It's just harder to fit in thousands of hours of deliberate practice in your thirties than in your teens. As the author correctly notes one needs to know tens of thousands of words to have a reasonable chance of getting through a text without encountering an unknown word. To get to that number a spaced repetition system is much more useful than sticky notes, but it doesn't help…

>Learning a language at any age is hard. It's just harder to fit in thousands of hours of deliberate practice in your thirties than in your teens.

Depends on the person and their budget. There are well off people (and quite poor people) with all the time in their hands to practice, because they hardly need to work. Doesn't need to be a billionaire, having a few houses to rent can be enough.

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