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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

#81

Post by grecy »

atemerev wrote: post #49

The problem with French is that the French are very sensitive to mistakes. If I speak bad English (I am Russian), everybody is still happy, the worst thing can happen is I’ll get corrected, and in 99.9% of cases it’s not even that. If I speak bad French with a French person... may God have mercy upon my soul. Especially if I forgot to say bonjour/bonsoir first (abomination! burn the heretic!)

I learned my French in West Africa - everyone there is extremely happy and friendly and very willing to tolerate my terrible accent.

It made learning French as fun & enjoyable as learning Spanish in Central & South America.

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

#82

Post by masklinn »

oogway8020 wrote: post #61

I started learning french at 50 to be an example to my teenage son, encouraging him to learn a second language rather than playing fortnite. It is harder when you are not in french speaking area/country. Everything around us is english. I listen ici.radio-canada during commute and after 6 month in, I can understand 60-70%. But if I would be in Quebec listening french all day, I think learning would be much faster eve…

> But if I would be in Quebec listening french all day, I think learning would be much faster even at middle age.

Full immersion is obviously a huge booster to fluency by a mix of opportunity (you're basically learning and practicing all the time) and necessity (you want to navigate the country without being stuck to a dictionary or translation application).

As long as you have a working basis and don't hang out too much with expats from your own country / first language (it's obviously comfortable and easy to slip into an insular community) even 3~6 months will do absolute wonders.

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

#83

Post by robaato »

dudul wrote: post #60
atemerev wrote: post #49

The problem with French is that the French are very sensitive to mistakes. If I speak bad English (I am Russian), everybody is still happy, the worst thing can happen is I’ll get corrected, and in 99.9% of cases it’s not even that. If I speak bad French with a French person... may God have mercy upon my soul. Especially if I forgot to say bonjour/bonsoir first (abomination! burn the heretic!)

They are sensitive because even what may seem to you like a tiny mistake, or a slight mispronunciation can completely change the meaning of a sentence or make it impossible to understand. Broken English is everywhere, people got used to it. This is not the case for other, less pervasive languages.

True enough, but I remember being accused of deliberate misunderstanding by friends when they emphasised wrong syllable in English. Some minutes later with me racking my brain I might come up with the answer. But the mispronunciation had sent me off on the wrong track totally.

The fact that I speak other languages helps in that I am better prepared for likely sorts of mistakes, but even so.

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

#84

Post by bpyne »

zorked wrote: post #72
atemerev wrote: post #49

The problem with French is that the French are very sensitive to mistakes. If I speak bad English (I am Russian), everybody is still happy, the worst thing can happen is I’ll get corrected, and in 99.9% of cases it’s not even that. If I speak bad French with a French person... may God have mercy upon my soul. Especially if I forgot to say bonjour/bonsoir first (abomination! burn the heretic!)

This is very correct. English's status as an international language does wonders - you can speak in any terrible accent, get all the vowels wrong, invert word orders, ignore plurals and be wrong about every preposition and people will make an effort to understand you. Now for German, you can speak any of the awful dialects natively and it's fine. But never, never dare Hochdeutsch with with a _foreign_ accent as peopl…

I visited Germany (West Germany at the time) in the Summer of 1988. At the time, I had taken one course in German (Hochdeutsch) at my university. People seemed very friendly and willing to speak German or English. Mistakes were tolerated and they provided assistance when I couldn't remember a word. It was a short trip. I visited four cities. But, people were consistent throughout.

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

#85

Post by atemerev »

renox wrote: post #77
atemerev wrote: post #49

The problem with French is that the French are very sensitive to mistakes. If I speak bad English (I am Russian), everybody is still happy, the worst thing can happen is I’ll get corrected, and in 99.9% of cases it’s not even that. If I speak bad French with a French person... may God have mercy upon my soul. Especially if I forgot to say bonjour/bonsoir first (abomination! burn the heretic!)

> The problem with French is that the French are very sensitive to mistakes. Define sensitive? When my wife (who is Czech) or my colleague (who is Venezuelan) make French errors, I correct them the same way I correct my children: not because it is annoying me (I don't speak Czech and my Spanish is terrible!) but because I want to help them. And yes, if someone speaks bad French, I'll switch to English but that's not…

No, your attitude is fine. I am OK when somebody corrects me. When they switch to English because they think English will be comfortable for both sides, this is also fine.

It is rolling one's eyes and immediate passive aggressive remarks that I hate, and they are quite common...

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

#86

Post by atemerev »

dudul wrote: post #60
atemerev wrote: post #49

The problem with French is that the French are very sensitive to mistakes. If I speak bad English (I am Russian), everybody is still happy, the worst thing can happen is I’ll get corrected, and in 99.9% of cases it’s not even that. If I speak bad French with a French person... may God have mercy upon my soul. Especially if I forgot to say bonjour/bonsoir first (abomination! burn the heretic!)

They are sensitive because even what may seem to you like a tiny mistake, or a slight mispronunciation can completely change the meaning of a sentence or make it impossible to understand. Broken English is everywhere, people got used to it. This is not the case for other, less pervasive languages.

If you try to speak Russian, no matter how broken, you will be encouraged and praised by every Russian person out there, no exceptions. The same is with Spanish. With French, it doesn't work this way, for some reason.

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

#87

Post by hluska »

atemerev wrote: post #49

The problem with French is that the French are very sensitive to mistakes. If I speak bad English (I am Russian), everybody is still happy, the worst thing can happen is I’ll get corrected, and in 99.9% of cases it’s not even that. If I speak bad French with a French person... may God have mercy upon my soul. Especially if I forgot to say bonjour/bonsoir first (abomination! burn the heretic!)

I’m a sample of one, but my experience with French people has been much different. As long as I’ve been open about being a beginner (from Western Canada) who badly wants to practice, I’ve actually been quite pleasantly surprised by how hard French speakers work to make me feel comfortable.

For example, just last week, I asked a French speaking couple I know to help me pronounce “de rien”. When I say it, I sound like I dun just gots off the potato patch. They quite literally tag teamed me, one started working on drills to help me roll the ‘r’. Another started making a list of other similar words (so that I could sound stupid across a wider range of vocabulary).

It was quite amazing. But, with the exact same people, if I just speak French without prefacing it with a request for help, they switch to English instantly.

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

#88

Post by atemerev »

bpyne wrote: post #78
atemerev wrote: post #49

The problem with French is that the French are very sensitive to mistakes. If I speak bad English (I am Russian), everybody is still happy, the worst thing can happen is I’ll get corrected, and in 99.9% of cases it’s not even that. If I speak bad French with a French person... may God have mercy upon my soul. Especially if I forgot to say bonjour/bonsoir first (abomination! burn the heretic!)

An anecdote from a trip to Paris, I walked into a store to look for a gift for someone back home. After making the greeting in French, I started to explain what I was looking for. The woman stopped me. With a dramatic eye roll she said, "Speak English, pleeeease." An anecdote from a trip to Quebec city. My wife and I walked up to a hostess to inquire about getting a table for dinner. We greeted her in French. As soon…

Sure, I am passionate about Russian grammar too, and I used to correct mistakes of native Russians writing in Russian (I stopped doing that when I learned that dyslexia is quite real and common, and I now feel sorry for that).

However, any foreigner trying to speak Russian, no matter how broken or incorrect, will meet nothing but praise and encouragement from other Russians.

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

#89

Post by taejo »

bpyne wrote: post #78
atemerev wrote: post #49

The problem with French is that the French are very sensitive to mistakes. If I speak bad English (I am Russian), everybody is still happy, the worst thing can happen is I’ll get corrected, and in 99.9% of cases it’s not even that. If I speak bad French with a French person... may God have mercy upon my soul. Especially if I forgot to say bonjour/bonsoir first (abomination! burn the heretic!)

An anecdote from a trip to Paris, I walked into a store to look for a gift for someone back home. After making the greeting in French, I started to explain what I was looking for. The woman stopped me. With a dramatic eye roll she said, "Speak English, pleeeease." An anecdote from a trip to Quebec city. My wife and I walked up to a hostess to inquire about getting a table for dinner. We greeted her in French. As soon…

> An anecdote from a trip to Quebec city. My wife and I walked up to a hostess to inquire about getting a table for dinner. We greeted her in French. As soon as we started to ask about a table, she stopped us and said, "No no no no. This will be in English."

I was under the impression (having never been to Quebec) that she was in fact breaking the law by doing this.

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

#90

Post by shawabawa3 »

hluska wrote: post #87
atemerev wrote: post #49

The problem with French is that the French are very sensitive to mistakes. If I speak bad English (I am Russian), everybody is still happy, the worst thing can happen is I’ll get corrected, and in 99.9% of cases it’s not even that. If I speak bad French with a French person... may God have mercy upon my soul. Especially if I forgot to say bonjour/bonsoir first (abomination! burn the heretic!)

I’m a sample of one, but my experience with French people has been much different. As long as I’ve been open about being a beginner (from Western Canada) who badly wants to practice, I’ve actually been quite pleasantly surprised by how hard French speakers work to make me feel comfortable. For example, just last week, I asked a French speaking couple I know to help me pronounce “de rien”. When I say it, I sound like…

> help me pronounce “derrien”

Do you mean "de rien"? (As in "no problem", literally "it was nothing")

I agree r's are definitely the hardest thing to pronounce in french (as an english speaker at least). I think "rire" is the hardest word in the french language

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