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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

#161

Post by Nadya »

intertextuality wrote: post #123
jdietrich wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anki is very powerful, but Memrise is a more user-friendly option that includes ready-made card decks for most popular languages. https://www.memrise.com/

You don't want ready-made decks except at the very beginning. Once you get past words like "mom" that have very obvious usage, these decks aren't great because they lack examples and structure. Instead, one should use Anki to make their own decks with words that they find whilst learning the language.

You can, and I have, make your own Memrise courses as well. I'm better at remembering to visit a website than I am at remembering to open a program. It's a silly difference, but I almost always have a browser open and every new tab I open serves as a reminder. I always fail to remember to open/use software. The times I've tried converting to Anki rather than relying that Memrise will continue to be available, my study time per week dropped by about 95%~.

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

#162

Post by rjsw »

adrianN wrote: post #141
rjsw wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you listen to the evening news on TV each night you will easily get up to 6 hours per week. Look up any new words in the dictionary.

10000 hours to proficiency divided by 6 is just 1666 weeks or 32 years. That's ignoring that just listening to the news is not the deliberate practice that is supposed to be accumulated for the proverbial 10000 hours.

I wasn't claiming that 6 hours a week was enough by itself to master a language, the parent comment suggested that people would find it hard to fit this much practice into their life.

I can use myself as an example of doing this kind of thing, when I'm in France I don't watch any english language media, and seeing a big improvement in my French.

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

#163

Post by bpyne »

Aromasin wrote: post #114
bpyne wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make a fair point. I can understand fear about a loss of cultural identity. But, speaking from a strategic standpoint, if you want to preserve the language, you need to get more people speaking it. Corrections can come later. It's like a child learning a musical instrument. Rare is the child who can tolerate being stopped every few seconds with corrections. But, teach a child to play a song in a rudimentary way o…

But how are you meant to fight off bandits with your sword arm if you're travelling on the right hand side of the road?! Utterly irresponsible. /s

LOL! Love it. We could learn a fair bit about humor from the British as well.

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

#164

Post by sowbug »

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…

That's too bad, but I have a hopeful story for you.

I have a few years of high school and college French fortified by a couple months spent living in Lyon with a French family. Other than an hour between CDG and the TGV station, I'd never been to Paris until 2016, which was long after my French studies.

That 2016 trip was disappointing. I'd mentally rehearse the restaurant order while looking at the menu, or check Google Translate for the exact words describing the thing I needed from the store, and I had the same experience as you: a strong feeling I was exceedingly boring to the other person, and please let's switch to the easy path to get this drudgery over with. Speaking French was a big attraction to why I was looking forward to going to France. It was a letdown.

But three years later, in 2019, I found myself back in Paris, and this time I had several successful non-phatic discussions with natives that I'd characterize as enjoyable in any language. What changed?

Strangely enough, the change was learning Mandarin, which I started doing last year. Aside from my being an adult, Mandarin is hard for anyone to learn as a second language, so I never expected to reach conversational fluency in it. And my resulting attitude every time I'm talking to a native Mandarin speaker is "well, fuck it, I'm never going to be good at this, but I have to start somewhere, so let's just try to assemble what I'm thinking out of the 500 words I know, and see what happens." It's a totally different attitude from my well-studied, well-schooled, well-read, but not well-practiced French brain. And while I still concede I'll never be fluent in Mandarin, I'm saying an awful lot more to Mandarin speakers than I would have a single year into my French studies.

This lack of inhibition led into a better experience in France. I didn't bother trying to construct full, stammering sentences in restaurants. I just said the numbers and nouns and gave one-word answers to whatever the server asked -- insisting on switching to English would have actually prolonged our time together. But in circumstances where conversation would have helped pass the time -- cab ride where the driver looks like he's wondering something about us, or standing in line where all of us were clearly confused by the same situation, etc. -- I just went for it, with the same fuck-it attitude, and it worked out. We had our short, meaningful, optional conversations that scratched the "I spoke real French in real France" itch.

In short, yes, unfortunately, the problem really is you (and me). But it's fixable. Stop thinking "I'm about to speak French." Just let it happen.

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

#165

Post by bgilroy26 »

davidivadavid wrote: post #156
davidy123 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pronounced in three syllables (de re-an) https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/de_rien

Nope. Two syllables is correct, as you can see by looking at the IPA transliteration, /də ʁjɛ̃/.

"j" is a semi-vowel so you're both right!

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

#166

Post by jeffreyrogers »

SomeHacker44 wrote: post #45
imtringued wrote: post #16

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…

In college Mandarin courses we were required to learn 30 words a day. That was a nearly impossible task for 20 year old me and required three hours of study a day on top of the 1:20 or 1:50 long daily class. To think a person more than twice that age can learn 30 words a day is, to my aged brain, ludicrous. Maybe it’s just me, but my learning ability is now vastly below what it was in my teens or even college.

It's hard for native Mandarin speakers too. Lots of educated Chinese can't write some of the characters anymore, especially as handwriting becomes less important.

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

#167

Post by arkh »

onli wrote: post #64
arkh wrote: post #21

> If required, I can read French books. Not reading books will limit your vocabulary. If you read when required, you don't read.

It's not like it's actually possible to comfortably read french books when you learn the language, with their specific grammatical tenses only used in literature. I speak French fluently and at home but I'd be incapable to read a complicated book in that language (while I'm absolutely able to read English books and do that all the time, and speak English way less often).

English is not my native language. I've been reading English books mostly for pleasure for years: when books main language is English that's what I get (thanks Amazon). At first it was hard, it is still hard when trying a book in a domain I've not encountered a lot. And I'm still reading faster in my language but there are not a lot of modern English books I'd consider impossible to read.

And I'm far from fluent.

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

#168

Post by intertextuality »

Nadya wrote: post #161
intertextuality wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't want ready-made decks except at the very beginning. Once you get past words like "mom" that have very obvious usage, these decks aren't great because they lack examples and structure. Instead, one should use Anki to make their own decks with words that they find whilst learning the language.

You can, and I have, make your own Memrise courses as well. I'm better at remembering to visit a website than I am at remembering to open a program. It's a silly difference, but I almost always have a browser open and every new tab I open serves as a reminder. I always fail to remember to open/use software. The times I've tried converting to Anki rather than relying that Memrise will continue to be available, my stud…

You actually can use anki online, it's ankiweb.net. You can't modify decks on the website but it works for studying daily cards. Otherwise I use the mac osx or ios apps.

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

#169

Post by fatnoah »

hluska wrote: post #95

This is anecdotal and I am a sample of one, so do with this as you will. I have learned to speak French at two particular times. When I was very young, my Grandma Yvette often spoke French to me and I spent three years in French immersion. Now, I am an adult who barely speaks the language, but I have a daughter who I badly want to bless with the French language. So, I’m learning again... I have noticed two things. Th…

I grew up in NH where a fair number of people (half of my own family included) are fluent in Quebecois French and also took 4 years of French in high school.

One summer between junior and senior years, I took a road trip to Montreal and tried out my French. I was thoroughly embarrassed and lived the OPs nightmare. The residents I spoke with seemed actively offended by my French and would smile condescendingly and speak to me in English.

During senior year, I was able to spend a week in France. It was a totally different experience. I spoke nothing but French for the week and was able to feed and otherwise care for myself. The locals seemed to genuinely appreciate my efforts to speak the language. The capstone was later in the week when a 2am knock on my door woke me up. A younger member of our group was having serious homesickness and wanted to call home, but couldn't figure out how to make the call. I went to the lobby with her to ask the desk clerk how to make the call. I ended up having a great conversation with the desk clerk who was only a few years older than me and was in Paris for university. We chatted for about 30 minutes about life, things we liked, cool things to see in Paris, etc. It was awesome!

For OP, give it a shot. The only way to get better is to do it!

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

#170

Post by scottlocklin »

bambax wrote: post #136
bpyne wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I may have simply run into rude people. Why did you think those people were rude, instead of, say, trying to be helpful? French is difficult to understand when spoken badly, even for natives (maybe esp. for natives). We don't understand what people are trying to say -- really. We don't try to be condescending: we truly do. not. understand. I get that foreigners / tourists may not believe it, but it is true.

Untrue: the last time I was in Portugal, I had a couple of marvelous conversations in my lousy French with older Portuguese shopkeeps (whose French was probably similarly lousy -it is more common among older people to speak French than English, as many of their generation emigrated to France for work). I'm pretty sure the French dislike how accented, goofy foreigners sound when mispronouncing their language. I always found it a relief when they switched to much better English, as French is pretty hard.

I now have some lousy Portuguese, so we'll see if the Portuguese people are more gregarious with their language or if they ask me to fall back to French.

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