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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

#231

Post by malpighien »

cageface wrote: post #27

I learned Vietnamese in my mid 40s. I think it’s just a matter of persistence and patience. As adults we’re less willing to be novices for an extended period of time.

Imho the way languages are taught is too often counter intuitive to the way we communicate. The issue is not accepting to be a novice but the harmful doxa dictating that in order to learn a language you first need to start thinking dumb before expressing a complex line of thoughts. It is mind numbing to be deprived of coordination when expressing yourself and the resulting brain atrophy caused by years of saying My name is.. I live in... I have... This stuff is such and such etc... is the biggest deterrent to learn a new language and become fluent in it.

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

#232

Post by ebruchez »

foldr wrote: post #202
davidy123 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I should have specifically called out the audible pronunciation, where it's clearly more than two syllables in pronunciation. As pointed out below, it has "two and a half" syllables, I guess the site has no category for that.

No, you're misperceiving "rien" as having two syllables because you are (I'm guessing) a native English speaker. You can't just "hear" how many syllables something has as syllabification rules are language-specific. The nearest corresponding sequence of English phonemes would have to be split into two syllables - but English has different syllabification rules.

Native French speaker here. Maybe it's confusing to discuss this in terms of syllables unless you are a linguist. If you just want to learn how to say the word, what matters is how people actually say the word. Specifically, you pronounce "rien" in one quick shot. (So it's definitely closer to one syllable if we care about this. But if I am to say the word very slowly to teach somebody how it sounds, it might progressively become closer to two syllables. Languages are complicated.)

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

#233

Post by hprotagonist »

>And I revel in small triumphs, like [...] that French Jews and Christians use the familiar “tu” when addressing God.

English speakers do as well, but the form of address is so deprecated in modern usage that it sounds more formal instead of less. The English familiar-you is thou, and is/was only used with intimate relationships.

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

#234

Post by FeteCommuniste »

mediocrejoker wrote: post #138
19690401 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Consider the word “de rien”. It is so simple. Three syllables. Not that it changes your point, but "de rien" is two syllables!

I only took a few years of French in Canadian high school but we were also taught this as three syllables.

"Rien" has the same number of syllables as all the other consonant sound + "ien" words: one. (tien, sien, chien, bien, lien)

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

#236

Post by FeteCommuniste »

GnarfGnarf wrote: post #185

My wife swears that when I say "en on in un" there is no way these are four distinct sounds.

Depending on what region someone comes from, "un" and "in" may indeed be the same sound or very close: https://www.cairn.info/revue-la-linguistique-2001-2-page-33....

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

#237

Post by intrasight »

_yawn wrote: post #172
fatnoah wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 spe…

People in Quebec are actively hostile to other languages in general, mostly for historical reasons. Probably not the best place to get started haha

And they speak French as it was spoken in the 1600s

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

#238

Post by spockz »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #214
dsjoerg wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are Duolingo/Babel not doing that they should?

They're shit for teaching grammar, verb conjugations and the vocabulary is quite limited, in some cases not even close to what native speakers use.

I learned Italian from my mother and grandmother and other family so I can do okay in general conversation. However, conversing with young people is a different thing altogether. They speak faster and less articulated, and use a completely different vocabulary/slang. So it is not just about which technology tools you use but also who you talk with.

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

#239

Post by irq11 »

blacksqr wrote: post #230
panglott wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that the tools you need are "listening to and interacting with people in the target language". Human language is a problem of interpreting the creative social signals of other human beings, and there's no way to automate that. With the Web, YouTube and internet radio, the actual amount of target-language material that a person can expose themselves to is hugely, hugely more available than it was 20-30…

The fact that digital tools can't be used to achieve total native-level fluency shouldn't be used as a reason not to try to improve what's available. It should be possible at least to use digital tools to learn to listen to and understand foreign language media at a useful level... I'd love to be able to watch a movie in the language I'm studying and understand 90% of what's going on. But that seems like an impossibl…

If you go to language-learning forums (e.g. the Japanese learning subreddit) you’ll find a lot of people who spend 95% of their time wanking with learning tools, and 5% (or less) actually studying. Everyone thinks the tools are the problem. Moreover, fixing tools is easier and less painful than doing the grueling work of learning a language. As a result, lots of people get caught in the trap of believing that fluency is One Good Tool Away. It isn’t.

The most important part of the parent’s comment is the one you overlooked: you need to listen and interact with people in the native language. The more hours you spend talking with people in your target language, the better you’ll become. Tools help on the margins, but there’s no magic bullet that will eliminate the time and exposure required.

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