The Benefits of Failing at French
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The Benefits of Failing at French
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Re: The Benefits of Failing at French
#2I'm French and I do realize it's a pretty complicated language to learn. Ridiculous amounts of exceptions to every single rule, dozens of tenses (which no one ever uses), lack of general structure, arbitrary genders, it's got it all.
My personal piece of advice to anyone: don't waste your time learning French, it's a dying language. Go for Spanish if you need a latin language, it's at least used in Spain, the United States, Central and South America. And once you speak Spanish, French comes rather easy (with the benefit of Italian and Portuguese becoming almost trivial).
Re: The Benefits of Failing at French
#3I'm French and I do realize it's a pretty complicated language to learn. Ridiculous amounts of exceptions to every single rule, dozens of tenses (which no one ever uses), lack of general structure, arbitrary genders, it's got it all. My personal piece of advice to anyone: don't waste your time learning French, it's a dying language. Go for Spanish if you need a latin language, it's at least used in Spain, the United…
[deleted]
Re: The Benefits of Failing at French
#4I'm French and I do realize it's a pretty complicated language to learn. Ridiculous amounts of exceptions to every single rule, dozens of tenses (which no one ever uses), lack of general structure, arbitrary genders, it's got it all. My personal piece of advice to anyone: don't waste your time learning French, it's a dying language. Go for Spanish if you need a latin language, it's at least used in Spain, the United…
French is an official language in 29 countries and spoken by more than 200 million people. It's probably the most widely learned foreign language after English. It's also one of the top 10 languages on the internet. I'm genuinely curious why you would call it a dying language.
Re: The Benefits of Failing at French
#5Speaking of personal experience, when begun at an early age, learning a language will be really easier and almost innate. I started learning French at the age of 8 within school classes, then English at the age of 11 and finally Spanish when 17. I am thus not as fluent in Spanish as I am in French or English BUT since French is a dying language and way complicated I find English to be the perfect language to use, even on a personal level and despite the fact Arabic is my native tongue.
Bottom line is, if you are a parent and wish for your kids to learn a particular language, start as they are young.
Re: The Benefits of Failing at French
#6I'm French and I do realize it's a pretty complicated language to learn. Ridiculous amounts of exceptions to every single rule, dozens of tenses (which no one ever uses), lack of general structure, arbitrary genders, it's got it all. My personal piece of advice to anyone: don't waste your time learning French, it's a dying language. Go for Spanish if you need a latin language, it's at least used in Spain, the United…
Would you say French is more or less complicated than English (from how much you can evaluate the two fairly, though it seems like your English is excellent)? I'm frequently catching myself on how hard English must be to learn...having it pushed on to me in school is only second in born-privilege to being a U.S. citizen by birth. My Vietnamese parents have been in the states nearly 40 years, speaking English in their jobs and to me everday, and it's still off.
I took French in high school just because most everyone else was taking Spanish...that was not a good attempt at rebelling :). I do love the language though, but liking it has no relation to having the discipline to be fluent in it...having situations where you need to speak it is the key factor, and that's not a frequent situation in the States.
Still, I'm almost certain that if I hadn't taken French (or Spanish), I would've never known what the nuance of something like the subjunctive mood, in French or in English, and I like thinking through sentence structure when writing and reading...not sure if that casual academic pleasure offers the same level of brain benefits the OP refers to.
Re: The Benefits of Failing at French
#7I'm French and I do realize it's a pretty complicated language to learn. Ridiculous amounts of exceptions to every single rule, dozens of tenses (which no one ever uses), lack of general structure, arbitrary genders, it's got it all. My personal piece of advice to anyone: don't waste your time learning French, it's a dying language. Go for Spanish if you need a latin language, it's at least used in Spain, the United…
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Re: The Benefits of Failing at French
#8I'm French and I do realize it's a pretty complicated language to learn. Ridiculous amounts of exceptions to every single rule, dozens of tenses (which no one ever uses), lack of general structure, arbitrary genders, it's got it all. My personal piece of advice to anyone: don't waste your time learning French, it's a dying language. Go for Spanish if you need a latin language, it's at least used in Spain, the United…
French is an official language in 29 countries and spoken by more than 200 million people. It's probably the most widely learned foreign language after English. It's also one of the top 10 languages on the internet. I'm genuinely curious why you would call it a dying language.
French is a really, really, really formal language! It's perfect to use in literature because it's kind of "pretentious". But on a daily basis, you'd find that the rules are simply not worth it.
Re: The Benefits of Failing at French
#9I'm French and I do realize it's a pretty complicated language to learn. Ridiculous amounts of exceptions to every single rule, dozens of tenses (which no one ever uses), lack of general structure, arbitrary genders, it's got it all. My personal piece of advice to anyone: don't waste your time learning French, it's a dying language. Go for Spanish if you need a latin language, it's at least used in Spain, the United…
It could certainly be worse - there are no declensions.
Re: The Benefits of Failing at French
#10I'm French and I do realize it's a pretty complicated language to learn. Ridiculous amounts of exceptions to every single rule, dozens of tenses (which no one ever uses), lack of general structure, arbitrary genders, it's got it all. My personal piece of advice to anyone: don't waste your time learning French, it's a dying language. Go for Spanish if you need a latin language, it's at least used in Spain, the United…
Would you say French is more or less complicated than English (from how much you can evaluate the two fairly, though it seems like your English is excellent)? I'm frequently catching myself on how hard English must be to learn...having it pushed on to me in school is only second in born-privilege to being a U.S. citizen by birth. My Vietnamese parents have been in the states nearly 40 years, speaking English in their…
I am neither native French not English speaker who learned both (although I forgot a lot of French ever since).
English is much easier in the beginning, but it is very hard to really master it. Prepositions are main culprit, it is basically random system. French is harder in the beginning (conjugations/ le vs la), but gets easier and more systematic afterwards.