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The Benefits of Failing at French

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Re: The Benefits of Failing at French

#21

Post by dreamweapon »

VeejayRampay wrote: post #2

I'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…

Well it's dead to you, obviously.

My counter-advice to the above is that on an extremely deep, life experience level it doesn't matter how popular a language is, in numerical terms. Or what will come of that language 500 years from now.

What matters is what experiences open up to you, as individual, when you go visit (and live) in those countries, in this life, right. It's the people you meet -- and become friends with, perhaps fall in love and start a family with -- and the literature, the music, and poetry that keeps reading and listening into the dead of night and into your dreams -- that matter. Not the gender/case system, of the fact that can speak some generic version of it in 54 countries.

In that sense nearly every (major) language community is infinite, and unique. Maybe the one that's most meaningful for you will be a globally dominant language, like Spanish, Mandarin, or Arabic. Or maybe it will something far more "marginal", like Basque or Pashto.

But whichever it ends up being: whether that language is "alive" or "dead" to you will be a direct function of the energy and enthusiasm you invest in learning it, and (correspondingly) your love for the people who speak it, and their culture.

And not a function of whether you can go to a Barnes and Noble right now and find a shelf with 50 (mostly) mediocre books and interactive learning tools for it.

Re: The Benefits of Failing at French

#22

Post by yaantc »

danso wrote: post #6
VeejayRampay wrote: post #2

I'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'm French, so this will definitely color my judgement.

I find English to be rather simple. The grammar is as simple as can get, and due to it being the international language people are very open to weird accent (including ze frrrrench wane ;). This makes it easy to start, even with a pretty rough command of the language. Then the main challenge (IMHO) to a good mastery is the large vocabulary, and the very irregular pronunciation. But nobody expects that from a foreigner starting in English, which is a benefit of it being the international tongue I guess (spoken by all, mastered by... less).

On the other hand the French grammar is very complex. That's not specific to French, many languages are like this. Spanish and Italian are pretty close, and German is also complex (I tried the two first, but have no experience in the later). Still, it requires a significant upfront investment to get to a working level. There is also a cultural challenge: the expectation in French is that you have to speak properly. For a foreigner there is some tolerance of course, but still the culture has a strong bias on speaking correctly, and for some professional contexts it will matter. There's a lot of history there, but let's say that command of language has long been a class differentiator. Nothing unique to French, I would guess it's the same in British English for Great Britons. But in an "international English" context that's definitely not the case, and it helps get started. Another challenge is that words tend to be more overloaded in French (smaller vocabulary vs. English), which opens the door for a lot of double meaning. This exists in all language, but can be a challenge to a newcomer and is not as common in "international English".

So all in all, I'd guess international English is easier than French. In any case seriously learning another language and its culture is highly recommended, whatever your choice. It's really a mind opening experience, as any one will find that "obvious" things that everybody knows are actually just cultural conventions. So the more remote the culture, the bigger the gain on this account.

As for French dying, the number of speakers is actually increasing, mainly due Africa rising population and the large number of French speakers there.

Re: The Benefits of Failing at French

#23

Post by 11001 »

VeejayRampay wrote: post #2

I'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…

Compared to, say, Russian or Ukrainian French is really not that complicated. It also has way less "exceptions to every single rule" than English. You should choose a language based on your goals, not "how many countries use it" (and even by that metric French would still be really high up). For example, if you ever want to work in Canada knowing French would help you a lot more than knowing Spanish.

Re: The Benefits of Failing at French

#24

Post by jiggy2011 »

DanielStraight wrote: post #19
jiggy2011 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That figure includes partial speakers , so people who learned a little French in school but probably have a much better knowledge of say English. With the exception of France most countries that legitimately speak French as the main language are either tiny or third world.

Being spoken in the least developed countries seems more like a plus for French than a minus. As those countries develop, French will become even more important (assuming they still speak French). A language like German on the other hand will never experience this kind of organic growth because pretty much everywhere that speaks German is already well developed (and has negative or near-zero population growth, which…

Examples of French speaking countries would be Rwanda, Congo, Niger and Madagascar. You could be waiting a very long time for these to become significant economies.

Re: The Benefits of Failing at French

#25

Post by fenomas »

zwieback wrote: post #17
spindritf wrote: post #13

Short of cauterizing your own genitals, nothing seems like it would change who you are like speaking in an-other's language. Blech, I'd rather wear someone else's underwear, no thanks, I'll take the 12 credits but no way am I retaining anything. "Well, science says you lose the ability to learn languages as you get older." Oh, did NPR just interview TED? Dummies in other countries and dummies in the CIA learn as adul…

I love TLP but losing your accent is easier said than done. I started learning English when I was a few years old and I've lived in the US for 22 years speaking English 99% of the time. My German accent is still clearly there. I'm not sure what it would take at this point but it's not something that happens easily. I listen to the way other people pronounce words but hearing your own accent is hard. Interestingly, my…

I think TLP's accent advice falls squarely into the "fake it until you make it" category - like becoming a confident presenter by impersonating somebody confident when you get on stage. It's not that if you try hard your accent will go away, it's more that you (consciously) do an impression of the accent you're learning. So if you're studying German you go full Ahhhnold.

I didn't read that TLP column until I was mostly fluent in my second language, but in retrospect I think it's spot on (and one of his best - he can be a little hit or miss).

Re: The Benefits of Failing at French

#26

Post by dragonwriter »

AYBABTME wrote: post #12
danso wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'd say English is simpler than French because it doesn't have as many arbitrary exceptions. To begin, English doesn't give genders to every idea. English has much fewer irregular verbs. Conjugation in French is a party of special cases. Participes passés? I'm no authority on the subject, but here's what I gathered: during la Renaissance, some aristocrats made a game of overly complexifying the language such that the…

> English has much fewer irregular verbs.

English has, IIRC, far more irregular verbs than French but fewer conjugations to learn (for both regular and irregular verbs) and I think fewer regular patterns to learn.

> Conjugation in French is a party of special cases. Participes passés?

English has those, too. Its superficially simpler because for regular verbs (and some irregular ones that are irregular in other ways), the past participle is the same as the past tense, while in French for regular verbs the participe passé is different from any other conjugation.

But that superficial simplicity is, in a sense, one of the traps of English for non-native speakers.

Re: The Benefits of Failing at French

#27

Post by tawan »

I started to learn French a year ago and I made a lot of progress. There are just a few bugs left to fix in my own vocabulary management tool, and then I'm ready to learn some words, systematically well tracked and documented. ;)

Re: The Benefits of Failing at French

#28

Post by rakoo »

ubernostrum wrote: post #15
danso wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a native English speaker (born and raised in the US). In school -- over a decade ago -- I took six semesters of French courses, and I've done some immersive trips to Quebec (which admittedly is a different dialect, but at least helps a bit). Last week I was in Paris. Even with a refresh on grammar and vocabulary, I struggled a lot to communicate in French. The most difficult thing, for me, is the sentence struct…

> For example, in English I might ask "Where is (X)" or "Is this street (X)". In French, I need to flip those around to "(X), where is it" or "Here, this is (X), yes?"

I don't know where you got your French lessons but you've been mislead. Both "Where is (X)" and "Is this street (X)" translated directly are more correct than your alternatives:

    "Ou est (X)"
    "Est-ce que c'est la rue (X)"
> "Thanks of not to disturb"

Rather, "Thanks for not disturbing", which has the advantage of being understable in English:

    "Merci de ne pas déranger"

Re: The Benefits of Failing at French

#29

Post by rdtsc »

spindritf wrote: post #13

Short of cauterizing your own genitals, nothing seems like it would change who you are like speaking in an-other's language. Blech, I'd rather wear someone else's underwear, no thanks, I'll take the 12 credits but no way am I retaining anything. "Well, science says you lose the ability to learn languages as you get older." Oh, did NPR just interview TED? Dummies in other countries and dummies in the CIA learn as adul…

> . The accent will teach you the rhythm of the words and the grammar-

I think that in part is how kids learn too. I am watching my 2 year old learn two languages and I can see that easily. They have the accent down very well. Sometimes they would repeat syllables that sound meaningless, but it seems they are just like practice rounds.

Then I noticed they also get excited about a new word that has an "interesting" combination of syllables and sounds. They laugh at that and want me to repeat it. They have this detector "Oh, here is a new challenge, I might want to know more about it".

Re: The Benefits of Failing at French

#30

Post by slurry »

raverbashing wrote: post #18
spindritf wrote: post #13

Short of cauterizing your own genitals, nothing seems like it would change who you are like speaking in an-other's language. Blech, I'd rather wear someone else's underwear, no thanks, I'll take the 12 credits but no way am I retaining anything. "Well, science says you lose the ability to learn languages as you get older." Oh, did NPR just interview TED? Dummies in other countries and dummies in the CIA learn as adul…

"American exceptiono-isolationism isn't arrogance, it's a cognitive bias impressed on us from kindergarten when we learn that there are only two languages in the world, English and Everything Else." Actually the French suffer from this as well, thinking that every language has the rhythm of French, and only stressing the last syllables. Learning the accent first is an insteresting trick. But what it seems to me is th…

Actually the French suffer from this as well, thinking that every language has the rhythm of French, and only stressing the last syllables.

Having taught Latin to French speakers, I can confirm.

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