The Benefits of Failing at French • Hacker News Board

Re: The Benefits of Failing at French

#131

Post by barry-cotter » Sat, Jul 19, 2014, 5:16 AM UTC

dreamweapon wrote: post #57

barry-cotter wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was giving you the benefit of the doubt until you put Arabic in the same category as Mandarin or Spanish. Vernacular Arabic is as much a single language as vernacular Germanic. Not at all. Mutually unintelligible languages that qualify as Germanic; Nynorsk, Bokmal, Swedish, Danish, Hochdeutsch, Allemanic, at least 4 varieties of Swiss German, Dutch, Frisian, Scots, English, Jamaican Patois, Tok Pisin. [Incredibly v…

Could you provide some metrics, please? I'll be happy to confess my ignorance, but I was under the impression that among countries where some form of Arabic is counted among the official languages spoken, these variants were much closer to Modern Standard Arabic than, say, Swedish is to German. Mutually unintelligible languages that qualify as Germanic; Nynorsk, Bokmal, Swedish, Danish, Hochdeutsch, Allemanic, at lea…

I don't have any metrics on Arabic but here's what Wikipedia has to say on intelligibility

> From a linguistic standpoint, it is often said that the various spoken varieties of Arabic differ among each other collectively about as much as the Romance languages.[34] This is an apt comparison in a number of ways. The period of divergence from a single spoken form is similar—perhaps 1500 years for Arabic, 2000 years for the Romance languages. Also, while it is comprehensible to people from the Maghreb, a linguistically innovative variety such as Moroccan Arabic is essentially incomprehensible to Arabs from the Mashriq, much as French is incomprehensible to Spanish or Italian speakers. This suggests that the spoken varieties may linguistically be considered separate languages.

I also fogot Afrikaans. Arabic ia really, really diglossic so all educated Arabs will be able to speak and understand fusha but people don't talk like that outside of extremely formal situations. Speaking fusha at home would be as weird as a Romance speaker raising their kids in Latin.

Re: The Benefits of Failing at French

#132

Post by _delirium » Sat, Jul 19, 2014, 5:24 AM UTC

vacri wrote: post #122

Jacqued wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many more than that though. Basically you can draw a line from Congo to Algeria, and every country west of that line speaks French. There are 4 exceptions : Nigeria, Ghana, Liberia and Sierra Leone. That still leaves a huge pool of speakers. Probably not enough to make it the 'most spoken language in the world by 2050'[0] because it is mostly spoken by educated and urban people, and far less in the countrys…

Well, it's more that French is an official language of those countries, rather than those countries speak French. WP has a list where most of those countries have only around 10%[1] of the population that can speak French. Given that French isn't particularly popular in the world of business (English and Chinese rule there) and that English seems to have become the default in science and engineering, it seems an assu…

There are some regional shifts involved in some of those countries. Burundi and Rwanda are looking more east than west in recent years, and East Africa uses a mixture of Swahili and English rather than French as the common language.

Rwanda in particular is not in practice really part of French-speaking Africa anymore. The numbers you link show only 3% of Rwandans speak partial French, which is barely more than any other country where a handful of people choose French as a foreign language in school. That's related to the ethnic unrest in the country; much of the current elite are ex-refugees who grew up in Uganda, which is not Francophone, and there's also a political edge to it because they consider France to have been too close to the previous Hutu-dominated government.

Re: The Benefits of Failing at French

#133

Post by falsestprophet » Sat, Jul 19, 2014, 5:49 AM UTC

bane wrote: post #66

yaantc wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 irregula…

This is perhaps one of the more insightful comments on learning a foreign language I've ever read. It really crystallizes the tolerance of the listener to foreign speakers as part of the barrier to learning a language. One thing I'd add, at least as a native English speaker in a very international area, not all foreign accents and mistakes are equally well treated. And this may help contribute to and explain why some…

Persian and Russian are part of the same language family as English: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_languages

Re: The Benefits of Failing at French

#134

Post by gonzo » Sat, Jul 19, 2014, 6:27 AM UTC

phea wrote: post #127

seanc wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's another advantage the toddler has, not mentioned in the article. People expect the toddler to speak poorly, and don't make fun of him or treat him badly for doing so. I found being laughed at was a huge barrier to learning French when I lived in Montreal. For example, many English speakers (and Quebecers!) I know have stories like this to tell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaFf2kWL45U (45s clip from The Mo…

You just have to suck it up and don't let it bother you as the majority of people are not really laughing at you. You may say something embarrassing like 'je suis chaud', which actually means you're horny and not feeling hot. That will get a chuckle out of people but the next time you will know to use avoir instead. Another favourite of teachers is 'je suis fini'.

So, tu es chaud?

Re: The Benefits of Failing at French

#135

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jul 19, 2014, 6:35 AM UTC

guard-of-terra wrote: post #107

The L-R confusion with asian languages' speakers is very strange to me btw. For example, English has t and th and f, most other languages don't have th and some don't even have f. However it's very rare to see non-native English speakers to swap or merge those sounds. Virtually unseen in writing. Asian languages' speakers do swap r and l and vice versa in writing too.

[deleted]

Re: The Benefits of Failing at French

#136

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jul 19, 2014, 6:35 AM UTC

guard-of-terra wrote: post #107

The L-R confusion with asian languages' speakers is very strange to me btw. For example, English has t and th and f, most other languages don't have th and some don't even have f. However it's very rare to see non-native English speakers to swap or merge those sounds. Virtually unseen in writing. Asian languages' speakers do swap r and l and vice versa in writing too.

[deleted]

Re: The Benefits of Failing at French

#137

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jul 19, 2014, 7:02 AM UTC

dreamweapon wrote: post #57

barry-cotter wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was giving you the benefit of the doubt until you put Arabic in the same category as Mandarin or Spanish. Vernacular Arabic is as much a single language as vernacular Germanic. Not at all. Mutually unintelligible languages that qualify as Germanic; Nynorsk, Bokmal, Swedish, Danish, Hochdeutsch, Allemanic, at least 4 varieties of Swiss German, Dutch, Frisian, Scots, English, Jamaican Patois, Tok Pisin. [Incredibly v…

Could you provide some metrics, please? I'll be happy to confess my ignorance, but I was under the impression that among countries where some form of Arabic is counted among the official languages spoken, these variants were much closer to Modern Standard Arabic than, say, Swedish is to German. Mutually unintelligible languages that qualify as Germanic; Nynorsk, Bokmal, Swedish, Danish, Hochdeutsch, Allemanic, at lea…

[deleted]

Re: The Benefits of Failing at French

#138

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jul 19, 2014, 7:07 AM UTC

barry-cotter wrote: post #131

dreamweapon wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you provide some metrics, please? I'll be happy to confess my ignorance, but I was under the impression that among countries where some form of Arabic is counted among the official languages spoken, these variants were much closer to Modern Standard Arabic than, say, Swedish is to German. Mutually unintelligible languages that qualify as Germanic; Nynorsk, Bokmal, Swedish, Danish, Hochdeutsch, Allemanic, at lea…

I don't have any metrics on Arabic but here's what Wikipedia has to say on intelligibility > From a linguistic standpoint, it is often said that the various spoken varieties of Arabic differ among each other collectively about as much as the Romance languages.[34] This is an apt comparison in a number of ways. The period of divergence from a single spoken form is similar—perhaps 1500 years for Arabic, 2000 years for…

[deleted]

Re: The Benefits of Failing at French

#139

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jul 19, 2014, 7:20 AM UTC

colanderman wrote: post #128

guard-of-terra wrote: post #107

The L-R confusion with asian languages' speakers is very strange to me btw. For example, English has t and th and f, most other languages don't have th and some don't even have f. However it's very rare to see non-native English speakers to swap or merge those sounds. Virtually unseen in writing. Asian languages' speakers do swap r and l and vice versa in writing too.

Asian languages have neither the English R (tongue curled backward in mouth, sides curled upward relative to mouth; "retroflex approximant") nor L (tongue straight, sides curled downward; "lateral alveolar approximant"). Rather, they have an R which is a combination of these (tongue straight, sides curled upward; "alveolar approximant"). Without a native sound to map these two distinct sounds to, it's easy to confuse…

[deleted]

Re: The Benefits of Failing at French

#140

Post by Swizec » Sat, Jul 19, 2014, 7:35 AM UTC

seanc wrote: post #63

DonPellegrino wrote: post #37

The author hits an important point. I'm a native French speaker and speak to anglophones trying to improve their french everyday and the overwhelming majority gets distracted if they don't get the noun genders right, pick the right verb tenses and all sorts of things like that. They hesitate mid-sentence trying to remember the rules and get it perfectly instead of just saying "Tommy hitted me" like in the article. As…

There's another advantage the toddler has, not mentioned in the article. People expect the toddler to speak poorly, and don't make fun of him or treat him badly for doing so. I found being laughed at was a huge barrier to learning French when I lived in Montreal. For example, many English speakers (and Quebecers!) I know have stories like this to tell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaFf2kWL45U (45s clip from The Mo…

Funnily enough, living in an English speaking house for a few months in an environment where everyone made fun of my accent has hammered the accent away to such an extent that people can no longer tell where the hell my accent is from. They notice an accent, but can't place it.

Even fellow Slovenians can no longer place my accent despite technically having the same accent.