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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

#131

Post by rjsw »

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…

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.

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

#133

Post by 19690401 »

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…

> Consider the word “de rien”. It is so simple. Three syllables.

Not that it changes your point, but "de rien" is two syllables!

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

#134

Post by jperras »

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…

> 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 as we started to ask about a table, she stopped us and said, "No no no no. This will be in English."

Native Québecois here. That's most definitely very odd.

The typical scenario is someone not fluent in French attempts to speak it, and the other person switches to English as a courtesy, not as a slight against you; many people forget or don't know that most Québecois in major cities are bilingual.

Simply mentioning that you would like to continue in French so that you can practice will elicit gratitude and wide smiles - we really, really, really like it when people speak French, no matter the quality, and most will happily help you learn a few extra words or expressions.

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

#135

Post by intertextuality »

stephenhuey wrote: post #126
intertextuality wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> get a long term disability pension just by saying it > but when I record it and play it back, I sound quite soft in the head > Who would have thought that a phrase ... would be such a big problem for me?? :) If this is how you envision yourself with speaking French, then is it any wonder you might be stuck or have issues with certain phrases? Good lord. Learning how to talk like a native in another language is exce…

If there's one thing I remember from my linguistics courses in college, it's that one of the biggest hurdles for adults is that they may have a fear of embarrassment that babies do not. The willingness to practice a ton while making errors is a huge advantage to children (or any adult who just goes for it). In many English-speaking countries, most people hear foreigners trying to speak English, so we're accustomed to…

Sometimes non-English speakers, when someone tries to learn their language past a basic degree, can be a bit rude even unintentionally.

I have had a good native Korean friend quite innocently (although randomly) point out that although I rarely make syntax errors I don't speak idiomatically at all and make weird constructs sometimes. Which makes sense, given my almost 2 years of study, but I would never think of saying something that to any ESL learner.

The same friend said something along the lines of "I talk to you a lot, so sometimes I speak like you [non idiomatically/weirdly] with my [native] Korean friends haha".

??!? was my initial reaction, but then I remembered that it's quite rare for a foreigner to actually learn Korean at all, let alone to intermediate+ levels. Internally I got reminded that I will practically always be a foreigner, though.

We're so used to people learning English and using broken English in all manners of dialects that it's not even a blip on our mental radars.

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

#136

Post by bambax »

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…

> 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.

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

#137

Post by cm2187 »

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!)

It also depends on social circles. If you hang around with a bunch of eton/oxbridge old boys, even as a non native english speaker closing in on my 15th year in London, I struggle to understand many of the expressions. But I don’t when watching the BBC. Also as the article mentions there are many terms that are very infrequent, and even as a native French speaker, I had to look up a few cathedral terms in the dictionary.

But I kind of disagree with your “God have mercy on my soul” statement. French people are extremely proud (and being a French native, rightly so!). There is nothing they appreciate more than the world looking at them. When the international press makes their cover on France, it usually gets reported with screenshots in French media, something I have not seen in any other large country. For the same reason, most French people tend to feel flattered when someone makes an effort to speak their language. Though there are enough ancient and illogical grammatical rules to ensure a non native always gets spotted after only a few sentences.

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

#138

Post by mediocrejoker »

19690401 wrote: post #133
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…

> 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.

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

#139

Post by bambax »

pygy_ wrote: post #25
bambax wrote: post #11

> And I revel in small triumphs, like discovering that a woolen ball on a sweater is a “boulouche” It's not. It's "bouloche" -- https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/bouloche > When my kids brought home notices telling me to check their hair for “poux” (pronounced “poo”), I correctly deduced that it meant lice. But later, in a first-aid course, I was perplexed when the instructor told us to immediately check an unconscious…

You're being harsh for pouls / poux being singular/plural, provided it was the first time the author had encountered those words. That kind of knowledge comes with experience with the words, which the author didn't have. Bouloche has been corrected.

> Bouloche has been corrected.

Indeed it has. But silently, which is surprising.

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

#140

Post by Kaiyou »

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.

If you learn a language through memorization of words you're being very, very inefficient. Very.

Learning a language requires next to no effort (compared to 30 words per day) and can be done at any age within six months. The strange thing is that nearly everyone does language learning wrong. I think it's because schools set everyone up for failure by teaching how to learn a language in a way, that's just so very inefficient.

If you care for the easier way: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0yGdNEWdn0

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