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I Learned French in 12 Months

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Re: I Learned French in 12 Months

#281

Post by thbr99 »

alexis_fr wrote: post #115
shmat wrote: post #101

I studied French from 7th-12th grade in an American High School. After that, I could not understand any French beyond "bonjour". I could not have a conversation in French. I could conjugate verbs and I could read some. Fast forward 45 years and I retired and decided to actually learn French. I followed a very, very similar method and after 9 months of self study took a 2 week intensive course in France where I was to…

> I studied French from 7th-12th grade As a French, I’ve lived a few years in Australia. A lot of people there can only say “Bonjour” and keep a bitter memory of their lessons. It feels like learning German for the French people, also a difficult (albeit more regular) language. It is merely necessary for political cohesion but not at an individual level; As such German lessons are... not designed for the students. If…

> a lot of Ozzies I’ve met told me they went to Paris and felt hated by parisians

It's the somewhat true in Québec too, but Québec isn't busy like Paris, so there must be something more to it.

The govt tries to force feed French to new Quebeckers who wants to settle in Québec. I am an expat in Québec. The attitude of Francophones and the Language Policing in Québec makes me not wanting to learn French at all even though it's the best opportunity to learn French. While I understand the reasons behind protecting French in Québec, I feel it can be done differently than by being rude and coercive. Ex: The pastagate in Québec.

Re: I Learned French in 12 Months

#282

Post by ghaff »

205guy wrote: post #98

The OP did a lot of work learning French, it’s always interesting to get a peek into someone’s process for something impressive and out of the ordinary. So thanks for the long and detailed write up. I wanted to point out that the limitations that were encountered are normal. The OP learned 95% of what can be learned without living in the culture itself. Sure, you could learn all these extra details by chatting online…

>We do the same in English for a few remaining times we use complex tenses

Which we mostly try not to overuse because of the cognitive load it places on the listener. It's also the case that, as a native English speaker, I have no idea what any of the less common cases are even called and would have trouble explaining why they're structured the way they are. I just know the words to use for a given purpose.

Re: I Learned French in 12 Months

#283

Post by tolai »

GuB-42 wrote: post #181
wes1350 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author here. I definitely don't feel completely automatic in French, but when having casual conversation I can be fairly automatic if the subject matter isn't too demanding. I think you're absolutely right that without being immersed in French, you will struggle being automatic, especially in all those situations that you only encounter while being in person with actual French speakers. I think getting C1/C2 certific…

I don't know any language test that tests actual fluency. That's something you can't standardize. Like most skills, language proficiency work in steps, and you are usually only able to see the next step, the rest goes above your head. In the case of language, the first step is learning the words and grammar. This can be tested. But there is a whole world beyond that. I realized it when talking about the Japanese lang…

Not sure if being able to understand the lyrics of an NTM or Stromae song should be testable, but I see the point. French is especially bitchy in that respect since what you learn as formal language will leave out a HUGE part of words and idioms used in everyday interactions. You can speak perfect French but sound like you just stepped out of a time machine. “C’est pas terrible” (colloquial) instead of “Ce n’est pas très bon” (more grammatically correct). “T’inquiètes!” vs “Ne t’inquiètes pas”

Re: I Learned French in 12 Months

#284

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

animalnewbie wrote: post #210
BTBurke wrote: post #182

I don't believe there is a shortcut for "hacking" languages. I'm a diplomat, and currently learning my fourth language to the C1+ level. When we learn languages, it's a full time job. It was 9 months to learn Mandarin to a B1, 6 months to a C1+ in Spanish, and I'm currently at a B1 in Estonian after 5 months. There are several things I think are crucial after years of full time study (note: this assumes you're going…

I've seen computational biologists , mechanical engineers , non-programmjng entrepreneurs but what does a diplomat do on HN?

Alan Mustard, former US ambassador to Turkmenistan and trained in agriculture, is a well-known OpenStreetMap geek and quite familiar with GIS issues. Diplomats can have hobbies, you know.

I myself am a linguist and translator, no professional background in the hard sciences or IT at all, but I have still been involved in Free Software for many years and so HN is a natural news channel to read.

Re: I Learned French in 12 Months

#285

Post by throwaway41968 »

rq1 wrote: post #245
throwaway41968 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That’s definitely not true, and what follows is thus complete bs sorry. Where does this come from to begin with? Alright I have my trusty Grammaire espagnole (Beschrelle) at hand, and here are the differences in use of the subjunctive. The following cases involve the indicative in Spanish and the subjunctive in French: -A concessive clause, whose opposition relies on a reality-grounded fact ( aunque està lloviendo /…

> I can go on if you like. Very clearly, Spanish's use of the subjunctive very closely follows Oh yes go on please. But you were originally stating that subjunctive in French lost its semantic value. Now you making it narrow and added "compared to Spanish". > I guess Spanish and Italian speakers aren't wiping their butts according to your point of view I think you missed the point. It was meant to say that misuse of…

>But you were originally stating that subjunctive in French lost its semantic value. Now you making it narrow and added "compared to Spanish".

I said almost lost, and I'm choosing to believe out of charity that you didn't notice the extra word.

> But you were originally stating that subjunctive in French lost its semantic value. Now you making it narrow and added "compared to Spanish".

Yes, that's the crux of my argument, comparing use cases in French with that of other Romance languages in order to show how far the subjunctive use cases in French drifted from their original purpose and meaning. How else am I supposed to demonstrate it without a couple of reference points to compare with?

> It was meant to say that misuse of tenses and moods may alter causality and in general events chaining is not commutative (poop o wipe != wipe o poop).

I did take your point a little too literally, sorry. Still, the fact that mood and tense use across Romance languages is inconsistent, yet:

-People who speak either Romance language have no trouble distinguishing the actual from the hypothetical within their language, and

-People who speak multiple Romance languages have no trouble switching from one mood to the other according to the use case/language combination at hand,

shows how unlikely your "poop o wipe" situations are in practice. People "misuse" tenses and moods all the time (which is the prescriptive way of saying tense and mood usage evolves all the time) yet they still manage to communicate clearly somehow. This shows that these are not actually central to convey meaning and there are other avenues that do not use this system (context, adverbial cues, etc.).

>I said you can do it in any language, but the formulation at some point will become cumbersome.

Do you have any evidence for this? Like, can you showcase foreign languages that do not feature this system and whose formulation of the hypothetical would prove consistently more cumbersome and verbose than that of Romance languages? I'm not sure if you realize how far-reaching that statement is.

Re: I Learned French in 12 Months

#286

Post by saint_fiasco »

Ghjklov wrote: post #206
thedirt0115 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What of the folks who have watched countless hours of anime, but still can't speak Japanese? Input alone is not enough, at least not for adults wanting to become fluent from what I've seen.

I think that’s more of a lack of initiative to learn. They may not know how to speak Japanese, but they can listen to it and be able to discern words from each other and be able to grasp ongoing conversations. After years of watching anime and learning kana and even a number of kanji, Japanese doesn’t seem hard at all anymore. I just lack the initiative or immediate need to advance my skills since I live in America.…

Code Lyoko is available on YouTube. It's basically French anime.

https://youtu.be/QCGixQKvTpA

Re: I Learned French in 12 Months

#287

Post by cmehdy »

thbr99 wrote: post #281
alexis_fr wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I studied French from 7th-12th grade As a French, I’ve lived a few years in Australia. A lot of people there can only say “Bonjour” and keep a bitter memory of their lessons. It feels like learning German for the French people, also a difficult (albeit more regular) language. It is merely necessary for political cohesion but not at an individual level; As such German lessons are... not designed for the students. If…

> a lot of Ozzies I’ve met told me they went to Paris and felt hated by parisians It's the somewhat true in Québec too, but Québec isn't busy like Paris, so there must be something more to it. The govt tries to force feed French to new Quebeckers who wants to settle in Québec. I am an expat in Québec. The attitude of Francophones and the Language Policing in Québec makes me not wanting to learn French at all even tho…

Quebec is often feeling disregarded culturally by the rest of Canada, or just seen as "that one area where people don't speak English" even though it is the most bilingual province of Canada by a decent margin [0]. There's also additional bad blood between provinces historically in Canada and a lot of debates that are quite specific to the country, which I don't have the ability to explain properly here.

They're also older than the rest of the country by a good amount of time (I seem to recall Montreal celebrating its 375th birthday during Canada's 150th[1]). And there's definitely a culturally French element to it: being defensive of the French culture and language is not exclusive to Quebec, see the Toubon Law [2] introduced in 1994 forcing 40% of songs on the radio in France to be in French. There's been a lot of pushback to lower the percentage these last few years, while at the same time arguably french-language rap and hip-hop is at an all-time high most likely in big part thanks to that very same law [3] [4, in french] So in a way you can see why being defensive of the language is mostly a reaction to the shift in dominant language throughout the world, in this case coupled with the good old nonchalant attitude that is part of the French heritage.

And Parisians don't hate you or Australians or anyone in particular, they just hate everyone. Source: Parisian

[0] https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/as-sa/98...

[1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/canada-day-150-montr...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toubon_Law

[3] https://djbooth.net/features/2019-06-26-the-french-hip-hop-r...

[4] in French: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5kIjAikHbs

Re: I Learned French in 12 Months

#288

Post by wingerlang »

digitalsushi wrote: post #190
lowercased wrote: post #188

I've done short stints in Spanish and Japanese classes, and have traveled abroad for short periods (Spain, Russia, China). I understand short phrases and can do very basic stuff: ask for directions, say please/thank you, get mugged, etc. I have some family that have done intense language study, and lived abroad for years (mostly Russia, but other places too), one thing I've always been curious about is wordplay. Do n…

I don't speak Swedish but someone told me they have their own pun Olympics simply because of how easy the language is to mold into puns

Looks like it is a comedy group that is setting some competition event yearly.

Re: I Learned French in 12 Months

#289

Post by rmc »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #284
animalnewbie wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen computational biologists , mechanical engineers , non-programmjng entrepreneurs but what does a diplomat do on HN?

Alan Mustard, former US ambassador to Turkmenistan and trained in agriculture, is a well-known OpenStreetMap geek and quite familiar with GIS issues. Diplomats can have hobbies, you know. I myself am a linguist and translator, no professional background in the hard sciences or IT at all, but I have still been involved in Free Software for many years and so HN is a natural news channel to read.

And Allan Mustard is now Chairperson of the OpenStreetMap Foundation Board of Directors

https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Board_Member_Bios

Re: I Learned French in 12 Months

#290

Post by thedirt0115 »

dsego wrote: post #257
brendyn wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When they do that, they are focusing on the English subtitles and effectively filtering out the Japanese. If they tried to hide the subtitles and only glimpse at them occasionally they would start to see gradual improvement. Many people won't because they'll find they suddenly can't understand most things and it becomes exhausting. by that that's what it's like when you are really learning. That being said it's still…

Ask pretty much any Croatian who was a kid in the 90ies and they will probably say that watching Cartoon Network as a kid on their satellite dish helped them learn English. Only 3-4 national channels were available on the terrestrial TV at the time, which made the huge variety of satellite channels novel and exciting for a kid. These foreign stations didn't have subtitles, so you had to try and pick up the language t…

I don't doubt that a bit, children are amazing language learners! I'm curious as to whether adults could learn the same way.
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