The Benefits of Failing at French • Hacker News Board

Re: The Benefits of Failing at French

#41

Post by barry-cotter » Fri, Jul 18, 2014, 2:30 PM UTC

dreamweapon wrote: post #21

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 wi…

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 vulgar abuse]

Learn a language if you feel like it, or it will be useful. Don't learn it for the money or the career. Trust me that aside from English all useless unless you can work in them well enough to translate to English.

Re: The Benefits of Failing at French

#42

Post by Jacqued » Fri, Jul 18, 2014, 2:30 PM UTC

jiggy2011 wrote: post #24

DanielStraight wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 countryside, but enough to make it a dynamic, growing language.

[0] : http://www.forbes.com/sites/pascalemmanuelgobry/2014/03/21/w...

Re: The Benefits of Failing at French

#43

Post by subb » Fri, Jul 18, 2014, 2:34 PM UTC

g8oz wrote: post #31

11001 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>>if you ever want to work in Canada knowing French would help you a lot more than knowing Spanish. Only if you want to work for the federal government or in the decidedly non dynamic province of Quebec.

Non dynamic?

Re: The Benefits of Failing at French

#44

Post by Ecio78 » Fri, Jul 18, 2014, 2:34 PM UTC

gnuvince wrote: post #16

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…

Native French speaker here, I think going from "I don't know the language" to "I can hold me end in a conversation" is easier in English than in French. French has a richer set of verb tenses, while with English you can go a long way be knowing present, " + ed" and "will + ". You also don't need to understand why a chair feminine and an oven is masculine (hint: there is no reason). One thing I do think French has ove…

I was having the same expectation in French, hoping to survive with only present, passé composé, future proche and "en train de" and avoid more complex things :) And it will probably be enough, if I'd master them, but I still don't remember tons of verbs, words and the pronunciation, oh my god.. As an Italian it shouldn't be that difficult, many things are almost the same, and in some situation it is (e.g. reading it) but the pronunciation is not easy and false friends are everywhere, so most of the time I don't know if I'm saying something that is sort-of French or I'm just mimicking French by removing some vowels and consonants here and there from Italian words...

Re: The Benefits of Failing at French

#45

Post by bpyne » Fri, Jul 18, 2014, 2:36 PM UTC

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…

Interesting change going on in language education. I'm a coordinator for my daughter's elementary school's after school program. I wanted to bring in foreign languages so I started with Spanish because of the large Spanish speaking population (plenty of people to practice with) around our area. I partnered with the foreign language department at a nearby college to get some Spanish education students to teach: they received credit while we received free instruction. The head of the department developed the learning modules with her students. The modules were all cultural - music, food and dining, art, literature, etc. - and emphasized vocabulary and phrases associated with the particular cultural lesson. The department head told me that modern language instruction is no longer about learning rules and exceptions, which is how I was taught French, rather it's about getting kids to use language practically as soon as possible.

An interesting side note is that the department head and her students consciously stayed away from the culture of Spain itself and focused on the countries of people in our area - Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Guatemala, and Columbia.

Learning, in general, seems to have changed away from rote learning of rules to "let's get the students doing something practical right away so they get excited about learning". My daughter's music teacher is a fairly recent graduate of Berklee Music College's music education program. When my daughter showed up for her first lesson, she had to pick a song she liked. He had her playing it - albeit crudely - by the end of the hour. She was excited and wanted to play more. When I learned drums I don't think I could play to an actual song for my first year. I had to go through hours of practicing rudiments - basic patterns to develop coordination - before applying them to anything.

I think we're learning more about how people learn. I'm hopeful that "older dogs will be learning new tricks" thanks to teaching methods better aligned with how we learn.

Re: The Benefits of Failing at French

#46

Post by contingencies » Fri, Jul 18, 2014, 2:45 PM UTC

dreamweapon wrote: post #21

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 wi…

Poetic!

I'm an Australian whose wife is Chinese, we just had our first child, who is German, in Thailand and are thinking to move - after 8+ years in China - to France. Neither of us speak French, but we sometimes translate classical Chinese together. You only get out of languages what you put in to them. Speaking of which, there's a great Arabic calligraphy torrent around at the moment...

PS. Pashto's pretty close to Farsi, isn't it? It's not that marginal. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Modernir...

Re: The Benefits of Failing at French

#47

Post by contingencies » Fri, Jul 18, 2014, 2:47 PM UTC

barry-cotter wrote: post #41

dreamweapon wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wi…

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…

Learn a language if you feel like it, or it will be useful. Don't learn it for the money or the career.

I agree, this is good advice.

Trust me that aside from English all useless unless you can work in them well enough to translate to English.

Useless in career - not necessarily. Useless in life - definitely untrue.

Re: The Benefits of Failing at French

#48

Post by time0 » Fri, Jul 18, 2014, 2:49 PM UTC

“Into the face of the young man who sat on the terrace of the Hotel Magnifique at Cannes there had crept a look of furtive shame, the shifty hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to speak French.”

― P.G. Wodehouse, The Luck of the Bodkins

Re: The Benefits of Failing at French

#49

Post by aikah » Fri, Jul 18, 2014, 2:49 PM UTC

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…

I'm french and I agree,the language is bloated and too complicated.

English might be difficult for a french native that didnt learn it at young age like me but it's much more simple than french.

I wonder though why french is that complicated,in some other countries you have the official language and dialects,but often the core of the official language is tiny,so if one sticks to that core one will write correct sentences.It feels like modern french is the result of trying to shove every french dialects into the core,resulting in the bloat it is today.

Canadian french seems less bloated.They often use old french expressions,which is good because,many expressions in modern french from France just dont make sense,or words have their meaning abused. And Canadian french seems more able to extend itself from its core,instead of using english words like french from France do.French from France definetly doesnt "scale".

It's just my opinion.

Re: The Benefits of Failing at French

#50

Post by VeejayRampay » Fri, Jul 18, 2014, 2:52 PM UTC

DanielStraight wrote: post #4

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…

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.

Because we're dying as a world power. It's the cycle of history. We're slowing riding the wave of our past glory toward oblivion. Most of the countries in Africa who used to speak French are now switching to other languages like Swahili, Lingala or Wolof, the Belgian, the Swiss and the Québécois all speak French and English, it's only a matter of time.

You can bring up figures and number of speakers, it won't change the fact that we're not relevant as a linguistic group in the world and unlike the other European powers, we haven't yet made the vital switch to having a strong command of English. It's really depressing.