8 ms·
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
by atemerev 8y ago
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!)
- dudul 8y agoThey are sensitive because even what may seem to you like a tiny mistake, or a slight mispronunciation can completely change the meaning of a sentence or make it impossible to understand. Broken English is everywhere, people got used to it. This is not the case for other, less pervasive languages.
- robaato 8y agoTrue enough, but I remember being accused of deliberate misunderstanding by friends when they emphasised wrong syllable in English. Some minutes later with me racking my brain I might come up with the answer. But the mispronunciation had sent me off on the wrong track totally. The fact that I speak other languages helps in that I am better prepared for likely sorts of mistakes, but even so.
- atemerev 8y agoIf you try to speak Russian, no matter how broken, you will be encouraged and praised by every Russian person out there, no exceptions. The same is with Spanish. With French, it doesn't work this way, for some reason.
- mikeash 8y agoI think you just need to find better French people to practice with.
- ebg13 8y ago> If I speak bad French with a French person... may God have mercy upon my soul. Especially if I forgot to say bonjout/bonsoir first (abomination! burn the heretic!) These are two very different things. In my years of experience, the most likely outcome of speaking imperfect French is just that the French person switches to speaking perfect English. Not saying hello+good morning is a social sanitation faux pas viewed akin to not washing your hands after using the toilet. I'm not going to defend the latter, because it's all very formulaic, but I lived in France for years without proficiency and never had a poor encounter because of my unskilled French.
- bpyne 8y agoI've only met French speakers who could switch to perfect English in Quebec province. French speakers from France make mistakes all the time and their pronunciation is very far from perfect. (As long as I can understand them, I don't care.) That being said, someone from France's English is more than likely many times better than my French.
- oblio 8y ago> In my years of experience, the most likely outcome of speaking imperfect French is just that the French person switches to speaking perfect English If they're from Canada, maybe [1]. If they're from France, a decent chunk of Wallonie (French-speaking Belgium) or Romandie (French-speaking Switzerland), I doubt it. France has one of the lowest rates of English proficiency among the other developed countries in Western Europe and I know that first hand. [1] And the average French person wouldn't consider what the Quebecois speak as French :p
- Aromasin 8y agoI think in part it's due to very few native English speakers being multi-lingual. Rudely correcting someone on their second-language is a faux-pas for most people in the UK. From my experience, people will try to be helpful and constructive with their criticism - because lets be honest, how many native English speakers could say much more than Hello, Please and Thank You in anything but English? Conversely, I can see why some Europeans might be more passionate about correct grammar and pronunciation. As youth begin to speak in a hybrid of English and their native language, it begins to erodes their cultural identity. It makes sense if they're passionate about their countries heritage, which many French people are, to try and resist the Anglicising of a part of that. Americans butchered the English language anyway so you couldn't do much worse ;)
- bpyne 8y agoYou make a fair point. I can understand fear about a loss of cultural identity. But, speaking from a strategic standpoint, if you want to preserve the language, you need to get more people speaking it. Corrections can come later. It's like a child learning a musical instrument. Rare is the child who can tolerate being stopped every few seconds with corrections. But, teach a child to play a song in a rudimentary way on the instrument and you capture their interest. Once interest is captured, you can start teaching proper technique. And yes, we of the US butchered English. I have no qualm with that statement. We also can't get metric right. At least we drive on the proper side of the road though. ;-)
- zorked 8y agoThis is very correct. English's status as an international language does wonders - you can speak in any terrible accent, get all the vowels wrong, invert word orders, ignore plurals and be wrong about every preposition and people will make an effort to understand you. Now for German, you can speak any of the awful dialects natively and it's fine. But never, never dare Hochdeutsch with with a _foreign_ accent as people will make a point of not understanding you! Because dropping a umlaut suddenly makes an entire sentence impossible to parse!
- bpyne 8y agoI visited Germany (West Germany at the time) in the Summer of 1988. At the time, I had taken one course in German (Hochdeutsch) at my university. People seemed very friendly and willing to speak German or English. Mistakes were tolerated and they provided assistance when I couldn't remember a word. It was a short trip. I visited four cities. But, people were consistent throughout.
- levosmetalo 8y ago> Now for German, you can speak any of the awful dialects natively and it's fine. But never, never dare Hochdeutsch with with a _foreign_ accent as people will make a point of not understanding you! Because dropping a umlaut suddenly makes an entire sentence impossible to parse! Well, for Germany it's not about the language, it's about the fact that making any mistake that gives away that German is not your native language suddenly makes you a stupid immigrant of lower education in the eyes of the most of the natives.
- renox 8y ago> The problem with French is that the French are very sensitive to mistakes. Define sensitive? When my wife (who is Czech) or my colleague (who is Venezuelan) make French errors, I correct them the same way I correct my children: not because it is annoying me (I don't speak Czech and my Spanish is terrible!) but because I want to help them. And yes, if someone speaks bad French, I'll switch to English but that's not out of disrespect, it's because it's more efficient/easy, if you prefer that the discussion stays in French to practice your French, just say so..
- atemerev 8y agoNo, your attitude is fine. I am OK when somebody corrects me. When they switch to English because they think English will be comfortable for both sides, this is also fine. It is rolling one's eyes and immediate passive aggressive remarks that I hate, and they are quite common...
- cm2187 8y agoIt might be the passive aggressive attitude itself rather than a reaction to the language. A frequent example is Parisian waiters in bistros. It is an old tradition for the waiter to be slightly cavalier with the clients, and for the clients to respond in kind. But it’s a kind of a parisian joke. Though I get how it would put off foreigners. But many other trades have their ritual (like a souk in Marrocco).
- iagooar 8y ago
- bpyne 8y agoAn 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 as we started to ask about a table, she stopped us and said, "No no no no. This will be in English." It's only two anecdotes. I may have simply run into rude people. But, they made me not care to ever speak French. My daughter is taking Spanish in school right now. I'm learning a little as well. We have a large population of people around us from different Spanish speaking countries. They seem to be very tolerant of mistakes. I'm very much looking forward to learning more of their language.
- atemerev 8y agoSure, I am passionate about Russian grammar too, and I used to correct mistakes of native Russians writing in Russian (I stopped doing that when I learned that dyslexia is quite real and common, and I now feel sorry for that). However, any foreigner trying to speak Russian, no matter how broken or incorrect, will meet nothing but praise and encouragement from other Russians.
- x0x0 8y agoExcept the lady who sells subway tickets in Moscow. That lady is quite grumpy. (Everyone else was kind.) I took immersive classes, speaking 6 hours / day, 90 minutes spent on pronunciation drills. The only downside is my accent got better faster than my vocab, confusing lots of people with whom I interacted.
- taejo 8y ago> 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." I was under the impression (having never been to Quebec) that she was in fact breaking the law by doing this.
- grecy 8y agoI learned my French in West Africa - everyone there is extremely happy and friendly and very willing to tolerate my terrible accent. It made learning French as fun & enjoyable as learning Spanish in Central & South America.
- hluska 8y agoI’m a sample of one, but my experience with French people has been much different. As long as I’ve been open about being a beginner (from Western Canada) who badly wants to practice, I’ve actually been quite pleasantly surprised by how hard French speakers work to make me feel comfortable. For example, just last week, I asked a French speaking couple I know to help me pronounce “de rien”. When I say it, I sound like I dun just gots off the potato patch. They quite literally tag teamed me, one started working on drills to help me roll the ‘r’. Another started making a list of other similar words (so that I could sound stupid across a wider range of vocabulary). It was quite amazing. But, with the exact same people, if I just speak French without prefacing it with a request for help, they switch to English instantly.
- shawabawa3 8y ago> help me pronounce “derrien” Do you mean "de rien"? (As in "no problem", literally "it was nothing") I agree r's are definitely the hardest thing to pronounce in french (as an english speaker at least). I think "rire" is the hardest word in the french language
- hluska 8y agoThanks for pointing that out - I fixed it. Don’t even get me started on rire. That’s another word that makes me sound significantly dumber than I hope I am!! :)
- asark 8y agoSinging along to French songs in the car finally fixed my R problem, in a matter of days. Found I could do the rolled Spanish R and even the lazy, liquid Latin R with very little practice after getting that one down, too, and I couldn't at all before.
- cm2187 8y agoIt 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.
- bsder 8y agoIf you want a challenge to your English, go to Glasgow. Holy hell do they have a thick accent. I've only encountered an accent that thick in very rural US (think deep South or Appalachia).
- ojhughes 8y agoMy experience in France is people in many places are very happy for you to attempt to converse in French. Outside of the main tourist areas, many people only speak French so you have to at least try. Of course in Paris, this is often not true.
- dehrmann 8y agoBecause English is such a widely spoken language by people coming from very diverse first languages, I think English speakers are accustomed to not just bad English, but diversity of English.
- iagooar 8y agoI think this is not true, it's just an often told cliché. French is spoken in so many countries around the world and yet still French have this thing with foreigners trying to speak it. I think it's just more cultural and educational, nothing else.
- marvin 8y agoIf you do this while making it clear via subtext that you've messed up the difference between liver pâté and foie gras, you might as well get a cab right to the airport before you're deported.
- chillacy 8y agoOnce I received the feedback “you are killing the French language”, so we switched to English. But at no point did I tell this speaker that he was “killing the English language”.