8 ms·

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 Grand

by hluska 8y ago

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. The first is that when I was a kid, I didn’t care who I spoke French to, how loud I was, or how many words I mangled. It was like a cool code for me. As an adult, I’m damned near petrified to speak the language. This is unlike me. I’ll gladly spend a week cold calling potential clients, but if I hear people speaking French, I often cannot bring myself to introduce myself or ask how they are. I’ll ask a stranger for money in English, but I’ll be damned if I ask a stranger to pass the cream in French. Another thing I’ve noticed is that it’s a lot harder to learn how to pronounce things. Some sounds seem to be engrained from years of speaking when I was young. Other words, crap. Consider the word “de rien”. It is so simple. Three syllables. Yet, I could walk into any French speaking country in the world and get a long term disability pension just by saying it. Last week, I even found a French couple to help me and I’ve been doing lots of drills, but when I record it and play it back, I sound quite soft in the head. Who would have thought that a phrase that translates to ‘it’s nothing’ would be such a big problem for me?? :)

MuffinFlavored 8y ago
do you really cold call clients and ask people for money or were those just made up examples?
- hluska 8y ago
  I do cold call on occasion and I have even grown to enjoy the game of it. I’m never quite that open and up front, but cold calling is always about drumming up business and getting paid. Frankly, it doesn’t work for me unless I hunt rejection in search of pay.
cced 8y ago
Not to be nitpicky, but to be precise, “de rien” translates to “from nothing”. Similar expressions in english are “no worries”, “no problem”, or “you’re welcome” . As for speaking a foreign language, you need to take the jump. Know that, you are likely to be judged. However, there are people who find joy in seeing others speak their language and do so in a nurturing environment. You just need to find those people and practice with them, without fear of judgement.
- amanaplanacanal 8y ago
  Your translation is word-for-word correct, but I've never heard somebody say "from nothing" in English in a situation where you might say "no worries", "no problem", or "you're welcome". I have heard "It's nothing" though, so I think his translation is fine. Perhaps people don't use it that way in the dialects of English you know?
  - inferiorhuman 8y ago
    Your translation is word-for-word correct, but I've never heard somebody say "from nothing" in English in a situation where you might say "no worries", "no problem", or "you're welcome". From nothing is an overly literal translation. You'll hear it in Spanish for sure as de nada (of/from nothing) or por nada (literally for nothing) depending on context though.
    - marvin 8y ago
      I _love_ overly literal translations. They express, in the purest translatable form, the idiomatic differences between languages and the cultures they belong to. You'll find many fascinating insights about culture and history by learning how different cultures express the same complex concept, situation or emotion.
  - jperras 8y ago
    The more idiomatic translation of "de rien" would be "think nothing of it". Source: lifelong bilingual in French & English.
misiti3780 8y ago
I am learning french now, this was helpful. https://www.livelingua.com/french/courses/fsi/French_Phonology/ https://www.livelingua.com/french/courses/fsi/French_Phonolo...
intertextuality 8y ago
> 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 exceedingly difficult. It requires thousands of hours of practice, and by practice I mean actually physically speaking. Babies do this over and over and over and over again. We just gloss over it because, well, they're babies. The only way to learn a language properly (as an adult) is to get over your fear and nervousness. When I hear obvious ESL people speaking English, my first thoughts are not of criticism. It's the exact same with people with other languages. I have been learning Korean for almost 2 years now and my pronunciation is still not good in a lot of areas because I haven't practiced them enough, or well enough yet. That's just a part of the learning process. I'm understood most of the time, and the rest I just note down as things to work on. Of course it sucks to hear myself compared to a native or make a mispronunciation so bad I'm not understood. But this is part of the process. If I -didn't- make mistakes I wouldn't be a learner of Korean, no? > but if I hear people speaking French, I often cannot bring myself to introduce myself or ask how they are. If you can't overcome this, you will never learn French. As long as you're afraid of making mistakes, you will never learn French. If you don't actually speak the language, you will never learn French... You don't learn a language only in classroom environments or with very patient friends. You learn it by speaking as much as you can, whenever you can, and making as many mistakes as you possibly can. Even if you don't know how to say one exact thing in particular, circumlocution is your friend. Or rewording it in another way.
- stephenhuey 8y ago
  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 that. French people do hear a lot of non-native speakers of their language as well. But when I lived in Turkey for a summer during college, I made a concerted effort to built up some vocab in a few verb tenses. While I didn't get very far, it was pretty fun since it's so different from the English and Spanish I knew. It was no surprise that the Turks were amused at my pronunciation, etc. But what really stuck out to me was how a group of my Turkish friends were not only tickled, they actually were kind of confused about what they were feeling about how I was sounding until one of them put their finger on it: they thought I sounded like a small child speaking Turkish! Why did that stand out to me? Because it dawned on me that unlike me, who had heard countless non-native speakers of my own language, they had never ever heard a non-native speaker trying to communicate in Turkish! I was amazed in trying to wrap my head around what that experience was like for them.
eequah9L 8y ago
> I’ll ask a stranger for money in English, but I’ll be damned if I ask a stranger to pass the cream in French. I had this with English. Then with Russian. Now I have it with German. It goes away with practice. Languages are hard. Keep it up, it will get better.
shaggyfrog 8y ago
I was in French immersion for 11 years, took classes in high school and university, and then took a long break from it -- about 10 years -- before I went back to it about 5 years ago. At first it was really hard! But things really got better over time. I practice 1-3 times a month with a French language meetup, and I also set my alarm to a French radio station. (If you can do one or both, I highly recommend!) Yet even last year when I visited France for the first time, I was still somewhat petrified to speak to the locals. After 3 days I got over it, and it started to flow again. Your angst is natural and common. Accept what you're feeling. You can push through it!
bambax 8y ago
> As an adult, I’m damned near petrified to speak the language. Have a drink or two. Really. I've noticed I'm much better in a foreign language when I'm mildly drunk (or at least I think I am, which helps get past the self-awareness block).
- nemosaltat 8y ago
  You probably do! https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0269881117735687?journalCode=jopa https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/026988111773568...
- cgriswald 8y ago
  Me too. Two of my close friends are native Spanish speakers and when I’m a little drunk I can converse with them fairly fluently. When I’m not I can still do it but I’m very slow and make more mistakes.
- moufestaphio 8y ago
  Seriously, came to say this. Speaking wise it helps a lot. You stop worrying about the conjugation or sentence structure etc, and just communicate with the other person.
19690401 8y ago
> Consider the word “de rien”. It is so simple. Three syllables. Not that it changes your point, but "de rien" is two syllables!
- mediocrejoker 8y ago
  I only took a few years of French in Canadian high school but we were also taught this as three syllables.
  - FeteCommuniste 8y ago
    "Rien" has the same number of syllables as all the other consonant sound + "ien" words: one. (tien, sien, chien, bien, lien)
- davidy123 8y ago
  It's pronounced in three syllables (de re-an) https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/de_rien https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/de_rien
  - davidivadavid 8y ago
    Nope. Two syllables is correct, as you can see by looking at the IPA transliteration, /də ʁjɛ̃/.
    - bgilroy26 8y ago
      "j" is a semi-vowel so you're both right!
      - foldr 8y ago
        Could you expand on that? Semivowels don't usually give rise to any uncertainty regarding syllable boundaries. E.g. Spanish 'tieso' clearly has two syllables (though many English speakers would misperceive it as having three), and it also has a semivowel following the initial consonant: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tieso https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tieso
fatnoah 8y ago
I grew up in NH where a fair number of people (half of my own family included) are fluent in Quebecois French and also took 4 years of French in high school. One summer between junior and senior years, I took a road trip to Montreal and tried out my French. I was thoroughly embarrassed and lived the OPs nightmare. The residents I spoke with seemed actively offended by my French and would smile condescendingly and speak to me in English. During senior year, I was able to spend a week in France. It was a totally different experience. I spoke nothing but French for the week and was able to feed and otherwise care for myself. The locals seemed to genuinely appreciate my efforts to speak the language. The capstone was later in the week when a 2am knock on my door woke me up. A younger member of our group was having serious homesickness and wanted to call home, but couldn't figure out how to make the call. I went to the lobby with her to ask the desk clerk how to make the call. I ended up having a great conversation with the desk clerk who was only a few years older than me and was in Paris for university. We chatted for about 30 minutes about life, things we liked, cool things to see in Paris, etc. It was awesome! For OP, give it a shot. The only way to get better is to do it!
- _yawn 8y ago
  People in Quebec are actively hostile to other languages in general, mostly for historical reasons. Probably not the best place to get started haha
  - cydonian_monk 8y ago
    It also doesn't help that French and Quebecois French are different dialects to the point of almost being different languages. We "offended" our entire office in Montreal when we rolled their telephony system into our headquarter's PBX and added localization for IVRs, Voicemail and whatnot using prompts recorded by a Parisian. I could understand the French French, the Quebecois was..., well, honestly about as different as street Spanish in Mexico and the Columbian Spanish I learned early in life.
    - fatnoah 8y ago
      Definitely. Some of the idioms are different and the language sounds come from the back of the throat vs. Parisian French. I had the same experience in terms of understanding and being understood.
theflyinghorse 8y ago
> Yet, I could walk into any French speaking country in the world and get a long term disability pension just by saying it. Last week, I even found a French couple to help me and I’ve been doing lots of drills, but when I record it and play it back, I sound quite soft in the head. Pro tip from an immigrant who spent decade and a half trying to get good at English pronunciation - You need to practice in front of he mirror with a recorder and youtube nearby. Find a clip of french person saying a word or a sentence you're having trouble with and mimic them in front of the mirror. Again and again, try to see what muscle engaging on their face and do the same, think of what your tongue is doing. Remember you are building muscle memory and your tongue has literally never been in some of those shapes so you need to work it. Pro tip two - find a pronunciation workshop or do a couple of sessions with a professional. Sounding like a native speaker is an incredible undertaking, but you'd probably be satisfied with being 75% there frankly.
- uryga 8y ago
  it's not just the tongue – when speaking French, your whole face has to do more work compared to English!
- 0815test 8y ago
  You can also look up the individual IPA phonemes on Wiki, you'll find surprisingly extensive descriptions of how to physically sound them, and sometimes comparisons to close phonemes in other languages. This removes the "guessing" factor entirely, so the video is only there to perfect your speech and as a sanity check.
purplezooey 8y ago
One of my favorite French phrases is Je dis ça, je dis rien
magic_beans 8y ago
Really focus on the movement of your lips when you speak French. French has entirely different physical demands on you than English does. Exaggerate the lip and cheek movement. It really helps with pronunciation.
droussel 8y ago
Hey, don't worry to much about your accent. I am Québécois and French is my first language. I can speak English very well apart from that terrible accent... I used to work at a place where we had daily calls with the office in California and most of the engineers there where Indian people speaking English. It probably took me 2-3 months before I could understand a single sentence on the conf. call. Their accents were just that bad (to me). All that to say, don't be shy of your accent. Personally, I am simply happy when people make an effort to learn my language. I'll listen patiently if they stumble on words, I'll help where I can, etc. As long as they are also patient with my own horrible accent :)

by hluska 8y ago

MuffinFlavored 8y ago

do you really cold call clients and ask people for money or were those just made up examples?

hluska 8y ago
I do cold call on occasion and I have even grown to enjoy the game of it. I’m never quite that open and up front, but cold calling is always about drumming up business and getting paid. Frankly, it doesn’t work for me unless I hunt rejection in search of pay.

cced 8y ago

Not to be nitpicky, but to be precise, “de rien” translates to “from nothing”. Similar expressions in english are “no worries”, “no problem”, or “you’re welcome” . As for speaking a foreign language, you need to take the jump. Know that, you are likely to be judged. However, there are people who find joy in seeing others speak their language and do so in a nurturing environment. You just need to find those people and practice with them, without fear of judgement.

amanaplanacanal 8y ago
Your translation is word-for-word correct, but I've never heard somebody say "from nothing" in English in a situation where you might say "no worries", "no problem", or "you're welcome". I have heard "It's nothing" though, so I think his translation is fine. Perhaps people don't use it that way in the dialects of English you know?
- inferiorhuman 8y ago
  Your translation is word-for-word correct, but I've never heard somebody say "from nothing" in English in a situation where you might say "no worries", "no problem", or "you're welcome". From nothing is an overly literal translation. You'll hear it in Spanish for sure as de nada (of/from nothing) or por nada (literally for nothing) depending on context though.
  - marvin 8y ago
    I _love_ overly literal translations. They express, in the purest translatable form, the idiomatic differences between languages and the cultures they belong to. You'll find many fascinating insights about culture and history by learning how different cultures express the same complex concept, situation or emotion.
- jperras 8y ago
  The more idiomatic translation of "de rien" would be "think nothing of it". Source: lifelong bilingual in French & English.

misiti3780 8y ago

I am learning french now, this was helpful. https://www.livelingua.com/french/courses/fsi/French_Phonology/ https://www.livelingua.com/french/courses/fsi/French_Phonolo...

intertextuality 8y ago

> 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 exceedingly difficult. It requires thousands of hours of practice, and by practice I mean actually physically speaking. Babies do this over and over and over and over again. We just gloss over it because, well, they're babies. The only way to learn a language properly (as an adult) is to get over your fear and nervousness. When I hear obvious ESL people speaking English, my first thoughts are not of criticism. It's the exact same with people with other languages. I have been learning Korean for almost 2 years now and my pronunciation is still not good in a lot of areas because I haven't practiced them enough, or well enough yet. That's just a part of the learning process. I'm understood most of the time, and the rest I just note down as things to work on. Of course it sucks to hear myself compared to a native or make a mispronunciation so bad I'm not understood. But this is part of the process. If I -didn't- make mistakes I wouldn't be a learner of Korean, no? > but if I hear people speaking French, I often cannot bring myself to introduce myself or ask how they are. If you can't overcome this, you will never learn French. As long as you're afraid of making mistakes, you will never learn French. If you don't actually speak the language, you will never learn French... You don't learn a language only in classroom environments or with very patient friends. You learn it by speaking as much as you can, whenever you can, and making as many mistakes as you possibly can. Even if you don't know how to say one exact thing in particular, circumlocution is your friend. Or rewording it in another way.

stephenhuey 8y ago
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 that. French people do hear a lot of non-native speakers of their language as well. But when I lived in Turkey for a summer during college, I made a concerted effort to built up some vocab in a few verb tenses. While I didn't get very far, it was pretty fun since it's so different from the English and Spanish I knew. It was no surprise that the Turks were amused at my pronunciation, etc. But what really stuck out to me was how a group of my Turkish friends were not only tickled, they actually were kind of confused about what they were feeling about how I was sounding until one of them put their finger on it: they thought I sounded like a small child speaking Turkish! Why did that stand out to me? Because it dawned on me that unlike me, who had heard countless non-native speakers of my own language, they had never ever heard a non-native speaker trying to communicate in Turkish! I was amazed in trying to wrap my head around what that experience was like for them.

eequah9L 8y ago

> I’ll ask a stranger for money in English, but I’ll be damned if I ask a stranger to pass the cream in French. I had this with English. Then with Russian. Now I have it with German. It goes away with practice. Languages are hard. Keep it up, it will get better.

shaggyfrog 8y ago

I was in French immersion for 11 years, took classes in high school and university, and then took a long break from it -- about 10 years -- before I went back to it about 5 years ago. At first it was really hard! But things really got better over time. I practice 1-3 times a month with a French language meetup, and I also set my alarm to a French radio station. (If you can do one or both, I highly recommend!) Yet even last year when I visited France for the first time, I was still somewhat petrified to speak to the locals. After 3 days I got over it, and it started to flow again. Your angst is natural and common. Accept what you're feeling. You can push through it!

bambax 8y ago

> As an adult, I’m damned near petrified to speak the language. Have a drink or two. Really. I've noticed I'm much better in a foreign language when I'm mildly drunk (or at least I think I am, which helps get past the self-awareness block).

nemosaltat 8y ago
You probably do! https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0269881117735687?journalCode=jopa https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/026988111773568...
cgriswald 8y ago
Me too. Two of my close friends are native Spanish speakers and when I’m a little drunk I can converse with them fairly fluently. When I’m not I can still do it but I’m very slow and make more mistakes.
moufestaphio 8y ago
Seriously, came to say this. Speaking wise it helps a lot. You stop worrying about the conjugation or sentence structure etc, and just communicate with the other person.

19690401 8y ago

> Consider the word “de rien”. It is so simple. Three syllables. Not that it changes your point, but "de rien" is two syllables!

mediocrejoker 8y ago
I only took a few years of French in Canadian high school but we were also taught this as three syllables.
- FeteCommuniste 8y ago
  "Rien" has the same number of syllables as all the other consonant sound + "ien" words: one. (tien, sien, chien, bien, lien)
davidy123 8y ago
It's pronounced in three syllables (de re-an) https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/de_rien https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/de_rien
- davidivadavid 8y ago
  Nope. Two syllables is correct, as you can see by looking at the IPA transliteration, /də ʁjɛ̃/.
  - bgilroy26 8y ago
    "j" is a semi-vowel so you're both right!
    - foldr 8y ago
      Could you expand on that? Semivowels don't usually give rise to any uncertainty regarding syllable boundaries. E.g. Spanish 'tieso' clearly has two syllables (though many English speakers would misperceive it as having three), and it also has a semivowel following the initial consonant: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tieso https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tieso

fatnoah 8y ago

I grew up in NH where a fair number of people (half of my own family included) are fluent in Quebecois French and also took 4 years of French in high school. One summer between junior and senior years, I took a road trip to Montreal and tried out my French. I was thoroughly embarrassed and lived the OPs nightmare. The residents I spoke with seemed actively offended by my French and would smile condescendingly and speak to me in English. During senior year, I was able to spend a week in France. It was a totally different experience. I spoke nothing but French for the week and was able to feed and otherwise care for myself. The locals seemed to genuinely appreciate my efforts to speak the language. The capstone was later in the week when a 2am knock on my door woke me up. A younger member of our group was having serious homesickness and wanted to call home, but couldn't figure out how to make the call. I went to the lobby with her to ask the desk clerk how to make the call. I ended up having a great conversation with the desk clerk who was only a few years older than me and was in Paris for university. We chatted for about 30 minutes about life, things we liked, cool things to see in Paris, etc. It was awesome! For OP, give it a shot. The only way to get better is to do it!

_yawn 8y ago
People in Quebec are actively hostile to other languages in general, mostly for historical reasons. Probably not the best place to get started haha
- cydonian_monk 8y ago
  It also doesn't help that French and Quebecois French are different dialects to the point of almost being different languages. We "offended" our entire office in Montreal when we rolled their telephony system into our headquarter's PBX and added localization for IVRs, Voicemail and whatnot using prompts recorded by a Parisian. I could understand the French French, the Quebecois was..., well, honestly about as different as street Spanish in Mexico and the Columbian Spanish I learned early in life.
  - fatnoah 8y ago
    Definitely. Some of the idioms are different and the language sounds come from the back of the throat vs. Parisian French. I had the same experience in terms of understanding and being understood.

theflyinghorse 8y ago

> Yet, I could walk into any French speaking country in the world and get a long term disability pension just by saying it. Last week, I even found a French couple to help me and I’ve been doing lots of drills, but when I record it and play it back, I sound quite soft in the head. Pro tip from an immigrant who spent decade and a half trying to get good at English pronunciation - You need to practice in front of he mirror with a recorder and youtube nearby. Find a clip of french person saying a word or a sentence you're having trouble with and mimic them in front of the mirror. Again and again, try to see what muscle engaging on their face and do the same, think of what your tongue is doing. Remember you are building muscle memory and your tongue has literally never been in some of those shapes so you need to work it. Pro tip two - find a pronunciation workshop or do a couple of sessions with a professional. Sounding like a native speaker is an incredible undertaking, but you'd probably be satisfied with being 75% there frankly.

uryga 8y ago
it's not just the tongue – when speaking French, your whole face has to do more work compared to English!
0815test 8y ago
You can also look up the individual IPA phonemes on Wiki, you'll find surprisingly extensive descriptions of how to physically sound them, and sometimes comparisons to close phonemes in other languages. This removes the "guessing" factor entirely, so the video is only there to perfect your speech and as a sanity check.

purplezooey 8y ago

One of my favorite French phrases is Je dis ça, je dis rien

magic_beans 8y ago

Really focus on the movement of your lips when you speak French. French has entirely different physical demands on you than English does. Exaggerate the lip and cheek movement. It really helps with pronunciation.

droussel 8y ago

Hey, don't worry to much about your accent. I am Québécois and French is my first language. I can speak English very well apart from that terrible accent... I used to work at a place where we had daily calls with the office in California and most of the engineers there where Indian people speaking English. It probably took me 2-3 months before I could understand a single sentence on the conf. call. Their accents were just that bad (to me). All that to say, don't be shy of your accent. Personally, I am simply happy when people make an effort to learn my language. I'll listen patiently if they stumble on words, I'll help where I can, etc. As long as they are also patient with my own horrible accent :)