4 ms·

Are you sue that’s the reason? French has an equally wacky spelling system, but French people are notorious for refusing to understand tiny errors in pronunciat

Are you sue that’s the reason? French has an equally wacky spelling system, but French people are notorious for refusing to understand tiny errors in pronunciation by foreigners (while North African French speakers will accept anything you say so long as you get a letter or two right). Meanwhile, Spanish, with its perfect phonetic spelling is spoken by a people who will go out of their way to understand you no matter how bad you speak their language. My experience is that it’s mostly cultural, and often comes down to whether the person you’re speaking to has themself had to try using a foreign language, thus gaining the empathy to help you out.

WastingMyTime89 5y ago
> French people are notorious for refusing to understand tiny errors in pronunciation by foreigners (while North African French speakers will accept anything you say so long as you get a letter or two right). I think it's a mix of multiple reasons. First, French is a language which not only has no word stress but actively blends words together when speacking in a sentence. Correct word pronunciation is key to understanding and what foreigners view as small errors sometimes do actually make their sentence unintelligible to a French speaker from France. Then, language proficiency is a strong social marker in France. So, if you speak broken French, people will subconsciously view you as lower class/uneducated.
runarberg 5y ago
Your mileage may vary, but my experience with Danish and Norwegian is similar. Norwegian which has very phonetic spelling is very forgiving on mispronunciation while Danish—a very similar language but spelled much differently and not very phonetically—is not nearly as forgiving on mispronunciation, and being Danish you do mispronounce a lot as you are learning the language.
- ihateolives 5y ago
  Reminds me of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-mOy8VUEBk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-mOy8VUEBk
coremoff 5y ago
I had a similar experience when I tried to learn Polish; my friends, who knew I was trying to learn, simply couldn't understand what I was saying, and couldn't guess either (and my ear found it very difficult to hear the difference between the expected pronunciation and what I was saying). My heart wasn't really in it, but I was also very discouraged by this.
scrollaway 5y ago
> French people are notorious for refusing to understand tiny errors in pronunciation by foreigners Keyword: refuse. They can, but pretend they don’t. It’s racism disguising itself as cultural pride. (Source: I’m French and am certainly not proud of that part of my heritage)
- krageon 5y ago
  > It’s racism It's elitism, France's hate of foreigners is not founded on skin colour or heritage (e.g. both your parents can be French and if your French is bad, you get treated poorly anyway).
  - scrollaway 5y ago
    It's not founded on skin color you're right, but you're wrong about heritage. Obviously Not All French People Are Like That (I should hope so, as a French person myself). But the ones concerned will be MUCH pickier about people's grammar, spelling and pronunciation if they perceive them as not French. But yes, elitism is also present: If you're perceived as French and your french is bad, you will also be treated poorly. But it's a different kind of "poorly". In fact, Paul Taylor talks about that in his stand up "Franglais" (I HIGHLY recommend a watch, it's hilarious especially if you're familiar with both French and British/American culture, and it's available for free on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pae2AMnmUVA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pae2AMnmUVA)
  - YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago
    The right word is chauvinism, no?
    - drran 5y ago
      No. Chauvinism is when somebody declares that his/her language is superior to other languages, e.g. because it used by a broad audience. Russian and English speakers are often doing that from my own experience.
pimterry 5y ago
> My experience is that it’s mostly cultural, and often comes down to whether the person you’re speaking to has themself had to try using a foreign language, thus gaining the empathy to help you out. I think another part is how much diversity there is in speakers of the language and the common dialects. For example, there's a very large number of Spanish speakers worldwide with a very wide variety of accents and dialects, plus large numbers of non-native speakers. That also applies to English, but doesn't apply so much to French (not that there's zero variety, but compare the content of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_dialects_and_varieties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_dialects_and_varieties, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dialects_of_English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dialects_of_English and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varieties_of_French https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varieties_of_French). Because of all that linguistic variety, if you're an English or Spanish speaker you're generally more accustomed to hearing different pronunciations of your own language day to day than French speakers are (on average, YMMV, etc). I lived in Romania at one point, where this was even more obvious. There are comparatively few distinct dialects of Romanian, and most Romanians have never heard non-native speakers speaking their language, so no matter how friendly they were, understanding unusual (OK, wrong) pronunciation was just not a common skill.
- thematrixturtle 5y ago
  Eh, France also has a number of languages that are distinctly not French. But it also has a long history of being a heavily centralized state where everything revolves around Paris, and other languages/dialects were ruthlessly suppressed for a long time.

WastingMyTime89 5y ago

> French people are notorious for refusing to understand tiny errors in pronunciation by foreigners (while North African French speakers will accept anything you say so long as you get a letter or two right). I think it's a mix of multiple reasons. First, French is a language which not only has no word stress but actively blends words together when speacking in a sentence. Correct word pronunciation is key to understanding and what foreigners view as small errors sometimes do actually make their sentence unintelligible to a French speaker from France. Then, language proficiency is a strong social marker in France. So, if you speak broken French, people will subconsciously view you as lower class/uneducated.

runarberg 5y ago

Your mileage may vary, but my experience with Danish and Norwegian is similar. Norwegian which has very phonetic spelling is very forgiving on mispronunciation while Danish—a very similar language but spelled much differently and not very phonetically—is not nearly as forgiving on mispronunciation, and being Danish you do mispronounce a lot as you are learning the language.

ihateolives 5y ago
Reminds me of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-mOy8VUEBk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-mOy8VUEBk

coremoff 5y ago

I had a similar experience when I tried to learn Polish; my friends, who knew I was trying to learn, simply couldn't understand what I was saying, and couldn't guess either (and my ear found it very difficult to hear the difference between the expected pronunciation and what I was saying). My heart wasn't really in it, but I was also very discouraged by this.

scrollaway 5y ago

> French people are notorious for refusing to understand tiny errors in pronunciation by foreigners Keyword: refuse. They can, but pretend they don’t. It’s racism disguising itself as cultural pride. (Source: I’m French and am certainly not proud of that part of my heritage)

krageon 5y ago
> It’s racism It's elitism, France's hate of foreigners is not founded on skin colour or heritage (e.g. both your parents can be French and if your French is bad, you get treated poorly anyway).
- scrollaway 5y ago
  It's not founded on skin color you're right, but you're wrong about heritage. Obviously Not All French People Are Like That (I should hope so, as a French person myself). But the ones concerned will be MUCH pickier about people's grammar, spelling and pronunciation if they perceive them as not French. But yes, elitism is also present: If you're perceived as French and your french is bad, you will also be treated poorly. But it's a different kind of "poorly". In fact, Paul Taylor talks about that in his stand up "Franglais" (I HIGHLY recommend a watch, it's hilarious especially if you're familiar with both French and British/American culture, and it's available for free on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pae2AMnmUVA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pae2AMnmUVA)
- YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago
  The right word is chauvinism, no?
  - drran 5y ago
    No. Chauvinism is when somebody declares that his/her language is superior to other languages, e.g. because it used by a broad audience. Russian and English speakers are often doing that from my own experience.

pimterry 5y ago

> My experience is that it’s mostly cultural, and often comes down to whether the person you’re speaking to has themself had to try using a foreign language, thus gaining the empathy to help you out. I think another part is how much diversity there is in speakers of the language and the common dialects. For example, there's a very large number of Spanish speakers worldwide with a very wide variety of accents and dialects, plus large numbers of non-native speakers. That also applies to English, but doesn't apply so much to French (not that there's zero variety, but compare the content of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_dialects_and_varieties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_dialects_and_varieties, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dialects_of_English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dialects_of_English and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varieties_of_French https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varieties_of_French). Because of all that linguistic variety, if you're an English or Spanish speaker you're generally more accustomed to hearing different pronunciations of your own language day to day than French speakers are (on average, YMMV, etc). I lived in Romania at one point, where this was even more obvious. There are comparatively few distinct dialects of Romanian, and most Romanians have never heard non-native speakers speaking their language, so no matter how friendly they were, understanding unusual (OK, wrong) pronunciation was just not a common skill.

thematrixturtle 5y ago
Eh, France also has a number of languages that are distinctly not French. But it also has a long history of being a heavily centralized state where everything revolves around Paris, and other languages/dialects were ruthlessly suppressed for a long time.