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I managed to get from A1.2 (started there from having a few holidays in France, having listened to a Michel Thomas audiobook once) to B2.4 in two years before m

I managed to get from A1.2 (started there from having a few holidays in France, having listened to a Michel Thomas audiobook once) to B2.4 in two years before moving to France. The InnerFrench podcast helped a lot - I had french courses twice a week, 2 hours each, and the podcast kept french in my mind on weekends/days off. That being said, after moving here it still took 3-4 months to get comfortable with just how bloody fast they speak French in real life.

mabub24 5y ago
That's the big thing with me as well. I would comfortably say I'm at a B2 level, but the french from native speakers in casual conversation is so fast sometimes. It gave me a new appreciation for how fast I probably speak english.
- plainnoodles 5y ago
  I took 5 years of french in high school and really loved it, so I leaned into it heavily and read novels in French, etc. I felt pretty confident in my vocab and grammar, and I even had a decent time reading some of the Old French stuff from classic novels (I disliked my English teacher and loved French, and since English class at that point is less about the language and more about literary analysis, I asked if I could read the books (where the original was in French) in their native language, and she could hardly refuse such a reasonable and intellectually curious request! So anyway I read Madame Bovary and L'Etranger and a few other older books whose titles escape me). And on the more modern side, I could read French newspapers quite well too. But at no point could I ever reliably make out more than the gist of what an actual French speaker, speaking normally, said. We have two Belgian exchange students and I struggled to understand them, and just watching French video content, similar struggles there. I don't know if it's like this for every language where native speakers just talk really fast and there's a large gulf in comprehension speed for learners to close, or if it's something specific to French, but I know your pain here.
  - sersi 5y ago
    In my experience with other languages (can't say for French since that's my native language), it's normal. I'd say that for someone at your level who has extensive vocabulary and good reading comprehension, just staying a month or two in France would be enough for you to get to the point where you wouldn't have issues understanding French speakers speaking normally. Also, once you do understand French speakers, you might not understand other accents. For example, even as a native French speaker, I struggle with Québécois.
    - 908B64B197 5y ago
      Takes time to get used to any accent. Americans struggle in Ireland for instance. Or people from the northeast once they get to Louisiana.
    - jgwil2 5y ago
      As an English speaker who learned French, Spanish, and German I'd say that of the three, French has the biggest gap between written, formal language and spoken language, especially in informal contexts (e.g. conversation among friends and family). I would also say that for all languages, reading comprehension and and listening comprehension are two different but complementary skills.
  - mabub24 5y ago
    Reading and conversing are really almost like two different skills. A lot of learning how to speak a language is ear-training. With French, I started much more with speaking so now I can make out a lot of what people say. But, the big challenge with French is that, like in English, native speakers "break" the rules or use subtle turns of phrasing that are very culturally specific, usually they're collocations that don't exactly translate (but luckily for English they actually commonly do thanks to the Norman mixing in English). It gets even more complicated when French has different formal and casual registers that are much more distinct than in English. So when you're reading Le Monde, or Flaubert, you're getting the literary, fancy, French. Most people speak in a much more argot mixed way. Now add onto that different regional dialects like Quebecois (really really fast, distinct, french from them), Belgian, Swiss, different parts of France, etc...and it's even more difficult. (Personally I find Parisian French, ou francais standard to be the easiest to understand). The best solution is just immersion. And constant use. Language is used, and use is the best method for improvement. You can't really think of it like a logical code. It's more like behavior for communicating. You have to learn the right rules in the language game for things to "make sense".
wbsss4412 5y ago
It’s important to note that it’s not just speed, they also drop/concatenate words in spoken French in ways that are rarely explicitly taught.
- maxFlow 5y ago
  Not entirely true, liaisons---and the rules around them---make part of any half-decent French curriculum. But liaisons are only one part of the "dropping/concatenating" in spoken French, the other part being accents. Accents can obfuscate speech terribly, but detecting accents can only come by with practice and exposure [in the wild] to regional varieties of FR. The thing that made liaisons much more clear for me was bucketing them by: optional, forbidden, and required.
  - wbsss4412 5y ago
    This is true. But as you say it is only a part of it. Whole words get dropped as well “ne ___ pas” simply becomes “pas” as an obvious example. This phenomenon happens in spoken English as well. “I am going to go to the store” => “imagotada store”
johnisom2001 5y ago
The innerFrench podcast is fantastic for comprehension if you're not yet at a high level.

mabub24 5y ago

That's the big thing with me as well. I would comfortably say I'm at a B2 level, but the french from native speakers in casual conversation is so fast sometimes. It gave me a new appreciation for how fast I probably speak english.

plainnoodles 5y ago
I took 5 years of french in high school and really loved it, so I leaned into it heavily and read novels in French, etc. I felt pretty confident in my vocab and grammar, and I even had a decent time reading some of the Old French stuff from classic novels (I disliked my English teacher and loved French, and since English class at that point is less about the language and more about literary analysis, I asked if I could read the books (where the original was in French) in their native language, and she could hardly refuse such a reasonable and intellectually curious request! So anyway I read Madame Bovary and L'Etranger and a few other older books whose titles escape me). And on the more modern side, I could read French newspapers quite well too. But at no point could I ever reliably make out more than the gist of what an actual French speaker, speaking normally, said. We have two Belgian exchange students and I struggled to understand them, and just watching French video content, similar struggles there. I don't know if it's like this for every language where native speakers just talk really fast and there's a large gulf in comprehension speed for learners to close, or if it's something specific to French, but I know your pain here.
- sersi 5y ago
  In my experience with other languages (can't say for French since that's my native language), it's normal. I'd say that for someone at your level who has extensive vocabulary and good reading comprehension, just staying a month or two in France would be enough for you to get to the point where you wouldn't have issues understanding French speakers speaking normally. Also, once you do understand French speakers, you might not understand other accents. For example, even as a native French speaker, I struggle with Québécois.
  - 908B64B197 5y ago
    Takes time to get used to any accent. Americans struggle in Ireland for instance. Or people from the northeast once they get to Louisiana.
  - jgwil2 5y ago
    As an English speaker who learned French, Spanish, and German I'd say that of the three, French has the biggest gap between written, formal language and spoken language, especially in informal contexts (e.g. conversation among friends and family). I would also say that for all languages, reading comprehension and and listening comprehension are two different but complementary skills.
- mabub24 5y ago
  Reading and conversing are really almost like two different skills. A lot of learning how to speak a language is ear-training. With French, I started much more with speaking so now I can make out a lot of what people say. But, the big challenge with French is that, like in English, native speakers "break" the rules or use subtle turns of phrasing that are very culturally specific, usually they're collocations that don't exactly translate (but luckily for English they actually commonly do thanks to the Norman mixing in English). It gets even more complicated when French has different formal and casual registers that are much more distinct than in English. So when you're reading Le Monde, or Flaubert, you're getting the literary, fancy, French. Most people speak in a much more argot mixed way. Now add onto that different regional dialects like Quebecois (really really fast, distinct, french from them), Belgian, Swiss, different parts of France, etc...and it's even more difficult. (Personally I find Parisian French, ou francais standard to be the easiest to understand). The best solution is just immersion. And constant use. Language is used, and use is the best method for improvement. You can't really think of it like a logical code. It's more like behavior for communicating. You have to learn the right rules in the language game for things to "make sense".

wbsss4412 5y ago

It’s important to note that it’s not just speed, they also drop/concatenate words in spoken French in ways that are rarely explicitly taught.

maxFlow 5y ago
Not entirely true, liaisons---and the rules around them---make part of any half-decent French curriculum. But liaisons are only one part of the "dropping/concatenating" in spoken French, the other part being accents. Accents can obfuscate speech terribly, but detecting accents can only come by with practice and exposure [in the wild] to regional varieties of FR. The thing that made liaisons much more clear for me was bucketing them by: optional, forbidden, and required.
- wbsss4412 5y ago
  This is true. But as you say it is only a part of it. Whole words get dropped as well “ne ___ pas” simply becomes “pas” as an obvious example. This phenomenon happens in spoken English as well. “I am going to go to the store” => “imagotada store”

johnisom2001 5y ago

The innerFrench podcast is fantastic for comprehension if you're not yet at a high level.