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Is French really easier than English? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| ScottScheule Diglot Senior Member United States scheule.blogspot.com Joined 5228 days ago 645 posts - 1176 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Latin, Hungarian, Biblical Hebrew, Old English, Russian, Swedish, German, Italian, French | Message 33 of 131 15 June 2011 at 3:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
Sure, it's part of the word, but my point was it's an additional part of the word. So in English, you have to learn pronunciation, spelling, meaning and register, but in French you have to learn pronunciation, spelling, meaning, register, and gender. So just by the math there's more work, other things being equal, learning a gendered language. This is without getting into the added burden of dealing with the agreement of adjectives, something the English speaker has little experience with. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| ScottScheule Diglot Senior Member United States scheule.blogspot.com Joined 5228 days ago 645 posts - 1176 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Latin, Hungarian, Biblical Hebrew, Old English, Russian, Swedish, German, Italian, French | Message 34 of 131 15 June 2011 at 3:42pm | IP Logged | |||||
Sure, but those are things you can control for (with the possible exception of native language--see my discussion upthread).
Nor do I, but that seems like a fair means of comparing the difficulty of a language. It would be interesting if after comparing languages thus, you tried it with many different languages and got some clues that the numbers were more than just relative. For example, say a French person had a worst time learning English than vice versa, and then an English person had a worst time learning Mongolian than vice versa, would that mean the French would have a harder time learning Mongolian than vice versa? You could make a prediction and see. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| caracao Triglot Groupie France Joined 5120 days ago 53 posts - 84 votes Speaks: French*, English, Italian Studies: German | Message 35 of 131 15 June 2011 at 5:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
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As a native speaker of French, I can't really say if English is more difficult than French.
But English is more difficult than most people think. (Real English, not this low vocabulary English that everybody speaks nowadays). The gender is not a problem in French, that exist in other languages. All I know is that French kids, when they learn a new word, learn it with the article "le-chat", "le-chien", "la-maison". Try to learn the new word with the article attached. Kids always use the word with the article. Phrasal verbs can be tricky, but most of the time French speakers can use the other verb. Example instead of to go on, they'll use "to continue", not only it's from french origin, but it's close to the verb "continuer". BUT when you learn real English, you may want to use the phrasal verbs, cause after all they're use in informal speachs, whereas the French-Latin vocabulary is use mostly in formal English. Example : Germanic vocabulary : to go on, to begin = "continuer" et "commencer". French-Latin vocabulary : to continue, to commence. So yes it can be tricky to learn English for a French speaker, we got less problem using and reading formal English (cause the vocabulary comes from the French), and tend to not use the phrasal verbs much, nor learning them properly. The main problem of English is that it's a ROMANIZED GermanCIC language with a DUAL (double) vocabulary, speaking French can help to read formal English, but you're left with all those phrasal verbs. And we tend to be lazy learning them. Some call English a hybrid language as well. Do not forget that around 73 % of the English comes from the Norman-French-Latin languages (a lot of this vocabulary found in rare words only found in old or very formal English). Norman variety of French first, then the French spoken in Paris was spoken in England. They used Latin and Greek as well to create new words, science vocabulary for example. Phrasal verbs tend to be use more and more, the English language is evolving, as all languages do. So if you're an English speaker, use your formal vocabulary in English to try recognize French words, when learning French. And don't worry of the spelling, we don't expect you to write properly, just try making less mistakes as possible. Even the most intelligent writter in French needs a dictionnary from time to time to check on the spelling of a particular word. Edited by caracao on 15 June 2011 at 5:21pm 8 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5766 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 36 of 131 15 June 2011 at 9:51pm | IP Logged | |||||
Only that vocabulary acquisition isn't an equation. If you already know several hundred or thousand nouns and haven't figured out heuristic strategies to work out a word's gender you are doing something wrong. And with such strategies most of the time gender is learned faster than connotation, register, sentence patterns the word occurs in and how they relate to the word's meaning. So initially, gender is an additional obstacle but it's not so bad in the long run. Unless, of course, you insist on learning words in isolation. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Haldor Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5615 days ago 103 posts - 122 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Swedish Studies: French, Spanish | Message 37 of 131 15 June 2011 at 9:53pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm sure phrasal verbs are difficult, just like English pronounciation/ intonation and spelling. However, each language has its difficulties, and I think French verbs are harder, having all the 6 persons and a lot more times. I mean, just think of passé simple, subjonctif, or even imparfait du subjonctif in French. French irregular verbs for instance are really hard, especially in plual form.. Croire vs croitre, etc.. So I would say that nouns/genders (of course) and verbs and the conjugations of these are a lot more difficult in French...
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ScottScheule Diglot Senior Member United States scheule.blogspot.com Joined 5228 days ago 645 posts - 1176 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Latin, Hungarian, Biblical Hebrew, Old English, Russian, Swedish, German, Italian, French | Message 38 of 131 15 June 2011 at 10:19pm | IP Logged | |||||
Well, yeah, and neither are two groups of apples, but we can represent them by an equation. For our purposes, it becomes a useful equation when one specifies "other things being equal," as I did.
I completely agree, but no one claimed otherwise--who ever would? The only thing Jon1991 claimed was that French had gender, and the only thing that I claimed was that's more work. Are there shortcuts? Of course. That doesn't alter the basic claim that genders make things more complicated. The English student doesn't need to learn any such shortcuts. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5056 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 39 of 131 15 June 2011 at 10:57pm | IP Logged | |||||
French verbal system is much more easier than that of English if we regard tense and aspect. Many tenses are not used in oral language and there are no modal verbs. Pronouns are more complex in French. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Haldor Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5615 days ago 103 posts - 122 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Swedish Studies: French, Spanish | Message 40 of 131 16 June 2011 at 1:43am | IP Logged | |||||
Hmm, but aside from to be and to have, there are no differences in persons. There are less times, hardly any subjunctive or conditionnal. I have trouble understanding your arguments here.. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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