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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 49 of 131 17 June 2011 at 11:55pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Hear, hear! The same rule for my and mine. "Thine" also functions alone as the possessive pronoun, of course, like mine. Note, however, Wikipedia: "The possessive forms were used as genitives before words beginning with a vowel sound and letter h (e.g. thine eyes, mine heire). Otherwise, "my" and "thy" is attributive (my/thy goods) and "mine" and "thine" are predicative (they are mine/thine). Shakespeare pokes fun at this custom with an archaic plural for eyes when the character Bottom says "mine eyen" in A Midsummer Night's Dream." 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| crystal.yang Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4911 days ago 25 posts - 39 votes Speaks: Mandarin | Message 50 of 131 19 June 2011 at 5:55am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I think the pronunciation of French is easier than English, bcause it has the same accent in each word. But the tense and the Verb conjugation really made me confused.
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| Haldor Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5615 days ago 103 posts - 122 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Swedish Studies: French, Spanish | Message 51 of 131 19 June 2011 at 8:45pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Hey. I think you might be right about that, at least accent-wise. However, regarding its spelling French is harder I think, because of all the mute letters and all the homophones, meaning the words sounds that sound the same but have different spelling. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6582 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 52 of 131 19 June 2011 at 9:38pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Surely you jest! French spelling is not entirely straightforward, but it's in general pretty regular. It's quite rare to find a sound with more than three different spellings, whereas English habitually has six or seven ways to spell any one sound. Take the phoneme [i:] for example.‘Caesar’, ‘conceive’, ‘fee’, ‘field’, ‘key’, ‘machine’, ‘me’, ‘people’, ‘quay’, ‘sea’, ‘subpoena’ (list stolen from the Internet). Or the 'sh' sound in: ‘chaperone’, ‘conscious’, ‘eschew’, ‘fuchsia’, ‘fissure’, ‘mansion’, ‘mission’, ‘nation’, ‘nauseous’, ‘ocean’, ‘shoe’, ‘sugar’, ‘suspicion’. English also refuses to change the spelling of loan words, which leaves us with spellings like "Czech". Scratch that, sometimes English does insert letters into loan words out of the blue, like the 's' in "island". As for words that are pronounced the same and spelled differently, it's not like English doesn't have its fair share. Ever wonder why some native speakers mess up their "their", "they're" and "there"? Or "you're" and "your"? And there are certainly plenty of others: "you, ewe", "bite, byte, bight", "gnu, new, knew", "hear, here", "isle, aisle, I'll", "metal, mettle" and so on. What was it more? Silent letters? How about "gnat", "know", "island", "pneumonia", "wrinkle", "debt", "listen", "two"? And don't for a moment think that list is exhaustive. It contains a huge heap of words, even without using the silent 'e'. Do I need to show you the poem again? 5 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 53 of 131 19 June 2011 at 11:13pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Hehe. No thanks. Let's take the sound /e/ in French.
How would you spell it? é, è, ai, ei, haie, haies, aie, ait, aient, es, et, est, ay, ey, aix, e, ê,ë, ais, .. I'm sure I could go on with this forever, but I guess you see my point.. 'Island' is there for ethymolgiacal reasons, I guess, (probably) being derived from, 'isle' which is a French word, today written as île, but I'm sure you knew that :) You can't really use the I'll thing in English though, that's optional, in French it's mandatory and even more common, so that's an invalid argument in my opinion. Edited by Haldor on 19 June 2011 at 11:13pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6582 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 54 of 131 20 June 2011 at 7:20am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Ok, point taken. However, those are several different sounds (or do you know of words where 'é' and 'è' have the same pronunciation?). Also, many of your examples are the same spelling but followed by a silent letter, which you had as a separate point.
Nope. "island" is derived from old Norse "igland". The 's' was added later in a misguided attempt to link it to the Latin "insula". Much like the 'b' in "debt" or the 'd' in "advantage", the letter has been added against all reason (though the pronunciation of "advantage" has since changed to accomodate the new spelling). But even if it were there for etymological reasons, it wouldn't make it easier to spell. Question: does French have spelling bees? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5056 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 55 of 131 20 June 2011 at 8:05am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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To me the pronunciation of French vowels was difficult, consonants were very easy. Spelling was a problem, of course, but not so big as in English. Unstressed pronouns were a problem while speaking because I didn't have time to put them in the correct order (together with auxilary verbs and some other small words placed before the main verb). It took also a big time to understand that words like "je" could not be separated from the verb, omitted, stressed. Edited by Марк on 20 June 2011 at 8:05am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tornus Diglot GroupieRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5143 days ago 82 posts - 113 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Spanish, Swedish, Danish | Message 56 of 131 20 June 2011 at 9:05am | IP Logged | ||||||||
No, I've seen this kind of contests here in France. Dictation contests are more popular though. For instance,"la dictée de bernard pivot" which is famous to be really hard. google it and you'll see how hard it is.
Eventhough the sound /e/ can be written with several spelling, when you read it you know how to pronunce it unlike in English. For example, in English 3 sounds match with the letters "ea" ( /e/ bear; /i/ leave; /ie/ creation) English is hard to read when you don't know every single word, French is not. Edited by tornus on 20 June 2011 at 9:32am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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