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French vs Italian ease of pronounciation | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| JW Hexaglot Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/egw Joined 6123 days ago 1802 posts - 2011 votes  22 sounds Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Ancient Greek, French, Biblical Hebrew Studies: Luxembourgish, Dutch, Greek, Italian | Message 9 of 18 05 January 2011 at 6:09pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Spoken Italian is much much easier for me. It is phonetic, simple, and sraightforward.
Spoken French is really an art form. It is very subtle, with many nuances if you really want to speak it correctly. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Darklight1216 Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5101 days ago 411 posts - 639 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German | Message 10 of 18 06 January 2011 at 3:47am | IP Logged | |||||
I think it can. If you can pronounce every sound in both languages except for that trilled R then that would be the determining factor. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5382 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 11 of 18 06 January 2011 at 4:09am | IP Logged | |||||
There can't be that many people around who can master all French vowels, but yet can't produce the relatively simple Italian r. It's what, 3-4% of all sounds? Even if you couldn't say r at all, it's rather insignificant in comparison to vowels, nasals, accent, liaison, etc. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| SSalvestrini Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5175 days ago 33 posts - 43 votes Speaks: Italian, English* Studies: German, Spanish, Russian | Message 12 of 18 06 January 2011 at 4:17am | IP Logged | |||||
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Being Italian, I find it to be much easier obviously (although I am not fluent).
However, I'm confident that if I did not have a background in the language, I would still think it easier than French. This is mostly because French pronunciation, while not difficult once you get used to it, is harder to discern without having heard the particular word you're saying (quite a remediable dilemma for self-studiers). After studying, this gets easier, but at first I would see words and pronounce more vowels than I should have and that sort of thing. Italian is far more phonetic. It is spelled as it sounds. Unfortunately, that is not the case with French. As for the French "R" versus the Italian "R", I would think that for native English speakers the trilled R would be easier, but maybe not. It probably depends on what other languages you've been exposed to. If you've worked with German, for instance, you might find the French R to be easier. Both come easily in the end with dedicated practice. In regards to fluidity, I wouldn't worry too much about speaking slowly in Italian. Being precise is appreciated. On the other hand, I definitely wouldn't worry about every little vowel and consonant (sometimes that makes it harder to pronounce). My family is from Lombardi and my grandfather consistently "drops" letters (an accustomed ear can hear them, but they're kind of "smushed together" so it almost sounds like several letters are actually a single letter). It all depends on the word, of course. Edited by SSalvestrini on 06 January 2011 at 4:22am 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Darklight1216 Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5101 days ago 411 posts - 639 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German | Message 13 of 18 06 January 2011 at 7:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
I don't know, the R is a big deal to me because I feel like I'm always hearing it when Italian is spoken. (It also reminds me of Spanish which is never a good thing.) I don't care for the ... shall we say "up and down" rhythm of the words (I'm sure there's a word for that, but I can't think of it right now). It's not very pleasant for me. I think the biggest factor for me is that I don't really care about Italian while I love French. When I hear a French word that is more difficult to pronounce, I work at it. If I hear an Italian word that is hard to prounounce I don't bother with it. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| SamD Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6660 days ago 823 posts - 987 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Portuguese, Norwegian | Message 14 of 18 07 January 2011 at 1:45am | IP Logged | |||||
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I started learning French when I was very young. It was my first foreign language. My mother had a friend who was a French war bride, so I had plenty of exposure to native French at a young age. That helped my pronunciation.
I didn't tackle Italian until I was about 30 years old. There are many Italian-Americans in and around the city where I live, but many of them speak very little Italian and the ones who do speak Italian often speak dialects that are quite different from what is held up as the standard. Not only that, many of them came here decades ago and their Italian is not very current. I studied high school Spanish before going on to Italian. I'm sure Spanish has influenced my Italian, and I'll probably never be mistaken for a native speaker. Even though I've studied much more French than Italian, I find Italian pronunciation easier than French...or else the Italians I've spoken with are far more forgiving of my pronunciation and accent than the French. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Naomi Chambers Newbie United States thepolyglotexperienc Joined 5072 days ago 23 posts - 30 votes Speaks: Spanish Studies: FrenchC1, Swedish | Message 15 of 18 07 January 2011 at 2:44am | IP Logged | |||||
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I studied both languages at the University level.
You may want to invest in a phonology course. Many Universities offer French phonology and oral expression. Some Universities offer the same for Italian. I found both languages to have difficult points to them. However, I must admit that Italian was a bit easier for me. This was after studying French for so many years. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| SSalvestrini Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5175 days ago 33 posts - 43 votes Speaks: Italian, English* Studies: German, Spanish, Russian | Message 16 of 18 09 January 2011 at 3:04am | IP Logged | |||||
In Italy, Milanese is standard (there's a very famous joke in Milan/Rome about this) and is what's taught in Universities. While American-Italians can provide good conversation when learning Italian, I would not mimic them (unless they themselves immigrated and not a family member). When I was on the East Coast just recently I spent some time talking with a lot of Italian-Americas (in Italian), and 1.) they all spoke Southern dialects (while similar to Milanese, they sound strange to norther Italians) and 2.) their pronunciation, for the most part, was very, very Americanized. Most native Italians would not consider them Italian. Of course, this is not true of all Italian-Americans, but a lot of immigrant families did not teach their children Italian once arriving in this country because they wanted to assimilate as much as possible. There were many stereotypes about Italians being poor and uneducated, so a more westernized family was idealistic. And actually, in Italy itself, these stereotypes are still prominent, but towards Southerners (similarly to how Southerners are viewed in the US). Northern Italy (especially Lombardi and Milan) are viewed as the economic and political power in the country. That half of the country is trendy and "European Italy". The South, on the other hand, is considered poor. Manual labor is done there, with little economic development or contribution. And again, those are just the stereotypes I have witnessed or have been told of. You may or may not agree. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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