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Trying to decide what to do with French? | ||
Tags: French | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4710 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes  Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 9 of 26 17 August 2014 at 11:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
I'm guessing he never learned as a child like a good boy ;) When you go for a swim, you don't just jump in off the deep end. Just like you don't start doing Russian and start with War and Peace. Apart from that languages can't kill you, but water can. Slightly wonky comparison. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5012 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 10 of 26 18 August 2014 at 12:03am | IP Logged | |||||
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I think the perfectionism is pretty understandable and quite a common thing. And truth be told, if it was another language (like Spanish or German), I would tell you the situations with natives will be much more pleasant than you expect (that good old fear "omg, I'm gonna look like an idiot who makes stupid mistakes!" which I know far too well). However, the french are the european japanese. Many of them cannot imagine you could learn their native language, which is among the hardest in the world. Many of them actually don't want you to or rather have no reason to want to be helpful and pleasant about it. And any detail (not only a mistake, it may be a touristy look or foreign name or whatever) will convince them you are just another bonjour-with-horrible-pronunciation-look-how-i-speak-french guy. The french have very high standards for learners as some posts of garyb's or mine or others' show.
But that just means you need a small approach adjustment. There are surely going to be people who'll enjoy speaking with you despite an ocassional mistake or imperfect accent (after all, who does have a perfect accent) or too basic vocabulary instead of a more precise word. You'll get lots of practice and both you and the natives will have good time. But there will be others, who will try to switch to English (even though their English might be nightmarish), who will look at you as if you were a cow trying to dance or they will stop you after two basic words to congratulate you to awesome French as if you were a spoiled child knowing nothing (and than perhaps switch to English). And there is only one way to deal with both them and your imperfection. Don't care about them and forgive yourself the mistakes and failures. Learn from those gaps but don't beat yourself over them. You have gone a long way and invested lots of time, efforts and money to get so far. And you will be making nice progress through the practice I'm sure. And if anyone tries to kick down your confidence and make your practice less pleasant (or even impossible), just tell them to (ok, it is probably not following the rules to share knowledge of espessialy rude expressions on the forums, so you'll need your own research) ;-) Edited by Cavesa on 18 August 2014 at 12:11am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5012 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 11 of 26 18 August 2014 at 12:06am | IP Logged | |||||
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Sorry, accidentally quoted myself instead of editing. Edited by Cavesa on 18 August 2014 at 12:11am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Tyrion101 Senior Member United States Joined 3916 days ago 153 posts - 174 votes Speaks: French | Message 12 of 26 18 August 2014 at 6:02am | IP Logged | |||||
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Again thank you, this will keep me going, I've heard in Quebec its a bit different, as far as how they treat people attempting to learn the language. This by the way is probably what my accent is going to wind up sounding like since that is the french I spend the most time listening to. How do the French french take their Quebecois friends from across the pond?
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| eyðimörk Triglot Senior Member France goo.gl/aT4FY7 Joined 4102 days ago 490 posts - 1158 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French Studies: Breton, Italian | Message 13 of 26 18 August 2014 at 10:00am | IP Logged | |||||
It's a joke from the Philogelos slightly paraphrased (I pulled out my notes and found you the original: "Σχολαστικὸς κολυμβῶν παρὰ μικρὸν ἐπνίγη· ὤμοσε δὲ εἰς ὕδωρ μὴ εἰσελθεῖν, ἐὰν μὴ μάθῃ πρῶτον καλῶς κολυμβᾶν"), and it highlights the (scholar's) fallacy of thinking one can learn to a skill well through theoretical work. Hence, its relevance, even if languages do not happen to be wet and fall from the sky. Edited by eyðimörk on 18 August 2014 at 10:01am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4710 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 14 of 26 18 August 2014 at 10:08am | IP Logged | |||||
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Excuse my failings in Ancient Greek.
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| eyðimörk Triglot Senior Member France goo.gl/aT4FY7 Joined 4102 days ago 490 posts - 1158 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French Studies: Breton, Italian | Message 15 of 26 18 August 2014 at 10:23am | IP Logged | |||||
Where in France have you been spending your time?! I'm not claiming that your experience is not your experience, but mine is wildly different. For the past 22 years I have been coming to France, first on occasional family holidays and for the past three years as an immigrant. I have been speaking anything from bonjour-tourist-French to relatively fluently, I have never been poorly treated over my inability to produce perfect French. Unless we count speaking to tweens and young teens. They're brutal. Say "plus" when the idiom requires "encore" and they'll look at their parents and loudly proclaim that they don't understand a word that you're saying. Adults, on the contrary, have always gone out of their way to let me speak French, even if I make mistakes or speak slowly. In Normandy, Brittany, the Loire Valley, Champagne, Burgundy, Alsace... even in Paris. My husband started learning French after we moved, and people are perfectly happy to let him take all the time in the world to compose a sentence, and if he stops conjugating his verbs half-way through no one cares (I've even been kindly told not to answer for him since he can clearly answer himself given a bit more time). On my really really bad off-days, when I have a headache, I'm cramping, and I'm mentally preoccupied, and I can barely compose a (in my opinion) passable sentence, people often jump in with an encouraging complement. Maybe that will all change if my French gets really good but I retain my accent, I don't know, but so far people have been nothing but incredibly gracious about how we butcher their beautiful language. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| eyðimörk Triglot Senior Member France goo.gl/aT4FY7 Joined 4102 days ago 490 posts - 1158 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French Studies: Breton, Italian | Message 16 of 26 18 August 2014 at 10:37am | IP Logged | |||||
I never once accused you of having insufficient knowledge in Ancient Greek or even Ancient Greek jokes. In fact, the origin of my joke affects very little with regard to how you responded, and how I responded to you. The original quote was included merely since this is a language forum and people tend to get a kick out of that sort of thing. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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