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French learners: What’s your main problem | ||
Tags: Difficulty | French | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| onesteptwostep Groupie United Kingdom Joined 5773 days ago 49 posts - 50 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, Japanese, Korean | Message 17 of 43 14 March 2009 at 6:09pm | IP Logged | |||||
I do try to make the effort, yes, even if it does get pretty disheartening at times. I have problems with acquiring decent amounts of vocabulary as well, so it's like killing two birds with one stone, really.
That's where we differ! I don't consider myself to be anywhere near fluent in reading, writing, or speaking - particularly speaking - but I've just noticed that my listening skills are pretty bad, that's all, mainly due to the speed at which the French language is spoken (I'm fine when the speech is slowed down). It's just a matter of practice, as with all language skills. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Topsiderunner Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6918 days ago 215 posts - 218 votes  Speaks: English*, French Studies: Italian, Arabic (Written) | Message 18 of 43 14 March 2009 at 6:14pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I've found comprehension more frustrating than anything because it is entirely variable: I might understand people all day and then comes one person that I literally find completely unintelligible no matter what the topic, situation, etc. Funny enough, once when I was in the latter situation, another native French speaker suddenly said "I don't understand half of what you're saying." One situation I've found particularly difficult is cashiers at large stores, because there's tons of background noise and they're just shooting off the same phrases they say all day. Luckily, you can usually guess what they are probably saying (do you have a store card, the total bill, etc).
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| heavydust Newbie Canada Joined 6084 days ago 18 posts - 19 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 19 of 43 15 March 2009 at 4:53am | IP Logged | |||||
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Yeah its listening. If your not 100% tuned in you miss things and some times a word is just pronounced in a single letter so you don't know if in a sentence if you heard a letter or a different word. Like a manger or ammenager. Too much similar sounding words, the french need to fix their language. Grammar ok, vocab not too bad if you practice but spoken is hard er than any language. This coming from a guy who learned chinese, Italian, Spanish, jamaican, and chenowah (a language which no written text exist for)
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| Kubelek Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland chomikuj.pl/Kuba_wal Joined 6852 days ago 415 posts - 528 votes Speaks: Polish*, EnglishC2, French, Spanish Studies: German | Message 20 of 43 15 March 2009 at 11:22am | IP Logged | |||||
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I can relate to that. I don't study French actively at the moment, but I watch movies and shows only in French. I like the dubbings, what can I say. You'd love them too if you tried watching movies in one of the countries that uses the lector system on TV (one person saying all the parts in a movie)
I can watch a season of an american show dubbed into French with near 100% comprehension, but when it's a French movie in 'version originale' I miss a lot of what's being said when I don't rewind. Even when I do go back to check, there are parts so slurred that I can't decipher to save my life. While in France it was easier to understand 70 year olds speaking French mixed with their local dialect than to understand my host family's teenage son. Understanding French Canadians is very hard too, especially in the shows where they use colloquial language. I've never tried watching one for more than 3 minutes though, because I find that particular accent utterly annoying. All I want to know is what to do, how to study, to gain access to real native materials, such as stand up shows, or guignols de l'info (when I can actually understand more than 30% of the jokes!). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| FrenchLanguage Senior Member Germany Joined 5736 days ago 122 posts - 135 votes | Message 21 of 43 15 March 2009 at 1:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Hey thanks a ton for all the replies @ everyone!
@heavydust: "but spoken is hard er than any language. This coming from a guy who learned chinese(...)" I assume you learned mandarin Chinese (and not cantonese which has those 9 "tones" - cant think of the right word, now sorry), right? Still, I'm amazed...do you really find French harder to comprehend than Chinese?!? I've actually not taken up Chinese, thinking it wouldnt be a wise idea for me, because grammar comes extremly easy to me, but listening is definitely an area of weakness of mine (not just with French...in English it took me a while, too - and not just in comparison to my written English skills, but I also often felt that other students understood English in class better than myself when I started learning it on my own). You find French harder to comprehend than Chinese? Wow, Im amazed now. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| melissa Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5733 days ago 1 posts - 1 votes Speaks: Malay | Message 22 of 43 15 March 2009 at 1:49pm | IP Logged | |||||
I understand your problem.. and my suggestion is why don't you try to view this site http://www.love2review.com/LANGUAGE.html View it first.. Hope this could help you :) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| FrenchLanguage Senior Member Germany Joined 5736 days ago 122 posts - 135 votes | Message 23 of 43 15 March 2009 at 1:56pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Thanks for the suggestion of buying a product in your very first post, but this kind of puts me off:
FEATURES: Who Else Wants to Learn to Speak France Confidently and Naturally In Less Than 8 Weeks?? AND take all the frustration, difficulty and headache out of YOUR practice time with this EXPLOSIVE interactive 'learn France' ---> My review of that review: 1. If you want to sell a language-learning product to an English-speaker, try not to make mistakes such as using the word "France" instead of "French" 2. 8 weeks sounds like way too much work for me. I want to speak French PERFECTLY, in 1 week! not in 8! ;-) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| TerryW Senior Member United States Joined 6357 days ago 370 posts - 783 votes Speaks: English* | Message 24 of 43 15 March 2009 at 1:56pm | IP Logged | |||||
Agreed. After learning a little bit of a few other languages, the spelling vs. pronunciation was a shock. Anyone who studied a little Spanish and/or Italian would look at the French words for "one year" (un an) and pronounce it "oon ahn." Not even close, like 180 degrees diff, and I can't even write it phonetically. I remember doing the FSI French Pronunciation module to start, and when I got to the pronunciation of "en retard" ("late"), I thought "Say what? Is that a misspelled typo or did they mismatch the sound for that text, or what? How do they get 'Ahngh tahgh' out of THAT, are they insane?" ;-) Edited by TerryW on 15 March 2009 at 2:04pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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