| Archive for langcafe2.myfreeforum.org Come in and have your daily cup of languages! |
| Porthos |
College foreign language classesAre they an efficient method of teaching a student a foreign language? If they're anything like the classes offered in High School, then they're probably not. Most kids here take two years of a foreign language in high school, and they don't learn a damn thing. Can one, and does one usually learn a language at an advanced level, given they've taken several classes of it in college? |
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| Uriel |
Depends on you as a student, and how hard you try. I think intermediate Spanish at NMSU was basically an immersion class -- nothing was ever in English. | ||||||
| Loic |
I think that if anyone starts completely from scratch when it comes to a foreign language at a relatively advanced age, he would have a mountain to scale.
Are you planning to do Spanish classes, Porthos? If so, you'd probably take to them like a duck to water. |
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| Porthos |
I was thinking French or German, with perhaps a couple of Spanish classes to take me to a fluent level. I'm already at the advanced level in Spanish, although I have not taken any classes in it. But I would still like to become natively fluent.
I would be learning French and German from scratch, but I already know a bit of French, and I can actually read and comprehend a great deal of French, although when spoken, I hardly understand a word. And other than syntax and grammar, German seems like a pretty easy language for me, compared to say, Russian. |
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| Pauline |
I think that you would find german *much* easier because it's in the same group with english. french you would find easy as well because of the similarities with english and especially spanish. Russian probably would be the most difficult. of course "easy" i mean in comparaison, as to learn a language is an enormous task.
The visitors of the german threads here are very nice, so for practise your german you can go to them. If you will have questions, they would answer them (icke and Tiorthan would do this). German grammar i find complicated because of the cases, as in latin and russian etc.. french hasn't cases, so to avoid them you can chose french. The simplest foreign language I've learned is dutch, but it's the most useless one also. I enjoy german, so i recommend you it. |
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| Benjamin [inactive] |
In truth, I think that Afrikaans is probably the 'easiest' relatively large language for a native English speaker to learn — so excluding languages like Scots, Frisian and Low Saxon, which wouldn't necessarily be 'easier' for native English speakers to learn anyway.
If you're interested, have a look at www.afrikaans.us — it's amazing.
German syntax and grammar is not 'difficult' as such — basically, you learn the rules and then apply them, whereas French is more often not like that. A lot of structures are very similar to English, actually. For example: I hang my jacket up — ich hänge meine Jacke auf The other 'easy' aspect of German is that Germans and other German speakers generally speak rather 'directly' — you state simply what you mean (to a large extent like in English, actually). I find that the opposite tends to be the case in French. |
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| Porthos |
<<In truth, I think that Afrikaans is probably the 'easiest' relatively large language for a native English speaker to learn — so excluding languages like Scots, Frisian and Low Saxon, which wouldn't necessarily be 'easier' for native English speakers to learn anyway. >>
You must not forget Benjamin, that I've been speaking Spanish (albeit not at a native level) my whole life, so Romance languages are actually much easier for me to learn than Germanic ones. Languages I understand best, in order: 1.English/Spanish 2.Scots 3.Portuguese 4.Italian (when spoken) 4.French (when written) 5. Frisian 6. Dutch/Afrikaans 7. German And if we include minority languaes like Occitan, Galcian, and Low Saxon, then they'd be up there as well. |
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| Benjamin [inactive] |
I see a difference though between finding a language 'easy' to understand and finding a language 'easy' to learn. For example, although I might be able to understand Scots reasonably well, that doesn't necessarily mean that it would be equally easy for me to learn to speak it on a near-native level.
Essentially, what I'm saying is that French may not necessarily be easier for you to actually learn to use actively than, say, Afrikaans (or even Dutch, German, Swedish etc.) — even if you understand more written French than the written forms of those other languages. As for language classes in general, I have nothing against them. I've been learning French at school for the past eight years, since I was 10, and I'd describe myself as semi-fluent in French because of it. |
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| Loic |
I wholeheartedly agree with you, Benjamin. Porthos: I was under the impression that you plan to do a degree in a business-related subject. How do foreign languages factor in the grand scheme of things? As for language learning, I always feel that one either learns something well and goes on to master it, or not attempt to try it at all. So I wish you all the best if you plan to start from scratch - I dare say it would take years of hard work to be anywhere near native competence, but the journey would definitely be enlightening and satisfying. |
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| Uriel |
I'm with you, Porth -- I think the Romance languages would be a lot easier to learn than the germanic ones. Those things scare me -- and I used to speak German!
There are so many cognates between English and Romance languages, and for whatever reason, they just seem to jump out at me more than the germanic ones. Don't know why. Maybe it's because I took French and Spanish in high school. |
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| Porthos |
Exactly. Uriel, I've decided that from now, you shall be my personal spokesperson, being that we always seem to agree on everything. Shall we discuss salary and benefits at this point? 
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| Pauline |
Most of english-speaker who don't speak some other languages tell that they find english to have more similarities with the romance languages, epsecially french, spanish and italian. But I think that they're wrong. They look to some vocabulary, spelled nearly the same and feel that this is familiar, without to look to the structures, what in english are very particluarly close with dutch and german as well.
Dutch and german have another way to spell, so this would *initially* make those cognates to be not very evident, but after you will learn the orthography, you will see the incredible similarities of syntax etc....and vocabulary. I agree, that english is the germanic language the most similar with romance languages (of those germanic ones I know, so I don't include scots as I don't know it). for me, spanish feel like the most natural language of the ones I'm learning, and I expect that for english-speaker this would be afrikaans / dutch possibly german. I think that english-speakesr don't like to admit that their language is germanic, and would prefer it to be romance. I don't understand this at all, and I like the germanic languages!!!! It's in the fashion to prefer the elegant, sophisticated romance ones, but I havn't such interest in fashion when it's so stupid as this. I find as well, that the romance languages have more elegance, but we're all very subjectively judging this and it can't be another way - only a person bilingual all their live in a romance & germanic language is able to be more objective I suppose. Anyway, all these languages are closely related , so Porhtos wouldn't have so much work for learn them as for example hungarian. i completely agree with Benjamin. But..
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| Benjamin [inactive] |
Seriously though, if you learn another Germanic language even for a few weeks, you will realise very quickly why English is a Germanic language, and it will become completely obvious that English is infinitely more similar to Dutch than to French (for example).
When I was in Germany last year doing an intensive language course, I remember the point when I suddenly realised that what people there were speaking wasn't really a 'foreign language' at all — but rather a bizarre version of English with various vowel and consonant shifts, and slightly different grammar. Compare, for example, book and CD packages for learning Dutch to those for learning Spanish. In the Dutch ones, right from the beginning it's usually listen and see how much you can understand, and they then go on to teach you more Dutch throughout the tape by a kind of assimilation process. On the other hand, this tends not to be the case for Spanish ones, for example. |
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| Benjamin [inactive] |
That does seem to be the case with many native English speakers, yes. I think it stems from historical attitudes towards languages like French and Classical Latin throughout Europe (or at least Western Europe). Traditionally, people at school in England learnt Latin, and today it is usually justified by the claim that it enables people to 'get to know the origins of their language' and gives them a 'greater understanding of the structure of the English language'. I don't really understand this mentality, and I actually would have thought that learning Anglo-Saxon would be more appropriate — similar to how Scandinavians learn Old Norse.
Lol — essentially I was saying that the way in which Germans generally speak German is more similar to the way in which English people generally speak English, compared to how French people generally speak French, for example. I accept that this is very tenuous, and is based only on my own experience, but I have generally found from listening to Germans speak to each-other, they tend to speak more 'directly', more 'literally', and more 'succinctly' than French people usually do. (I don't know enough about French in Belgium to comment on that). |
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| Pauline |
Yes, I agree. There is something snob about latin, and inferior about Anglo-Saxon in the views of many people: cultured, intellectuals know latin (in this image what it has).
Of course I know only some people, not 3,5 millions who are the belgian francophones. Our french isn't very different than in France I think, except sometimes influences from walloon but not frequently. i find spoken converstaions difficult and tiring, so definitly I prefer very much when the person speak "more directly, literally & succinctly". Maybe this is for french-speakers more different than how the normal speaking is, so this can explain why I like the germanic languages!! If something isn't literally said, I will understand the literal message or not understand it at all, this is very often and I'm absolutly stupid and useless in such complicated converstaions so then get a bit panic.The germanic direct, literal, succinct talking would be perfect for me!!! i will move to live in one of those countries 
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| Benjamin [inactive] |
Essentially, if someone from England knows Latin, they will generally be see as very well educated, although perhaps a bit eccentric if they know it very well. It's also often a sign that someone went to a private school. On the other hand, someone who knows Anglo-Saxon would more likely been seen as extremely eccentric, perhaps with a somewhat 'quaint' appreciation of ancient folk traditions of rural Saxon life. There also seems to be an association between French and 'high culture' — to an extent, there is still a kind of expectation that very well educated people and upper-class people here should be able to speak French. Knowing German, on the other hand, is often seen more as a bonus, and is losing ground these days due to increasing popularity of Spanish. Seriously, I had discussions with many people who simply could not understand why on earth I'd choose to study German at university when I could have chosen Spanish instead. |
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| Pauline |
It's the same here.
It's weird that French has such an association, as here all the people speak it, also the completly low cultured (or abolsutly without culture) people. i suppose that it's seen well-educated to be able speak English.
Why everyone must do exactly the same? I never can understand this. Spanish is beautiful, but german as well!! It's the same in Wallonie; spanish is more in the fashion than german. Dutch some people learn because if you woudl like a good career in the government you must speak it. I think that in europe, German is more useful than spanish, althogh in the US vice versa. It isn't only "use" but other things of course what are important. spanish will be very useful for me as I would like to go to the Gapagos islands where there are the *very* nice enormous tortoises. I don't want to die before I've seen them. I think that Galapagos is part of Ecuador where one of the official language is spanish (and some local ones I expect, but I won't learn those). |
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| Pauline |
here's a great picture of a tortoise :
this one was 175 year old in the photo in 2005 !!! 
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| Uriel |
Maybe that closeness is actually the problem -- that it's so close that it becomesdifficult to see the forest for the trees, whereas with romance languages you have a certain comfort of distance. (They say that's why many people find apes ugly -- they're so similar to humans that we begin to judge them by human standards of beauty, which they fall far short of. But less similar creatures, like horses, we judge as beautiful on their own merit -- using completely different standards.) I seem to have trouble overlooking the strange orthography to find similarities -- I remember several people posting things written in Friesian and being completely flummoxed by it -- couldn't even take a stab at translating it. I can skim Fab or greg's posts in French and get more out of them! And I don't have any linguistic bias toward or against Germanic versus Romance languages, or see one as more sophisticated or elegant than the other. I never even heard of such a thing until I read all the bickering on Antimoon -- and I still can't take that crap seriously! In terms of being straightforward, I can see how French is a complete mess from an English-speaker's standpoint. You may have a good point about German being a closer fit to our speech patterns. Even in Spanish, which is much "cleaner" in that regard (my apologies to our resident francophones! No offense intended) I have to read half the sentences backwards or transpose half the words to make sense of them. Of course, there may be some stylistic variations -- I've heard some Spanish speakers from one country accuse those of another of more circumlocution than is really necessary -- I suppose it's not unlike the way Americans are deemed blunt by certain other English-speakers' standards. |
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| bruce |
To respond to Portho's original question about taking a foreign language at the college level:
Last semester, I took the introductory course to GERMAN at a nearby community college, and I can safely say that I did not learn as much as I had anticipated. I'm in high school, and I thought college was supposed to be this institution of higher education and accelerated learning. I was disappointed. In the entire textbook, we only went through the two introductory chapters and then four more chapters into the book. We reviewed the same concepts over and over and over and over again and the professor did not expect anyone to memorize any vocabulary other than the really necessary words. I'm not trying to bag on community colleges or anything, but I think that we learned at such a slow pace because the professor didn't want anyone to fall behind (considering that it's a community college). Maybe if I had taken the course at a university where students are expected to be able to learn more and learn faster, then my experience would have been different. The German course at the community college that I took was supposedly equivalent to one year of high school German, but I think that I would have learned more in one year of high school German than I did in one semester of German at community college. I definitely learned more Spanish in one year of high school Spanish than I would have learned if I had taken one semester of Spanish at the community college. And regarding the whole French vs. German or Romance vs. Germanic discussion: Granted, English is a Germanic language, so learning German for a native Anglophone would be "easy," but English has so much Latin influence that I don't think an Anglophone learning French would be at that much of a disadvantage. Learning Spanish, I didn't think that it was difficult at all because there are so many cognates and the grammar is much more straightforward and consistent. Maybe French is different, but if I use Spanish as a barometer for Romance languages, then I'd say that it wouldn't be a problem at all. As odd as it may sound, I struggled more with German. I wasn't used to the word order of German. It seems like the rules are less straightforward and less consistent because the professor often said "it doesn't matter where that phrase goes, as long as it's somewhere in the sentence" (which ALWAYS frustrated me!). And of course, there are certain times when certain phrases can only go in certain places, so it wasn't a very good experience. But the word order of really basic sentences are similar to English, I guess. There are also more cognates for basic words, so it's easier to form basic sentences right off the bat. So after all this rambling, I've come to one conclusion: Learning either French or German, you'll encounter obstacles, but you wouldn't be at much of a disadvantage if you chose one over the other. If I could do it over again though, I think I would rather choose French over German for various reasons: French is a much more *global* language and I would have more opportunities to use it and practice it. French pronunciation is VERY inconsistent and irregular, so I'd need a real teacher to be able to teach me how to pronounce the word as opposed to German which is pretty straightforward, making it easier to learn on one's own. |
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| Deborah |
By irregular, do you mean it has a lot of rules about pronunciation? I found that, once you learn the pronunciation rules, it's quite consistent. |
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| Yelina |
Or do you mean there's no real stressed syllables? I think that's because of this I don't know which syllable accentuate when I speak in English. I guess I always stress the wrong syllable  For this reason, I think French pronounciation is rather easy for foreigners.
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| Benjamin [inactive] |
I agree with Deborah that, once you've learnt the rules for French pronunciation and spelling, you can pronounce each word you see accurately, apart from a few rare exceptions.
As for rules for which syllables to stress in French — there are general rules for it (mainly involving when to raise or lower the pitch of a syllable), and I subconsciously know them, but I don't think that I'd be able to explain them. |
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| Porthos |
And there's a lot more people here who you could practice your French with than there are German speakers. Girls love French, and they find it sexy and romantic, at least in my experience. Even something as simple as tres beau whispered in their ear does the trick! 
Most certainly not. It has a lot of unique sounds even within the Romance languages, and I find Spanish and Italian infinitely easier to pronounce. Of course, I pronounce Spanish effortlessly as I've been doing it since I learned how to speak, but even without that, I think I would still find Spanish or especially Italian to be easier to pronounce. Spanish "j"s and certain peculiarities of the dialect I speak might be difficult for most. |
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| Walker |
What dialect is that and how does your 'j' differ from a Standard Spanish 'j'? |
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| bruce |
I think I pronounce my Spanish J the same way as you, Porthos. Anglophones try to imitate the J sound by saying that it's like the English H, but the Spanish J that I learned was more like a softer version of the German CH in "das Buch." | ||||||
| Pauline |
I agree: word stress is absolutly annoying -it's one of the most difficult thing of foreign lanaguges.  I think that I don't make it correctly at all, but compltly wrong is french the only language without this?
the other romance languages have the word stress, but at least they havn't the other vowels in the unstressed syllables, what aren't possible to understand at all, or pronounce (they are in English, german and Dutch).
I think that in Belgium we make a differnt pitch and intonation than in France, but I'm not sure, although it's defintily another pronunciation. sometimes people in France are quite pompously speaking  
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| Uriel |
Or do you mean there's no real stressed syllables? I think (it's) because of this (that) I don't know which syllable (to) accentuate when I speak in English. I guess I always stress the wrong syllable For this reason, I think French pronunciation is rather easy for foreigners.
There. That wasn't so hard, was it? |
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| Liz |
I beg to differ here, Yelina. I don't think it's easy for foreigners to pronounce French correctly at all. Not even for Hungarians despite that fact that Hungarian, like French, is a syllable-timed language. We do have a hard time pronouncing your r-s. I'm prone to pronounce the Dutch-type uvular fricative instead, which isn't exactly the same sound as the one you use in standard French. What's more, when I'm too tired to pay attention, I produce an alveolar trill (which is normal in my native variety) or a sound inbetween an alveolar trill and an alveolar approximant, which makes me sound Canadian French...
Lots of French people take us for Canadian French for some unknown reasons.
Uriel, believe me, it *is* difficult. Not that much for me anymore as I have been learning and practising it for donkey's years, but even if I do, my intonation is still imperfect. Normally, it's always the first syllable that is stressed in Hungarian, thus we tend to speak all the foreign languages we know that way. Yawn.
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| Yelina |
Well, seeing it written makes it seem easier, but if I had to tell it to you orally, I wouldn't have stressed these words or syllables.
Actually, I was only talking about the stress pronounciation. I do know some letters are very difficult to pronounce the right way as the 'r-s", the "u-s" or some sounds like "un". In any case, the rate of the accentuations must be one of the easiest as you stress one syllable out of two. |
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| Liz |
Oh...I see. Yes, that's true. |
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| Deborah |
Yelina, I think Uriel meant just the opposite of what she wrote. When I studied Russian, I thought that the accent stress in Russian was just as unpredictable as it is in English, and, like English, it doesn't use accent marks. There was a Russian ballerina whose last name, Terekhova, was a mystery me. Some, it only sounded right to me if I stressed either the 2nd or 3rd syllables, because with the first syllable stressed, I'd be left with three unstressed syllable in a row, which sounds strange to anglophones, with our secondary stresses. But when I finally heard it, it turned out to be stressed on the first syllable after all...except, that is, when the person who did the French voiceover pronounced it. Then the accent was on the final syllable, just as in all the other Russian names she said. |
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| Liz |
Normally, they don't but most of the Russian course books I've ever encountered used accent marks. I was profoundly shocked when I read a normal, authentic Russian text for the first time in my life. It was a complete mess as there were no accent marks, let alone the double dots or whatever ( I just can't recall what they are called) above some of the "e"-s. I had a hard time deciphering the correct pronunciation. I haven't dealt with anything closely resembling Russian in the past few years up til now. As a result of this, I've mysteriously forgotten the language, which is a real shame. But when I did speak Russian, my pronunciation was an abyss. I had a very good Russian girl friend, who was my teacher, too. She was actually an English teacher but she taught me Russian. That time she didn't speak much Hungarian, so we used English as some sort of a lingua franca. She said that I pronounced some of the words totally native like, but others with quite a strong foreign accent (with a Hungarian or an English accent). It was annoying because I heard my accent but I wasn't able to pronounce correctly. Aaaarrrrgh!!!!!
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| Deborah |
Hmm, none of the ones I used did. The words had accent marks when they appeared in the vocabulary list, but not in the reading section. |
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| Liz |
At least learners get used to it in the early phase. One of the main drawbacks of these books is that they aren't suitable for self-study. However, it raises the question whether it can be rewarding to study alone with the help of a course book or not at all. |
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| Deborah |
I'm trying to imagine the context of your whispering "très beau" in a girl's ear, and all I can think of is that you'd be saying, "Je suis tres beau."
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| Liz |
LOL! Deborah, don't be so mean to Josh...
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| Deborah |
...or just maybe he's not the straight arrow he professes to be...
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| Pauline |
Maybe he doesn't know it's the adjective for describe a male. | ||||||
| Deborah |
Oh, yeah...there's also that possibility! But it just occurred to me to wonder how many times he's already told some girl how handsome (in a male way) she is. |
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| Porthos |
Lol! See! And they were still swept off their feet by it! So what's the feminine form in this case? Belle perhaps?
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| Deborah |
Exactly, belle. (As long as they didn't understand French, no harm was done -- they got the whisper and the sexy language.) | ||||||
| Porthos |
I think I'm still gonna say "beau". It just rolls of the tounge better, and they won't know the difference anyway!
Sometimes I just mutter random incoherent phrases and then when asked to translate in English, I just make something up. Like this for example: Bebe, J'aime votre corps. Je suis sexy. Les cheveux sont tres mous. Lol. I just try to flavor the speech with as many French 'r's as possible. The French 'r' is just so sexy.
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| Deborah |
I assume you discreetly verify their ignorance of the language before you begin. If you don't like the sound of "belle", maybe you'd prefer "jolie" (pretty). But if the girl doesn't like Angelina, it might be a bad choice. But who am I to suggest things to whisper? The francophones should be able to give you much better suggestions.
In that case, how about something along the lines of "Je te ferai ronronner." (Help me out here, Pauline, Greg, Fab, etc.) |
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| Porthos |
Haha, that's a lot of 'r's. What does ronronner mean? |
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| Deborah |
Purrrr. | ||||||
| Porthos |
It means to "purrr" like a cat? lol |
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| Benjamin [inactive] |
Yes: je te ferai ronronner = I will make you purr
So you tell her that you like her body, and then you say that you're sexy? And then whose hair are you talking about? Lol, reminds me of when my boyfriend was talking to me in German whilst he was, um... — I absolutely loved it. 
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| Porthos |
Yes, simply because I want to say "Je suis", because it sounds sexy. It doesn't have to make any sense. That's what's so funny. |
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| Deborah |
...making you purr? |
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| Liz |
What a strange guy you are, Benjamin... Speaking German whilst planting onions...Good Gracious...
De gustibus non est disputandum after all...I don't know if you say it in English (meaning auf English and not auf Latein in an English-speaking environment), so I'm not trying to word it in English.
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| Deborah |
Planting onions -- I must remember that one. | ||||||
| Liz |
I'm a self-appointed language reformer - haven't you noticed that?
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| Pauline |
LOL!! porthos & benjamin Maybe I must talk to Pascal in a foreign language !!! he can speak Latin, antique greek, english and bit german. I think that Dutch is absolutly not sexy, so it must be Spanish!!! Or.. a language what I can't speak such as Russian etc, as Porthos in French
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| Porthos |
What does "planting onions" mean? I haven't heard that expression yet.
Dutch can be sexy at times. My experience with a Dutch girl named Nienke last summer certainly told me that. Her Dutch was rather sexy and cute I thought. Oh how I miss the days staying at an international hotel. 
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| Liz |
Well, I used it as a synonym for the act of penetration. I don't think it's an existing expression - I've only ever heard it from my father, who is notoriously creative with the language. So it's not exactly me who is a language reformer.
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| Deborah |
Does anyone remember a thread on either the old langcafe -- http://14.freebb.com/antimoonbis/antimoonbis.html or antimoon about the most romantic language in the world? I remember what Sander said about the advantages Italian had over Dutch in that regard. It was very funny -- something about the trials trying to make love in Dutch, in a cold barn in the rain with cows, and chickens shitting on your girlfriend at inopportune moments. I tried looking briefly on the old antimoon but didn't come across it. |
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| Uriel |
I was being facetious.  There isn't much rhyme or reason to our system; I would hardly expect it to come easily to a learner. It's like when I took Chinese -- the tones meant nothing to me, so they were a total nightmare to try to learn, because I'm not used to having to pay attention to such a thing -- and yet they can comnpletely change the meaning of a word in Mandarin.
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| Loic |
Bingo. Also, it is our hobby to make fun of foreigners who mangle our language with their well-meaning attempts to communicate with us! This reminds me of a series of notorious gaffes by one former colonial Governor of Hong Kong. As you are aware, the official Chinese tongue in HK is Cantonese and His Excellency alluded to a clandestine fornication with his mother while he was supposed to dish out some heckling rhetoric on crime and punishment, law and order. Mandarin only has 4 distinct tones; Cantonese have 8, some say 9. Mandarin is by far, the easiest of all the Chinese speeches (My mother's native dialect, Teochew, has 7). Deborah: Sander might have been disarmingly direct at times, but I had always appreciated his insights. That example was one of them. |
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| Pauline |
I don't miss him at all because he was absolutly nasty, but I wonder why doesn't he anymore visit. He was banned one week about an half year ago, but only one week, not one year. Probably he was furious or maybe his computer is broken. |
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| Liz |
URIEL:
Later, I realised that you were being facetious...Sorry, I was too knackered yestarday to distinguish the tongue-in-cheek from the serious.
PS: Too much preocuppation with my thesis topics do my mental abilities serious harm.
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| Loic |
Pauline:
I can understand your aversion to him. I had felt that he should have exercised a bit more self-restraint in his conduct towards you and it boggles the mind as to how he seemed to be allergic to your point of view almost all the time. I suppose my fondness for him is purely nostalgic in character. He was one of the first chaps I knew here. |
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| Pauline |
He hate all Belgians, especially Walloons. For an insult, he told Jo that he's belgian, although Jo's Dutch. When Jo told him that he's Dutch, Sander refused believe him!!! He refused belive me that I've the diploma in the dutch language what I told him, also after I copied the text on the certificate to the post !! We had an argument about 7 pages on Antimoon about such things. | ||||||
| Yelina |
Well, as you like "r-s", I can suggest the word "ravissante". Otherwise, you can say "charmante", "attirante", "seduisante"... |
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| Yelina |
That's also why I think I won't be able to speak Mandarin before a looooong long time! But if I had to choose, I'd say Mandarin's accents would be easier to pronounce for me than the English sentences' accentuation! |
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| Walker |
Yelina, you know, what you need to do is listen. I met a Swiss guy in Uppsala and his Swedish was so good that I had to ask him how he'd managed to reach such a level of fluency. He told me that one has to "be like a small child" and listen. That's pretty much what I say too. Forget about French, listen and copy. |
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| Deborah |
And if you say "seduisante", remember that in French, a single S between two vowels is pronounced like an English Z (double S is like S). |
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| Yelina |
Thank you for the advice! When I watch films, I always do in the original voice (well, when I can, i.e when I watch DVDs), but it doesn't seem better. Maybe I don't pay attention enough. I think I'd need to listen to many times the same sentence to really integrate the way people are speaking. Unfortunately, during a conversation I can't ask people to repeat 5 times their sentence. 
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| Walker |
You just need more practice, is all. One thing I often do is memorize lines from movies and repeat them to myself. It seems to work; an American guy in Galway told me that I have "very good pronounciation".
That might wear out their patience. I know. However, if you need to ask them to repeat themselves, just do it. You won't make a fool out of yourself even though it may feel like it at times. In any case it's worth it in the end.
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| Yelina |
Well, I'll try to do so and I hope an English-speaker will complement me as well! I think when one of my foreign friends understands me, it'll mean I improved my pronounciation!
I would dare ask people to repeat themselves if I know them, but if I don't, I think I'd be satisfied with their "single sentence". (Of course, I mean in the hypothesis I understand what they say and I just want to see their pronounciation/accentuation. That's clear if I don't understand their sentence, I'd ask them to repeat). |
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