French Language

[oneinam]

Many people including the French say that the French language is one of the most difficult to learn to converse, read and write. How difficult is it? Also compared to English, how much harder although some have said English is just as difficult? Is learning to speak French easier than playing the piano? French must be a 10,000 hour learning period to get beyond the European Framework level of C1. What do think?

[emmie]

I didn't find it that hard, but there are differences in the language in parts of France. No idea how you can compare it to playing the piano?

[magsmay]

German is far more difficult to learn than French. I speak fluent French and found it quite easy although I did not learn French at school I learnt it working in France at La Sorbonne . French was the only language used so I learned to think in French. Get a job in France if you want to learn the language.

[murraymints]

Found French quite easy...German much more difficult.

[craft1948]

I agree, French was okay (not as easy as Spanish) but German was harder.

[Buenchico]

Apart from oriental languages such as Chinese (where there is no alphabet, per se, to work with), English is generally regarded as the hardest language to learn, simply because it has so many words which don't conform to any standard rules. Despite that, millions of people learn to speak English fluently (and often better than the English do!).

French is generally regarded as one of the easier languages to learn because it generally sticks to certain rules. (However some other Romance languages, such as Spanish and Italian are even more rule-conforming, and thus probably slightly easier to learn).

I'd regard learning to play the piano well as about 1000 times as hard as learning to speak reasonable conversational French!

[jake-the-peg]

I have a good friend who is French and we've often discussed the relative differences between the languages - although I don't think it's easy to compare to learning the piano.

I think that English is one of those languages which is easy to learn but very difficult to master - we have very regular verbs declinations, no gender associated with nouns that need to be learnt and made to agree with things like adjectives - but there are a million and one gotchas.

Pronounciation is particularly tricky in Engliah without accents to tell you how something is pronounced you often have to learn the pronounciation as you can't assume it will follow rules. A language like Hungarian has very proscriptive accenting that tells you exactly how something has to be pronounced.

It also depends what your native language is it's obviously easier for an English speaker to learn French than say a Japanese speaker.

However we've often agreed that the big thing is motivation - when she was growing up they wanted to learn English to understand films and music in English and if you've got a motivation at a young age and a lot of readilly available material in that language it's a huge advantage

[Khandro]

I agree that French is easier to learn than German, though I learnt French when I was young and it is much easier to learn a language then. The key to learning a language is using it, not just reading it. If you can find a French person or speaker to practise with, you will learn it more quickly.

[jake-the-peg]

One of the other interesting things we've found is that English and French share (or almost share) a number of idioms.

That's a funny thing, we use them much more than we realise and if you're not familliar with them you can understand the words but have no conception of what the meaning is.

An amusing ione is to get on your high horse - the French say high horses - but there it means to get angry rather than to be stand-offish

In a similar vein last year I met a taxi driver in Cork who'd come from the (Francophone) Ivory coast having learnt English a bit at school

He found the Cork dialect like landing on Mars!

[Bazile]

The best way to learn any language is to go and live in a country where the predominant language is the one you want to learn

[murraymints]

My neighbour is French so can talk to him and my ex was German football player..leaned lots of interesting words from him not found in text books ! Lol

[DTCwordfan]

What is the term for someone who speaks three languages?
Answer: Trilingual (trilingue)

What is the term for someone who speaks two languages?
Answer: Bilingual (bilingue)

What is the term for someone who speaks three languages?
Answer: Not monolingual but American or English.......

[DTCwordfan]

For French, buy the two volumes of "Merde" if you want the swear words, chasing your partner and sexual positions, and general slang - they are very good for learning "la langue argotique" and make excellent toilet reading.

[murraymints]

???????

[Khandro]

The English tend to learn French as a default second language, but apart from visiting France, it is of little use to you in the wide world. In Europe German has more native speakers than any other language, however, most young educated people speak English anyway. If it is to the future, and job opportunities you look, - go for Chinese!

[modeller]

oneinam #to learn to converse, read and write#
It depends on what you mean by learn , and what you want to use the language for.
Our exam system has always favoured the non verbal side of language learning . My German friend failed the German A level , whilst I passed.
The reason was in part, the verbal side, at that time, only earned 10% of the total. Most of the rest 80% covered German History/Geography, Literature , all of which was answered in English, and 10% was alloted to comprehension .
If you only want to learn to converse fluently don't waste your time going along the O and A route. I read German books all the time but I have great difficulty following German broadcasts. I would add you can only learn to speak a language from a native speaker. also you can't learn a language
by learning words . You have to learn whole sentences.

[AlwaysConfused]

I found German very easy to learn, French I struggled with, and I was natural onthe piano. Just goes to show, we are all different, so so different.

[FredPuli43]

French is definitely easier than German, at least for me it was. German has the most daunting list of irregular verbs and three genders for nouns, for a start. Unfortunately the only certain way to learn a language is to have some lessons in the basics and then live in a country where it is the national language !

But you really can't compare playing the piano with it. It may take as many hours to be good at either, but the skills required are so different for each; some of us would take 10,000 hours and still not manage to read the music and show the manual dexterity for the piano but would be fluent in French because we have an 'ear for languages'. And we already know one language, we have some understanding of the structure;none of us already have such knowledge of an instrument or music.

[mrs_overall]

I found French far easier to learn than German.

I don't play the piano, but learning to play the spoons was easier than French

[naomi24]

//apart from visiting France, it is of little use to you in the wide world.//

I disagree with that. Any language is useful - and a knowledge of French has extricated me from many a dilemma in some very far flung corners of the globe.