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So following the comment I just posted, I clicked on this and felt a lot better to the point of laughing 😂Your point about how the English language changed the sound of "ou" to the point of stupidity is something I've thought of before! If I can master that, I'm sure I've got this French thing with some practise 😆
as an Italian who worked as waiter I met many many tourists who tried to speak Italian and their pronunciation was really really bad but somehow I always managed to understand what they meant. That's because you don't have to focus on the pronounce but on the context, trust me french people: it will be easier also for you
I would wager that Italian is also a bit easier to understand, given that there are almost twice as many different vowel sounds in french as there are in italian. Italian is more visibly phonetic, so accented foreigners are likely to make more consistent errors vs. French, which is less visibly phonetic (French IS quite consistent, but it may take some time and irritation to recognize that é [été], er [parler], e [erreur], ez [assez], es [les], ai [sait], ay [essayer], ey [volleyeur], and ed [pied], all can make the same sound).
@@ribos2762 why should I act like a professor of Italian while the costumer doesn't care about learning It? I would just look arrogant and the costumer won't choose my bar again. If I'm able to understand what they say I'll be happy to help them. It's not a matter of pride
Je suis français. Quand un étranger parle français je suis tellement content que je suis très concentré pour bien comprendre ce qu'il dit. Et je comprends bien ce qu'il dit même s'il ne prononce pas bien. Quand je parle anglais je n'ai pas un bel accent et je comprends ce que vis un étranger. Je pense que ce n'est pas de l'arrogance mais un manque d'empathie.
Most times I find that foreign language speakers know more English than an English speaker knows their mother tongue. It’s much easier imo for someone to speak English and the native English speaker to understand them than vice versa. Je suis desole. I’m starting to learn French and don’t have enough grammar knowledge. ☺️
je suis tout a fait d'accord avec vous, quand j'habitais en france, il y avait des gens qui me comprennent sans aucun probleme, et ces gens etaient les plus empathiques. Mais c'est vrai que dans la langue franciais il y a beaucoup de mots dans lesquels si vous changez une seule lettre, ils signifieront quelque chose de totalement différent. faut faire attention a cela.
As a linguist, I feel the need to stress that it's important to find balance with this; obsessing about pronunciation can sometimes scare people away from speaking your language at all, since many people will never have a perfect accent and that is of course fine. For effective communication, of course vocabulary and grammar are much, much more important.
Yep, grammar and vocabulary + the very basics of pronunciation; not focusing only on how bad your pronunciation is (or that you feel it is...) but try to grasp the basics of it. Otherwise, you get all these French who don't even know that English stresses a syllable in every word (since we don't have that: our stressed syllable is always the last one that is pronounced in every word); and not getting it means you can't talk with people. It's like the initial scene in this video: try saying "waTER" instead of "WAter" in any English-speaking restaurant. 🤣
Hmm... I'm not sure. Pronunciation is constantly overlooked and its importance diminished when learning and teaching foreign languages. And then, people are not understood when they try to speak a foreign language, and they're suddenly surprised. Well, yeah! That's because correct (and if possible flawless) pronunciation is part an parcel of speaking a language correctly (or flawlessly). Correct pronunciation is not a nice ornament to be added as an option to your language skills once you're done with all the rest. Have you ever seen a TV programme where someone, let's say a French person, speaks a grammatically correct or even flawless English, but what they say is subtitled nonetheless? It happens all the time and for a good reason: their English pronunciation is atrocious. And that's probably in part because they've been led to believe "they shouldn't obsessed over pronunciation" and that "they'd never have a perfect accent anyway". The end result is: they can't really speak the language. So much efforts on their part wasted! Pronunciation matters a great deal.
@@frontenac5083 Pronunciation isn't constantly overlooked it is stressed from the beginning of learning all throughout. Which is very different from being told not to get hung up on perfection, which prevents people from ever speaking. It is very difficult to acquire a completely different sound system. This video focuses upon French and the opening problem is not even pronunciation, but actually a problem in French where many words sound the same and learners see little difference between small nuances. As someone further up said it should easily be seen from context that someone isn't ordering 'wind' but 'wine'. Only an idiot would think that. Speaking of TV programmes...have you ever seen one where someone is natively speaking English, say in Scotland, and it's subtitled just in case someone in the south of England gets confused? Any suggestion of pronunciation training in that scenario would be tantamount to insult. Same here in the Netherlands where they subtitle people from outside the Randstad as though they speak a different language. The problem is that some of the audience are dullards and hear nothing but the standard language day-in day-out and need subtitles for regional speech.
My favorite misunderstanding I encountered was with a Spanish couple that were talking about the famous singer "El toñon". I said I don't know many spanish singers .. they said "no no, he's English"... I asked a few more times... they finally started singing "Candle in the wind" ... it turned out to be Elton John 😀
El toñon😂 I'm a spanish native speaker and when I read "El toñon" I figured out what was the singer they were talking about. I think pronunciation in English matters a lot. Something that happens with Spanish native speakers is that they pronounce everything as it sounds in their own language.
My Italian grandpa was born in Brazil, and named João, John. It has a nasal sound. He was not able to recognize he was being called over the PA in Italy, for the announcer obviously missed the nasal sound (Italian doesn't have an equivalent), and grandpa missed his boat back home. João vs. Joao. Vin vs vent? And a guy named Waldisnei was called like that under pretty much the same circumstances, and was mad when saw people being served before him, still waiting to be called. The announcer said he had been called several times, "Waldisnei", and he said "But my name is so simple to pronounce! You ignorant, don't you know the guy who created Mickey?!".
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Ça me rappelle cette histoire, quand ma mère était adolescente en voyage scolaire en Espagne. Les jeunes espagnols étaient affolés qu'elle ne connaisse pas "los béatlèss", ni "Rimi Endriss" 😂
im American and i always thought French had similarities to us in our arrogance. This is one example! I went into a bakery to order “le vert macaron” in Paris. Probably not exactly right and pronunciation not good but I tried! And they just couldn’t get it after me repeating “vert” for green. Finally it clicked but it wasn’t like there were a ton of options.
Pour la question que tu as posée "Est-ce que les Français sont trop arrogants" ben ça dépend un peu quand même. Parfois j'entends des élèves faire des erreurs de grammaire qui ne rendent pas leurs phrases incompréhensibles, genre ils utilisent l'infinitif au lieu de conjuguer le verbe. Ça sonne très faux, c'est clair, mais strictement parlant on va TOUJOURS bien comprendre les phrases où les verbes ne sont pas conjugués. Et oui, même si quelqu'un dit "je aller", "vous vouloir", on comprend. Et pourtant, il y a pas mal de Français qui font semblant de ne plus rien comprendre lorsqu'un étranger fait une faute de grammaire comme ça. Et ça, c'est de l'arrogance, il n'y a pas autre mot.
Après il y a des fois où les (jeunes) français ont un sens disons "particulier" de l'utilisation de la langue de Molière qui fait réellement hésiter entre plusieurs sens pour la phrase... Donc ça ne me paraît pas insensé qu'un étranger (avec accent et grammaire aléatoire) puisse avoir beaucoup de mal à se faire comprendre même en faisant des efforts...
Je ne sais pas pourquoi ces personnes faisaient soi-disant semblant de ne pas comprendre, mais par contre, "pas mal de.." français, ce n'est pas tous les français, ça, j'en suis sûr... J'ai même demandé autour de moi...
Il arrive parfois que les français soient excédés par l'impolitesse de certains étrangers au point de ne pas leur répondre. En France, quand on s'adresse à quelqu'un et surtout quand on a besoin de lui, on commence par dire bonjour ou excusez moi. Même s'il s'agit d'un employé dans un magasin dont la fonction est de répondre au client. Pour nous, ce genre de situation ne supprime pas le respect envers l'autre. Tout le monde ne sait pas que la politesse aux USA a des codes différents des nôtres et, parfois, les français se braquent.
@@christianc9894 C'est sous-entendre que dans les autres pays on dit pas bonjour ou "excusez moi de vous déranger" et c'est juste faux. De pure expérience les USiens qui viennent en France sont 5000 fois plus polis que les Français. Idem ceux sur internet ou sur les jeux
@@shatzinorris1417 On n'a pas la même expérience donc. MAIS LA MIENNE est celle d'un français, plus tout jeune, et qui vit dans une région où viennent beaucoup d'étrangers dont des touristes US.
I've run into this problem many times living in France and being a beginner in the language. The pronunciation is sooo subtle that in some cases I have hard time hearing the differences, let alone trying to speak myself. But I do think there might be a difference in the listeners too. I never had so many problems being understood when speaking English, Portuguese or German for example, even when I was very bad at those languages. The combination of the subtlety and the listeners' expectations makes it tricky.
When learning a new language and especially if you are living in that country, trying your best for a good pronunciation is very important indeed. Though when a foreigner is trying to communicate speaking your language, there is really a limited amount of similar sounding words or miss-pronunciations that can happen and there is always context to a conversation. It is not that hard to make some effort and understand what people are trying to say. You can expect them to speak your language in your country but you shouldn't expect them to speak it like you do.
A little pointer for anyone learning the french, the usual speaking speed is around 1.25× the speed of the video if you want to train in more real condition
On holiday near Nantes. My husband and I were staying at a campsite. My husband was playing pool and won the game. He shouted "Je suis le champignon!" Hysterical laughter all round!
L'on peut comprendre facilement ce qu'il voulait dire, mais moi aussi j'aurais ri un peu de ça, puisque est une célèbre variété de plantes généralement comestibles😅. Sinon le mot correct est .
They do understand, but they do not care, especially in Paris. In Berlin I lived with french people and we talked in French many times, and through them I had occasional conversations with their French friends too, and they all understood me perfectly, always. Not just in Berlin, but traveling around the world. But when I go to France, I come across that attitude many many times, when they detect a slight foreign accent they go like "I don't understand", or they directly pass away. You can tell they do understand but they get "offended" if the pronunciation is not perfect. It is called "Chauvinism".
J'avais 14 ans quand j'ai voyagé à Paris. J'ai eu du mal à m'exprimer à l'oral parce que j'avais jamais pratiqué avec un natif. Alors un jour je voulais acheter du fromage, j'ai demandé du fromage "salé". Il m'a dit qu'il n'a pas compris. Je l'ai encore dit en anglais. Pas compris. Après avoir répété ce que je voulais plusieurs fois, il s'est moqué de moi en disant que je pouvais acheter du sel et du fromage et les ajouter ensemble. (Il a même ri en disant ça) Même s'il me comprenait pas, il n'avait pas besoin d'être si impoli!
@@mehreganghadiri Oh ! Je suis désolé de lire ça... Paris est la première destination touristique du monde, les parisiens sont une espèce à part... La majorité des Français sont très contents de voir qu'une personne étrangère fait l'effort de parler la langue et de s'intéresser à notre culture. Et, parfois les accents sont difficile à comprendre, mais là, clairement, c'est juste un manque de respect. Si je peux me permettre, d'où es-tu originaire ? En tout cas, je ne sais pas depuis combien de temps tu apprends le Français mais sincèrement, ton Français à l'écrit est meilleur que celui de la plupart des Français.
I'm not the kind of person that likes to hate on any nationality, so I'm not looking for an excuse to beat the french over the head. But I just came from a brasilian channel (I'm portuguese) with an outlandish story of a french person who refused to communicate in any other language other than french even though he knew english AND portuguese.....WHILE LIVING IN BRAZIL. He was living in Brazil for 14 years and was being asked for a candle because the light had gone out, by a neighboor. I was like loool wth. I knew from my travels French tend to be all about their language within country borders....but OUTSIDE? So i googled why french people dont talk other languages...and found this video. French people are cool but their deadly sin is for sure Pride. But it's weird because french have explored the world too...and I tend to think of them as open minded people...so this particular thing about the languge is kidna weird.
Excellent! J'ai vécu longtemps au Brésil (je suis franco-brésilien) et il y a une erreur que tous les français font quand ils vont sur la plage et demandent au vendeur un jus de noix de coco. "Uma agua de cocô por favor". Le problème, c'est qu'en mettant l'accent sur la dernière syllabe coco ne veut plus dire noix de coco mais veut dire caca. Donc en gros ils demandent un jus de caca. Ca fait toujours rire les vendeurs mais depuis le temps, ils sont habitués et ne leur servent pas du jus de caca mais bien un jus de noix de coco.
🤣 We had it a little different with pronouncing pineapple as avocado. Abacaxí is the Brazilian word for pineapple and Abacate means avocado. We wanted a pineapple juice but received avocado cream instead😖 not exactly what we went for😅
Yes! I am a French teacher in the U.S. Pronunciation has been de-emphasized the past 50 years or so in foreign language teaching. Teachers either do not teach it at all or just the alphabet and basic sounds. And the teachers here also de-emphasize listening. Listening to native speakers also helps with Pronunciation. And students think it is weird to make these weird sounds so they don't do it and just use an English sound instead. And teachers here do a lot of paired speaking practice, which reinforces the Pronunciation errors and fossilizes poor Pronunciation. Plus a lot of reading of French further makes this poor Pronunciation a habit as students subvocalize as they read. And when Admin. comes in to observe French teachers, they cannot understand French, so they cannot understand that the students' French is very poor and they want the teachers to just use these poor methods. So if a teacher does try to improve the students' Pronunciation beyond the basics, it is actually criticized by school leaders. So 99% of American French students have poor Pronunciation and cannot speak French properly so a native speaker could understand them, and the Americans also cannot understand French because they have done little, if any, listening to real native speech. So, hopefully you can make some money off this complete and utter failure of the American education system.
And you also have the facts that 1/ French in the wild is quite unlike at school, like the way we eat part of words in regular speech (je ne sais pas => jsaipa). 2/ French do use a lot of slang (argot) because a lot of slang words have been accepted into daily regular French. Like at work, you won't hear "si nous allions manger ?" like it has been taught at school, but rather "on bouffe ?" or "on graille ?". 3/ French has no tonic accent unlike English, it has no tonal variation unlike Asian languages, it has no strong evident grammar to make the sentence structure easy to spot (unlike German or Japanese) and it blends the words, so all it has to turn continuous vibrations (speech) into words are the proper sounds of the language. If you don't hear the sounds because you did not train your ear, you can't make out the words in French speech, if you don't pronounce the sounds correctly, you are *very* hard to understand by French people, even if they genuinely try to understand you, because proper sounds of the letters are about all you have to understand French. It's actually pretty impressive among roman languages. Usually, with no training, French people can understand Italian and Spanish reasonably well, because we have a lot of words in common and the words are easy to spot in these musical languages. But Italian and Spanish people with no training have a much harder time understanding French, because the words are difficult to spot. People think French is difficult because of grammar (and exceptions to the exceptions) and vocabulary. But French pronunciation and speech are very difficult too I think. If your school do not teach it at all, it must be very disappointing to the students. The reverse is also true : as a French person, learning English grammar and vocabulary is pretty easy, but pronunciation and understanding speech is a nightmare.
Ah, c'est donc pour ça! C'est flagrant à la télé, par exemple. Au début, si on ne comprend pas un acteur étranger qui dit quelque chose en français, puis qu'on le comprend enfin, on voit aussi 'pourquoi' on ne comprenait pas. Sauf avec les américains. C'est fou à quel point, maintenant, leurs sons n'ont plus aucun rapport avec les mots qu'ils veulent dire! (Sauf Sharon Stone, évidemment) Merci pour l'explication.
Here's a strategy: muddle your accent. When I went to France -- with only two years of university-level French classes -- I tried a unique strategy: muddling my American accent. I threw a little of -- what I thought -- was a Mexican lilt with a bit of -- what I thought -- were Russian vowels. With the base American accent, my accent was so confused, that the French had no idea where I was from. They kept asking me where I was from, and I simply played coy. (I wasn't about to tell them I was American.) The fact that I'm African American just seemed to confuse them more. This is the crux of the problem: they try to place where you are from, and there are some prejudices there. Also, I should note that I was *always* polite and grateful to anyone who tried to help me. And I *always* tried to speak in French.
There are dozens of African countries that have French as one of the main languages. So they probably assumed you were from one of those countries and were confused why you weren’t speaking fluently and had an accent.
how did you play coy? i don't like people asking me where I'm from because i don't want to be placed in a box (them to have preconceived ideas about me based on the origine). but i don't know how to avoid answering them
@NoelJacquerey LOL. You are definitely trolling. As you know, most Americans wouldn't bother trying to learn another language. They'd just assume that every European knows English, and then be offended when that assumption isn't obliged.
I studied French for three years. I spent a month in France. 75% of people had no trouble understanding my French but the other quarter did not, I firmly believe it was intentional. I was so annoyed with the French that I switched to Spanish. All six of the Spanish speaking countries I’ve been to have been far more gracious than France.
Because español has less vowel sounds than française, there is not nasal sounds in español and in español everything is written the way it is pronounced. You can even read in español a paragraph aloud and you don`t understand what you read but the Spanish speakers will understand you. Believe it, or not! ¡ Aunque Usted no lo crea! Croyez-le ou non!
I can beat that. I minored in French in college, have studied it for twenty years, and have spent a total of a year in France. Yes, I have a strong accent, but I find that "some" French people (in my case, women) will refuse to understand a word I say while others (in my case, men) will tell me I speak it very well. In my experience it is les Françaises who will simply refuse to meet me halfway.
Le trauma moi, c'est sur le tempo... J'ai parlé espagnol en Espagne, le vendeur m'a répondu tellement vite que j'avais l'impression qu'il parlait une autre langue... Selon les régions, le rythme auquel on parle est assez différent, et c'est vrai que ce qui est une vitesse normale pour moi peut être rapide ou lent pour d'autres...
Et même au-delà de l'accent, les langues se parlent plus ou moins vites. Mais ce qui est fou, c'est que les linguistes ont montré que la vitesse de transmission moyenne des informations était quasiment la même, peu importe la langue. Ce qui signifie que les langues qui ont besoin de moins de syllabes pour donner une info sont généralement parlé plus lentement. Cela signifie aussi que c'est la vitesse de traitement des récepteurs de l'information qui induit le rythme des émetteurs.
I've had some very patient people in France speak to me and make a huge effort to understand me. Particularly one wonderful hotel receptionist who said everything twice - once in English and once in French so I could practice. I did experience the vin blanc issue though 🤣 the poor barman had no clue until his colleague shouted over. I've met some lovely people when I've been practicing, with some people who have overheard making an effort to say hello or good evening to me too!
Oh but come on... you are in a restaurant, what else could it be that you are ordering?! Vin and not Vent... please! So here in Italy, when somebody at the restaurant asks for "wino" (I've heard it with my own ears), then the waiter should wait 5 minutes making faces and saying that he is not understanding you? The fact is that they don't even try!!!
@@andromacha83 Why being butthurt about people not comprehending what others say right away? Does it require such a tremendous amount of energy that it cannot be repeated? I didn't realize how bothered people were about having to help another human being. French pronunciation can be really tough to get, especially when the sounds [un / an / eu / ou] are involved, which are often the sounds French people struggle to understand if not pronounced properly by foreigners. In comparison, Italian is super easy and doesn't have difficult sounds so it's ridiculous to compare those two languages.
@@lo.cherry ... says the expert of Italian language! We do have our hard to make sounds like for example "gl" or "gh". My husband, who is not Italian, struggled a lot with such sounds and also others. But in Italy, we do try our best to make everybody feel welcome, and we go above and beyond to understand foreigners. If at a French restaurant, a poor guy pronounces "vin" as "vent", and the waiter fakes not understanding it... well then the waiter is dumb I think. Or, most likely, all French are stuck up asses who don't make the tiniest of effort. Just like those asses that come right around the border and expect us to speak to them in French. No way! You are in Italy and you either speak Italian or English. French is not contemplated!
I had a different experience. I once was lost on Quebec. I was nervous at first but confident in my French to ask for help. Well, I understood ZERO. I walked away realizing my French was rustier than I thought. 😢 Years later, I visited France. Same situation, I need to ask for directions. I understood the gentelman who tried to help me and he even coplimented my French! It was a moment of redemption.😂🎉
(It might have been because Quebec-french can be very different than France-french. It took me time, as a native speaker, to understand Quebec-french. XD So there's a chance that it wasn't your french skills' fault!^^)
It’s kind of annoying tho cause I’ve been studying French for 7 years and teaching it at a high school level for going on my second year. I immediately understand immigrants who just started speaking English like this year - so idk why the same courtesy and active listening can’t be applied.
Depends. Are you doing a fast pace job? It often takes focus to get it and often times the jobs tourists are faced with are the ones where people need to focus on many things at once and so focusing on the pronunciation isn't the main focus. Same with people walking around, they're usually going somewhere and aren't focused on just you.
@@celia1888 I am an Italian, I live in Lisbon (very touristic too) as a foreigner, and everyone makes an effort to understand my Broken Portuguese, bars, restaurant, shops ... everything ... I have rarely met a rude Portuguese person, from the touristic restaurant on the main square to the bar owned by an old nice lady. And, since I am Italian I never experienced it, but I was told by friends that even in Italy (when people usually don't speak a lot of English,) people are extremely helpful and try their best, only in Rome I've heard of bad experiences. So, I am sorry to say this, but I am afraid that what french people do is just because of a bad attitude.
@@saratrusio9728 the tourism is still very different. It's a millions of tourists difference (mostly dozens more). Now obviously with Covid things changed a bit since there were only half as many as there usually are, the numbers are now closer to Lisbon's numbers pre-covid. If this can give you an idea of how many tourists are around. There are some neighborhoods where you'll here 5 different languages in the space of one minute and French won't be part of it. So yeah, it takes a lot more focus. I've done the same job in tourist centered parts of Paris and normal ones, it's night and day. Even in a fast paced job like waitressing can be it almost felt like I was on holidays.
@@saratrusio9728 People during high season in Venice are just as "rude". Same in Barcelona, Spain. Go off season and they tend to be lovely. But Paris doesn't really have an off season. Used to be in Euro-travelling tourism. I hate Paris myself, mainly because of the people, but I also understand why they are that way. And a good thing to remember is that Paris is not France. It's like boiling down Italy to Rome, the USA to New York... you get the idea.
Some people of France are infamous around the french world for not being able to understand speakers of other french speaking countries. I think some them just have trouble with accents. I wouldn't worry about it if I were you.
Le problème habituel est que beaucoup de gens s'attendent à un certain système de sonorisation et qu'ils déraillent lorsque cela ne se produit pas. J'avais cette problème quand j'ai commencé à parler l'Allemand. La problème est beaucoup moins aigu en anglais, où plus d'accents sont déjà reconnu et accepté. Nous sommes plus habitué à des accents quand on entend quelqu'un qui parle l'anglais avec un accent étranger (ce qui est aussi parfois maladroit). Ayant dit cela... Il y a des années j'étais en voyage prés de Nîmes avec une parisienne et elle a insisté sur le fait qu'elle ne comprenait pas "l'accent" d'un petit commerçant, qui était aussi français qu'elle. Donc, je pense que oui, certains Français ont une idée un peu exagérée de le "français correct". Y compris sa sonorisation.
Tu as parfaitement raison sur le fait que les Français ont plus de difficultés à comprendre ce qui est dit lorsque l'accent est prononcé. Mais ce n'est pas tant qu'il y a "un français correcte" qu'un manque d'habitude. Il y a une 50aine d'années, les accents régionaux étaient encore plus importants et prononcés. Et, même aujourd'hui (je suis du sud-est) je n'arrive pas à bien comprendre quand des petits vieux du sud-ouest parlent avec leur accent. Et ça ne veut pas dire qu'on n'apprécie pas les accents. 😊
@@rollbackmotte je sais que vous voulez être gentille à vos concitoyens mais après 7 ans ici, j'ai vu des choses. Pour example je suis américaine et mon mari est français de Normandie. Il a donc un petit accent normand. Et ici dans le sud où on habite, on ne cesse pas de le demander de quel pays il vient !? Il le dit qu'il est français. Puis on veut savoir dans quel pays il a été élevé !? C'est fait exprès. Dans la France, on n'aime pas ce qui est différent. Dans le sud, mon mari est différent. Dans le nord on n'aime pas l'accent du sud. En gros, si ce n'est pas comme moi, je ne l'aime pas et je ne ferai plus un effort. Bien sûr il y a des exceptions, comme mon mari qui s'est mariée avec une américaine. Et j'ai eu des super bonnes amis dans le fac, mais en gros il y une portion qui aime la diversité et la reste qui n'aime pas.
Je suis jaloux de vous madame. Moi je suis anglais et j’apprends le français depuis presque 25 ans et je n’arrive toujours pas à le parler ou comprendre. Vous avez bien de la chance d’avoir epousée un francophone. Je suis sur que cela vous a aidé beaucoup. Quand les gens français parlent je n’entends pas les mots quand ils parlent. C’est juste du bruit. Je ne peux pa me maintenir. Mon problème c’est que je m’attends que la langue sonne différente.
j'ai été beaucoup confronté à des gens qui viennent de nombreux endroits et j'ai souvent du "traduire" entre français : marseillais incompris par des chtis, avignonnais qui ne comprend rien en Alsace. Berrichon perdu à Montpellier. Une amie l'italienne avait appris le français à Rome et est partie faire ses études en Belgique. Elle ne comprenait rien. Un an après, enfin adaptée, une nouvelle collègue arrive, de Marseille. L'italienne ne comprenait à nouveau plus rien. Les belges non plus d'ailleurs. Et tout ceci était en grande partie du à la façon de prononcer (en plus de certaines expressions locales)
je rappelle toujours que la présentatrice du JT d'Arte (chaîne FRANCO-ALLEMANDE !!!) est incapable de prononcer correctement "Guten Abend" ! Moi, ça ferait longtemps que je l'aurais fichue à la porte, c'est une honte.
Hello ! Je suis franco-italienne et je parle 4 langues couramment dont l'anglais, et j'ai des bonnes bases dans plusieurs autres langues. J'ai été serveuse plusieurs étés de suite. Et je peux vous dire que malgré tout mon bagage linguistique, je n'ai jamais compris lorsqu'un britannique m'a demandé du "kow-drô-oune". Je l'ai fait répéter plusieurs fois, très gênée, avant de lui demander de me montrer ce qu'il souhaitait sur le menu. Il n'a pas voulu et a continué à répéter "kow-drô-oune". Il a fini par s'énerver et par me montrer sur le menu qu'il voulait du "Côtes du Rhône" - le vin. J'étais hyper mal à l'aise et lui a dû croire que je le faisais exprès alors que pour le coup, j'y ai mis beaucoup de bonne volonté, mais je n'ai vraiment pas compris... Par contre je pense comme beaucoup de gens dans les commentaires que parfois, les Français le font un peu exprès. Vu le contexte, un "vent blond" ça se comprend... à Paris surtout, je suis effarée par l'accueil réservé aux étrangers dans les lieux touristiques.
@@avilesandres my two cents as a French/Spanish/English speaker, is Spanish people are better at understanding foreigners because they are used to people speaking different dialects / accents within the country (Andalusian, Basque, Catalunian, etc) so tend to be used to more phonemes. Most regional French accents are comprehensible to us but much milder and regular than foreigners speaking french. Also Spanish is easier to pronounce as long as you get the tonic accent right. French is definitely harder, so I sympathise.
don't worry, French people are also mostly badly welcomed in tourist places in Paris. I gained used to it while living there. Far better outside Paris, but people talk a lot less english ....Good luck ! ^^
Bien résumé ! Il y a des cons bien français, mais parfois malgré toute la bonne volonté du monde, on ne peut pas comprendre (ce n'est pas la majorité des cas, pas du tout, mais ça arrive)
Je suis un Français qui passe par là par hasard... Et j'ai une chose à dire : Bon courage aux étrangers qui apprennent notre belle langue ! On l'aime, mais on sait bien qu'elle est difficile :) La preuve, même si on passe plus de dix ans à l'apprendre assidument à l'école, certains d'entre nous font encore des fautes à l'âge adulte, notamment sur l'orthographe et beaucoup en font encore au bac, à 18 ans. Je me plains parfois de la difficulté à apprendre l'Espagnol et l'Anglais, mais je peux toujours relativiser en pensant à ceux qui apprennent ma langue maternelle ! Mais disons que vous pouvez relativiser aussi en pensant à ceux qui doivent en plus changer d'alphabet 😅 (pour ceux dont ce n'est pas le cas). Bonne journée !
I've worked in customer service for the past 21 years. I am French Canadian I live in Montreal. In Montreal, the island in the east it's mostly French and in the west is mostly English speakers. We have a lot of people from around the world. Personally I love it. For a little more than the past decade, I worked for alarm company emergency center and we have client all over the country. I got the opportunity to speak to people from all over the world. I always make the most effort to understand them. It's even harder for my job and people at 911 because people you talk to are often upset and or angry and or scared, and so they may even have a harder time pronounciating and enunciating words properly, but it's your duty to concentrate and try your upmost to understand. Who cares if they are mispronounciating their words. But there has been a constant in the last 20 or so years. French people from France mainly from Paris, they are the only people and I understand that a few bad apple doesn't represent the entire population. But it's really much a stereotype for French speaking Canadian who speak french to never be understood by French speaking people from France. Because of our history with France and this, there is a stereotype that French Canadian tend to think of French from France and more specificically Paris as arrogant, snobbish, and that they use too many english borrowed words but can't pronounce them properly to save their life. The only people I have ever had issues with, in my entire life, were a very few English Speaking Canadian mostly from Alberta, they would get condescending or hostile when they detected a hint of french accent in your voice. And to be fair it goes both ways. I can't count how many time an english speaker (one of my colleague) in my company called me to call back a French Client in Quebec because they were being asshole to my co-worker with an english accent. Even people from 911 which I find completely insane and stupid (But I am used to it, most French and English speaking Canadian had at a certain point in their life experience a certain level of racism toward the other group. Personnaly I never had anything against english speakers, but my Grandma was something else, this is due to our shared history, Hostilities between French and English going back centuries, but it's not as bad as it used to be) and the other group I have ever had issue with are French from France, every time from Paris. If you are a French person from anywhere in the world and someone says I want to buy Vent Blond and you can't make out what they are saying in a Restaurant, there isn't any two ways about it, you are an as*h*le. Simple as that.
After a summer of looking forward to this, I'm now just weeks away from starting a French module at university, alongside my degree. These videos have been gold for passively enjoying the language throughout the summer. But this video encapsulates my greatest fear - pronunciation! As a 28 year old Manchester lad who has never shown any interest in other languages before, I've become very set in my ways and am really having to try to get the sounds right 😂Here's to hoping it goes well!
You'll get some laughs mate. Im broad Geordie, my Italki teacher says I sound like a Scandinavian talking French and I've been asked by a lot of people in France if my maternal language is German. On y va ;)
Don't worry, I think everyone makes mistakes in the beginning, it's normal~ I think having some knowledge of the International Phonetic Alphabet might help you understand pronunciation better, regardless of the language that you want to learn.
If you're hung up on your pronunciation, you'll be stuck sincerely. Speak as you can, it will come as you go. Believe me you can never speak good enough French for French people. Just face it head on. Remember it's not your first language
en tant que Italian, je me démande ce qu'il a prononcé ton frère pour ne pas etre compris alors que "quattro tiramisu" devrait etre relativament facile à comprendre, n'importe quelle prononciation
J’aime tellement votre accent. Un de mes profs de Français m’a dit que les Fraincais ne roulent pas leurs “r” (elle était Americaine). Mais tous mes autres profs étaient francophones avec une belle accent comme vous. J’ai écouté ce video avec beaucoup de plaisir. Merci!!!
Le problème avec "ácido" (fr: acide) prononcé comme "aCIdo", c'est qu'il peut être confondu avec "ha sido" (fr: il/elle/on a été). Mais aussi si le context est très claire, je pense que la confusion est un peut exagérée. Au fait, votre espagnol ici avait un accent argentin. C'était mignon, hehe.
en Espagne y aurai pas trop de confusion comme la "c" de acido a la langue entre les dents contrairement à ha sido (où à l'espangol parlé en amerique du sud)
@@EllisBoydRedding Siendo argentino, nunca observe confusión en esas dos palabras. La tilde de ácido está en la letra á y el acento de "ha sido" en la sílaba "si", y si bien pueden dar lugar a confusión, el lugar que ocupan dentro de la oración y el contexto hace que sea imposible confundirlas.
I switched from German to French as a third language in "videregående" (what we call the education years age 16-19 in Norway); some girls in my class wanted people to choose it because they needed a certain minimum of students to sign up for the class if the school was going to teach it. They argued that French was much easier than German, easy grammar and you already know a lot of words from English the only slight challenge was the pronunciation. But weirdly for me, pronunciation was not a problem at all; maybe because I'm musical I have a good ear for sounds in general; but learned all the French sounds in a few hours and most of the text-to-sound rules of French in just a few days. This is actually quite easy because unlike English; French pronunciation rules is very regular so with very few exceptions (mostly slang and dialectal words and proper names) you can always know how to say something from the spelling (but not the other way around, theres several ways to spell the same sounds). The challenge for me; as with any language is learning enough vocabulary to be able to speak anything meaningful. I'm still at a very low level of understanding and even lower at speaking French; but the little I can say I apparently sound so fluent it just gets me in "trouble" because it makes French speakers think I know more French than I actually do. I once tried to help a French tourist that for some reason had travelled to Lillehammer in Norway thinking he could get by without speaking English (we're almost all fluent in English; but only maybe 10% of us have had any French in school); who was desperately asking everyone around him in french something about a park (one of the few words I understood of his rapid rambling was "parc"); though I don't speak much French I assumed I could understand enough to understand which park he was talking about (after all Lillehammer is not a big city so there could not be to many to choose from) if he just spoke slowly or perhaps showed me the name written down; so I approached saying fairly slowly: "Je parle un petit peu de Français..." ("I speak a little bit of french..." probably misspelled a bit) but apparently that still sounded way too fluent; because he immediately bombarded me with an even faster and completely incomprehensible barrage of French with no attempt at all to speak in any simpler terms. After a while I had to just leave him because I could not understand anything, and I was unable to make him slow down. (In recent years I've deliberately started speaking English with a more Norwegian accent; both because it's more comfortable; and because it's better to be more fluent than you sound)
First, congratulations for your persistance and efforts to learn my language. Then yes, I see three big odds when you know French but don't speak it fluently enough : -the most pertinent choice of vocabulary as you want to be very accurate to your interlocutor (we have a very rich and wide lexicon and obviously some complexity comes with it), -the best way to put your sentence in a good and understandable order (basically grammar, especially when your birth language is agglutinative instead of inflective), -and of course the speed we French tend to hast when we are dialoguing with French-speaking foreigners, often forgetting we should rather converse in a moderate speed and more-to-the-point way to keep a good feedback. But the phonetic and pronunciation are pretty easy to get first I agree, specifically when you're already familiar with German or another Romance language (even if French has evolved far away from Greek and Latin). And that's a good move to keep your Norwegian accent, it has its charm as you keep a foot in your roots and it doesn't make your English less understandable at all. Just the same I'm keeping my Southwestern accent which comes from Occitan because sometimes you can't beat your nature 😆 Regards !
I just realized my main problem with learning a language (beyond my native language and English both of which I naturally use every day) is actually that I'm an introvert and neurodivergent. Talking to people in any language is draining energy; so I don't have any drive to talk to people just to talk, so of course I don't learn much vocabulary. Also the extreme polyglots you see on TH-cam, they are all extreme extroverts who have a natural drive to learn languages to be able to talk to more people! They enjoy smalltalk which is initially the only thing you can do in a language you barely know; so they only need to be in proximity to speakers of a language to practice; while I can go days without talking to anyone but my wife.
I learnt a bit of Oslo-dialekt and I could make myself understood in Oslo.. but I certainly could hardly get a word in Bergen, Trondheim or "Nordnorge" ! Fy faen ! 🙂
Peu après mon arrivée en France, j'ai vu un croque Monsieur dans une guinguette mais je ne savais pas le nom du plat. J'ai donc demandé et la serveuse m'a dit que "c'est un croque Monsieur" J'ai répondu okay, "je prends le croque". Elle m'a dit "c'est un croque Monsieur" et j'ai cru qu'elle me corrigeais ma prononciation. J'ai donc bien articulé "je prends le croque" et la scène s'est répétée trois fois avant qu'un ami français m'a expliqué que le plat s’appelle au fait un "croque Monsieur". Bordel, faut savoir🙃🙃🙃
Pfff ouais la serveuse t'a pris la tête pour rien, parce qu'en France on peut aussi dire "un croque" pour "un croque monsieur" si on veut raccourcir et que le contexte est relativement clair. Genre si ma mère fait des croques-monsieur, elle me dit "tu veux un croque?"
Et en parlant de drôle : c'est littéralement la chute d'un sketch de Kaamelott où Karadoc (surnommé Croc) invente un sandwich qu'il appel Le Croc. Et le roi officialise le truc : Je vous présente Le Croc, Monsieur. (il venait d'inventer le croc-monsieur)
C'est vraiment très importante de prononcer une langue correctement (voyelles, consonnes diohtongues), puisque les personnes qui nous entendent parler, ils peuvent mieux comprendre ce que nous disons.Merci bcp pour la vidéo.
The actual mistake is simply attempting to speak French. With a bunch of narcissists. I either speak english to french people, or I don't speak to french people. It's that simple.
Je suis arrivé en France pour mes études il y a presque 1 mois et je n'avais pas regardé un de ces vidéos dès que je suis ici. La difference est immense entre ce qui me passait par la tête en regardant ces vidéos en Colombie... C'est comme si je n'apprenais pas le français avant de venir. L'immersion change beaucoup la perception, vraiment trop. La prononciation est toujours un problème, même si la communication est généralement bonne et mon vocabulaire est assez complet. Par contre, je trouve important de noter qu'il y a des gens qui ne font pas un effort pour améliorer sa prononciation et ils peuvent avoir une bonne communication, mais je ne suis pas d'accord avec cette approche au problème. Merci pour tes vidéos Elisa ! Tu m'as aidé surtout en sujets culturels et du français courant.
Le p'tit sketch du début m'a effectivement rappelé une histoire, mais avec deux français. Je suis Québécoise et ici la distinction des son nasaux est plus ''évidente'' si je peux dire ça comme ça. Donc, je travaillais dans un dépanneur (je crois que vous appelez ça une supérette en Europe?). Le dépanneur était situé dans la haute ville de Québec, donc très touristique comme quartier. Un jour, il y a un touriste français qui rentre et voilà un apperçu de la conversation: Moi: Bonjour! Lui: Bonjour, il est où votre paon? Moi: Du paon, comme l'oiseau? On a pas d'oiseaux ici monsieur. Lui: Non du paon... comme boulangerie! Moi: AH!!! Du pain! (Prononcer avec le ''in'' le plus québécois que vous aurez entendu de toute votre vie!) On a bien rit quand même. Quelques semaine plus tard, une situation similaire ce produit. Un autre touriste français rentre dans mon dépanneur: Moi: Bonjour! Lui: Bonjour, vous vendez du vent? Moi: Ben, y en a dehors...? (En disant je me souviens du paon/pain) Ah du vin? (encore un fois, prononcer avec mon meilleur ''in'' bien québécois.) Faque ouin, quand tu dis blanc ou blond, pour vrai, pour mon oreille de québécoise ça sonne exactement pareil. 🤣
En vrai c'est pareil pour nous, j'avais une prof qui était québécoise et globalement je comprenais ce qu'elle disais mais pour les nasales, même sans les confondre il y avait toujours un décalage par rapport à ce que je croyais entendre, je la comprenais bien parce que je m'étais habitué et que selon le contexte on ne pouvais pas se trompé mais c'était différents c'est certain
Désolé que vous en soyez vexé. Certains des films de Xavier Dolan ont des personnages qui ont un accent québécois très fort, un rythme de parole élevé, et parfois aussi un vocabulaire québécois qui n'existe pas dans l'hexagone. Si la plupart des français sont capables de comprendre le québécois léger, cela demande pour certains un effort, et ceux là sont immédiatement dépassés dès que l'accent est plus fort ou que le rythme accélère. Quant au vocabulaire, pour le coup on ne peut rien y faire si on y est jamais exposé. Parfois, un film est entièrement sous-titré à cause de quelques passages compliqués. Et finalement, c'est presque devenu un automatisme de sous-titrer tout ce qui vient d'en dehors d'Europe, que ce soit le Québec ou l'Afrique. Si l'intention originale du sous-titrage est justifiable (désolé, on est peut-être pas foutu comme vous je sais pas, mais en tout cas ce n'est pas du snobisme mais vraiment qu'on comprend pas), je trouve par contre que parfois cet automatisme de tout sous-titrer ce qui vient d'ailleurs est débile voire insultant quand on se retrouve avec des films ou des reportages sans aucune difficulté à comprendre des accents légers, mais quand même sous-titrés "au cas où". Ce devrait être du cas par cas.
Ma femme est hispanophone et elle prononce par exemple de la même façon "verre" et "beurre". Quand elle me dit "passe-moi le beurre" je comprends "passe-moi le verre". Ce genre de choses arrive plusieurs fois par semaine avec une personne qui vit en France depuis 20 ans ( mais qui n'a jamais réussi à améliorer son accent). Alors non, quand on ne comprend pas on ne comprend vraiment pas.
Once I was on an eastbound train out of Paris when there was an announcement, everyone out for "cinquante ans" 50 years? I can't wait for 50 years!!! No worries, it was "San Quentin".
J'ai vécu en France pendant deux ans à peu près, il y a 15 ans. J'étais à Paris, en queue au guichet pour acheter un carnet de tickets métro, derrière des italiens, qui étaient en train à leur tour d'acheter des tickets. Ils avaient vraiment du mal pour se faire comprendre, car la vendeuse ne faisait même pas aucun effort pour les aider, elle était vraiment un peu arrogante, voilà! Elle faisait semblant de ne pas comprendre et lorsque je l'ai entendue dire "oh encore ces ritals", là j'en avais marre et j'ai demandé les tickets pour eux! Bref, ce n'a pas été un comportement très professionnel !
@@ninocondina2397 Et comment le sais-tu ? Beaucoup de Français ont des origines étrangères, surtout à Paris. Je crois que c'est extrêmement rare de nos jours des Français qui appellent les Italiens "Ritals". Ta Française devait avoir à peu près 70 ans ou même plus 😄!
@@phlm9038 je ne suis pas d'accord, car je connais des italiens émigrés en France depuis des dizaines d'années qui viennent encore appelés comme ça, mais ce ne sont pas des vieux que disent "ritals", au contraire. D'ailleurs, ce que je veux dire, c'est juste souligner l'impolitesse, voire la cruauté de la vendeuse.
When you were saying aCIdo I was also confused on what you were trying to say. But when u said it Acido i was able to understand. This video was great. Im trying to learn French and it help. Muchas gracias!
Hello, je découvre ton contenu, c'est super. Pour infos, dans les sous-titres en anglais, les phrases qui suivent "since you were a child" (5:38 pour le timestamp) devraient être conjugées au past continuous : "you've been learning" et non pas "you're learning". Keep up the good work
The problem is that French is especially sensitive to improper pronunciation. Compare that with Spanish where people can generally guess what I want to say.
That is definitely true. There are hundreds, if not thousands of words (a lot of them very basic/common in everyday language) where if you fail on single letter/sound, you will say a completely different word. While words like that exist in every language, they are so much more frequent in French.
It feels the same way for a french speaking english, in Atlanta & New York i had multiple interactions with people that doesn't try to understand, even got insulted because i didn't had a perfect english (happened in 8 months living inthe US). I also received some help from a guy right next to me that hear one of the interaction, obviouly it's not everyone. In fact, it could be common in Paris, a city that receive 20 to 40 million travelers each year, but in other smaller cities, this type of reactions are very rare.
Yoeun Pen. That’s false. The french languages have many homonymes. If you don’t pronounce the words correctly, the meaning is totally different. So before saying non sense, try to learn french first.
Very true. Every language has words that “change” if you pronounce one sound differently, it’s how languages work. The context is so obvious sometimes, it feels a lot like French are pretending to be confused.
Oh oui, d'erreurs embarrassantes (plus ou moins) j'en ai faites beaucoup quand j'apprenais le français, mais je n'arrive pas à me rappeler des exemples. Moi j'essaye toujours d'apprécier l'effort des personnes qui apprennent une langue, n'importe laquelle, mais il est vrai que parfois c'est difficile de comprendre quand l'accent est trop prononcé. Je dis toujours que chaque langue possède une "chanson" ou une "mélodie" qu'il faut essayer de chanter, c'est ce qui donne l'accent à une langue. Beaucoup de personnes parlent une langue étrangère en gardant la mélodie de leur langue maternelle et ça se ressent beaucoup. La plupart du temps ceci est juste du à une sorte de honte qu'on a en imitant la façon de parler des natifs, comme si on se moquait d'eux en essayant de parler de la même façon (p.e. comme on pourrait imiter l'accent très particulier de Marseille quand on raconte un gag). En réalité, cette imitation c'est bien ce qui fera qu'à la fin on parlera correctement et avec un bon accent.
Je me suis tombé accidentellement dans cette vidéo et littéralement je ne arrête pas de regarder chaque de leux. Merci bcp Elisa, je les trouve hiper amusant et si bien utile. Nouvelle abonnée💞 .
À mon avis, ça dépend aussi des gens. En France, la majorité est exigente avec sa langue... Oh mon Dieu ! Mais dans l'Amérique latine c'est complètement différent, on aide des étrangers pour parler mieux, on le plaisait bcp!, C'est joli apprendre ensemble les langues qu'on peut parler. En plus, je suis en train d'apprendre le français et vachement c'est un peu compliqué de le practiquer ici en France et, encore plus.... Le geste que faite des français avec le son "hhheeinnnn" ohlalalala... 😐 C'est dure! Mais, merci pour être comme ça, on fait plus d'effort pour parler mieux votre incroyable et jolie langue ;)
Speaking very clearly and precisely requires listening carefully and repeatedly. I cannot emphasize how much more important pronunciation is than grammar and vocabulary combined. Thank you for this video.
Very interesting how a small detail can change what you're saying. In the case of your Spanish friend, the reason why he didn't know you were saying "ácido" is because if you change the intonation it would become "ha sido" (it has been). (Sorry for comenting in English but my French is still too basic. J'étudie avec une appli pour portable)
《 Vraiment intéressant comme un petit détail peut changer ce qu'on dit. Dans le cas de ton ami espagnol, la raison qui fait qu'il n'a pas compris que tu disais "ácido", c'est que si tu changes l'intonation, ça devient "ha sido" (ça a été). Désolé si je commente en anglais mais mon français est trop basique pour l'instant 》
En Italie nous sommes élastiques avec les étrangers parce que nous savons qu'il ne peuvent pas prononcer nôtres paroles correctement. Donc nous ne demandons pas la perfection.
I live in Japan and regularly experience pronunciation errors, which come form my English background. As you said in this video, in English the emphasis, and where we put stress in a word matters a lot, while in Japanese they have a pitch accent that changes the meaning of the words, and the pitch of individual words by themselves is different than when they are in a sentence with other words. It is very difficult to hear the pitch when you're used to only listening for where to put stress or emphasis, so my students will tell me when I say a word and it sounds off pretty regularly. There are a lot of words that are very short and the pitch is what determines it's meaning, because otherwise the sounds are the same. Just today a teacher said a compound word, where when the words are said separately I can understand and hear them correctly, but when they were put together the pitch accent of them changed, and it took me a little while to understand what the words were. I think knowing how the common sounds of a language are combined and how to properly say the vowels is very important in any language with vowels, but that we need to figure out what is different from our base language, what kind of thing has importance placed on it, and work to be able to do that well. I've heard that with Mandarin Chinese the sounds don't matter nearly as much as the tones, so learning those improves fluency faster than anything. And of course how languages are spoken varies dramatically based on region, which can make learning another language to any degree of fluency extremely difficult without spending time in a region where the target language is spoken to get experience using and having cause and effect relationships with the language. Just the act of failure to communicate can help teach the learner how to improve to be better understood. I've studied Japanese for over 15 years and lived in Japan for over 7, and have yet to seriously study pitch accent, but recently I've felt like I need to, to get to the next level in my understanding and overall communication abilities. I think a lot of people want to say that pronunciation isn't very important in being understood, but in my opinion the flow, the ups and downs and rhythms of speech combined with the pronunciation are extremely important to comprehension. We all get used to hearing things said in a specific way in our native languages and deviance from that is often quite confusing.
I think you are so right about the vowels! There are a lot of people who are hired to take care of Customer Service on the phone here in the US who only read cards with questions and answers on them and they do not even speak English, they just have to read the cards and listen for answers, then go to the next card, depending on the answers we give... I have SUCH a hard time understanding the people who do not know what they are saying because they only have TWO VOWEL SOUNDS which they use which are harsh and extremely exaggerated compared to what the vowel actually is supposed to sound like. We have many vowels, long, short, and complicated by other vowels which are next to the first vowel and the consonants nearby also make a difference in how the word is pronounced.. Also we have very little nasal sounds, compared to every single word spoken by these CS people who speak Spanish when they are not at work.. It's NOT the Spanish you think you know, or were taught in school or hear here on TH-cam! The people who have these jobs I think come from a Spanish speaking country in Central America or maybe S America -- aws I sid, they will only use 2 long vowels, and when they add their nasal intonation , the word sounds nothing like what it is supposed to sound like. Not only that, but even if you put the blame on yourself and say "I have a hard time understanding things sometimes, so would you mind to repeat that, and say it more slowly?" Instead, they say it LOUDER
Pour moi le problème a toujours été le volume de ma voix au moment de parler. Quand j’ai commencé à apprendre le français j’appréhendais les moqueries si jamais je faisais une faute, d’où cette mauvaise habitude de baisser le son de ma voix, parfois inconsciemment. C’était une torture pour moi être envoyée chercher la baguette à la boulangerie. “Je pourrais avoir une baguette s’il vous plaît “ ? Phrase trop longue et compliquée à me débuts. Maintenant je parle haut et fort! (Ou du moins j’essaye). Surtout que ça aide à mieux articuler et donc à se faire comprendre !
My problem in French (but also in Spanish and Italian too) is that native speakers DO understand my questions but then I have trouble understanding their responses.
En tant que français en Australie on ne me comprenait pas quand je demandais un croissant 😂 j'étais obligé de le dire le plus mal possible pour qu'ils captent de quoi je parle X)
Les mots français ou transparents sont les pires. On les prononce de manière authentique, ce qui n'est effectivement pas le cas pour les non-francophones, et ça ne passe pas. Ca me rappelle quand j'étais en Angleterre, et que j'ai demandé un muffin. La vendeuse ne comprenait pas ce que je demandais, même après plusieurs essais de ma part. Il a fallu qu'un client derrière moi s'énerve et dise le mot de manière authentique pour que je sois servi... J'étais assez vexé, bien sûr. Mais je trouve que le son du "u" de "cut" est le son le plus difficile à maîtriser.
On sait tous que l’anglais pour les français c’est vraiment dure c’est pour cela qu’on arrive pas a comprendre comment à Paris tout le monde s’est fait traiter comme la m*rda même si on commande des choses en français! Je rigolais tellement car je posais les questions en français (je sais que c’était bien prononcé car je travaille en français depuis des années) et tout de suite ils changeaient à l’anglais alors je répondais en anglais (je travaille autant en français comme en anglais ) mais ils ne pouvaient pas répondre aux questions en anglais!! Lol Alors pourquoi utiliser l’anglais s’ils ne le parlent même pas lol Tout le monde dit que les français sont les pires touristes et c’est vrai malheureusement lol
un ami chinois a essaye de commander un dessert dans un resto dans le sud de la France, il a voulu le dire lui-meme a la serveuse: Je voudrais une ile fontaine... J'ai ri, la serveuse a ri puis elle dit: "presque" et elle l'a corrige... c'etait mignon et c'est une belle annecdote dont on se rappelera toute notre vie... :)
Very interesting video. I don't know any French other than small, common words. I had no idea how easy it could be to mispronounce things and come up with much different words, even without context to help. I don't see this as a problem in English. I find that French speakers, tend to have a harder time with English, yet we would rarely have a problem understanding what you are trying to say especially through context. There are so many different accents in English, that a "French" English accent just seems to be another version, to me. My weird pronunciation experience was in Italian, which neither me nor my traveling buddy spoke. We speak English natively. I speak conversational German, and he spoke a bit of French. Our first train stop in a small town in Italy, we hopped off the train and went searching for a bank to exchange money. Two wonderful elderly men saw that we were kind of lost (this is before smart phones) and approached us. I came up with the word "banco"... For some reason, it sounded Italian enough to me that it probably meant bank. So I gesture, "Banco???" and the international hand symbol of rubbing your fingers together to mean "money". These two guys looked like we were aliens. Banco?? And they debated for at least 3-4 minutes what we were trying to say. We went back and forth for easily 15 minutes with zero understanding between us. Then I magically came up with this potential phrase: "Banco d'Italia??" And their eyes lit up! BancA!.... Banca. Banca!! not Banco! Banca is correct word, and then the proceeded to point in dozens of gestures resulting in at least 5-6 different left and right turns at various corners. We thanked them vigorously, smiled, and just headed in the general direction of the majority of their hand directions. How could a single letter change make a word completely unintelligible?!?
I grew up in San Diego, native English speaker, American. You may have heard of “ Spanglish”? They even made a comedy movie with that title. Growing up, streets and schools and cities all had Spanish names. I only had Spanish in the 1st grade, but some of it comes in thru osmosis. Anyway, the point I wanted to make , is if anyone wanted to either try or pretend to speak Spanish, you just added an “ O” on the end of the word. There were lots of make up words that were Spanish - English combos, rather than real words, but the meaning got across. All of my Latino relatives, as well as the kids in my school , spoke perfect English, without an accent. So , I totally forgot I had Mexican or Mexican - American relatives, lots of them.
Un jour à Londres, je suis rentrée dans une sorte de parapharmacie et j'ai demandé à la vendeuse des tweezers. Parce que j'avais oublié la mienne. Elle m'a fait répéter 40 fois, j'ai essayé toutes les intonations possible, elle n'a jamais compris. Du coup, un peu saoulée, j'ai pris mon accent français le plus frenchy possible et j'ai dit : 'ze fing tou poul aout your hair' ! Et là elle m'a regardé et a dit '' ah, tweezers !'' avec exactement le même accent que les 30 premières fois où je l'ai dit. A ce jour, je n'ai toujours pas compris quel était le soucis et comment elle avait pu ne pas comprendre...
Salut Elisa. J'adore tes videos. Comme on a déjà te racconté, en Espagnol, "acído" peut être interprété comme : "ha sido" (a été) mais aussi come "asido", du verb "asir" (prendre), c'est à dire, "pris" or "held" in English. Cette dernière mot n'est pas très utilisé, mais le contexte a pu confondre l'autre personne, qui attendait: "ácido". Merci pour cette superbe video qui nous aide beaucoup et ¡saludos!
I’m French but I speak several languages and the nature of the misunderstandings between them are fascinating to me. You explain it so well too! I felt let down by the French education system for learning languages but found great apps that I use before i travel abroad. Listening and repeating is basically what kids do and it’s the best way to be understood by native speakers, so you can have a grip of the basics when you are in need. I am SO GLAD i don’t have to learn French is sounds honestly exhausting xD Great vid!
Yeah I had one where I was asking someone where the bathroom was. They had no clue what I was saying even when I said it multiple times. What was worse is that we both spoke English as our native language. Who's to blame, I don't know.
If you are in the US, then you are probably well aware that regional differences, just in the US , speaking English, it can be hard to understand other native English speakers. I have certainly experienced that.
You are amazing and so are your videos, since a week ago I started to learn French language from zero and also watching your videos everyday :D Thank youuuu
I do appreciate this video and I think it's fair enough to try and confront some of the things that learners can pragmatically try and tackle in the face of hostility. However, I have to reassure some people who may feel discouraged in France - it is certainly not all your fault or all in your mind. After a year living in France, after studying intensely for seven years beforehand, my confidence in general was rock bottom. I didn't imagine the fact that people did not want to try and understand me even when my French was at its best: my colleagues (I worked in a school) told me openly that they did not like dealing with foreigners. People in the shops verbally abused me to my face. There are some beautiful souls in France and nobody should generalise but some of this behaviour was the rule and not the exception. Many western countries have similar isolationist mindsets but in France there is a particular idea in some people's minds that a blow to an individual from various countries is some small act of anti-imperialism (ignoring that France of course is not a bastion of freedom itself). In general I think it is good to persevere and develop a very thick skin about it but my advice is to mentally prepare for this kind of behaviour as it can really get you down if you find yourself alone in the country. Focus on the many many kind people out there and ignore the immature bullying types.
I also experienced this while studying abroad, so much so that I fell out of love with the French culture even though I majored in French. 😕 I am now learning Italian with the hope that I will fit in better with Italian culture.
@@evercuriousmichelle I’ve been studying French for a month, super passionate and dedicated. Yet, reading these comments is heartbreaking. Am I wasting my time only to be rejected by the culture? 😢
@@corrosivecub Hopefully not! Every culture has it's faults and it's a matter of if the pros outweigh the cons for you. For a lot of my classmates, the pros did outweigh the cons and so they were able to brush off a few of the negative interactions and move on. For instance, I can't eat dairy so I wasn't able to fall in love with the French cuisine like my classmates were able to. I also grew up in Texas and really value friendliness, something that the French culture doesn't value as much. My classmates from different regions, where they are a bit more reserved, didn't find that to be a hurdle like I did. I also recommend avoiding Paris since the folks there are often sick of tourists and so won't have as much patience. Here's to hoping you continue to love learning French and French culture!
Merci, Élisa, pour tes vidéos. Ils sont toujours très intéressants et utiles. Alors, comme hispanophone, je t'explique pourquoi ton amie n'avait pas compris. Le truc c'est que en espagnol, si tu es "seseista" (comme la grand partie de hispanoamericain et aussi les français qui apprennent l'espagnol), c'est-à-dire on prononce le sons (/th/ en anglais, /z/ en espagnol Ibérique) comme /s/; et tu prononce "aCIdo" au lieu de "Ácido", on va comprendre "ha sido" (ça a été), c'est-à-dire un autre signification différent. Merci pour tes explications, celà m'a fait me trouver plus identifiqué avec les francophones qui ne comprends pas les étrangers qui hésitent de parler le français. ❤️🇨🇵
I'm not a speaker of French or not even of English, but let me explain. This happens when you are really good at the language and the people assume that you don't make that kind of mistakes. They can't tell if you are pronouncing those words correctly and trying to tell something with those words, or you are just wrong at pronunciation. It's like, a Japanese who is perfect at everything but l/r distinction in English.
Vidéo amusante ! J’habite dans une région touristique en France (Bourgogne) et je peux je vous assurer que les serveurs font toujours l’effort pour comprendre les clients étrangers mais il est vrai que quelquefois ( et l’on voit ça partout dans le monde ) certains ne veulent pas faire l’effort ou ont peur peut-être ?
French attitude towards tourists make me avoid this country, I choose Spain instead, even though Spaniards do not speak English widely, but they are not arrogant, and they try to help you. I do not understand French attitude towards foreingers, very weird country…
Parisians and Southern French* please dont over generalise. I've never heard foreigners say this about us in the North (ch'tis) or about people in Bretagne, we're friendlier and warmer, it's easy to make friends there, but our regions are not as attractive. Btw Parisians treat us like shit too ^^
It's not a coincidence that everybody has the same "bad" experience with french but no one has it with english, for example. it's just a matter of wanting to understand the other, it's not a matter of making an effort. I do not need to make any effort to understand someone talking in spanish. i will understand you, it is very easy cause you can interpret what the other is trying to say cause is literally saying words of your dictionary lol. you do not need to have any spanish accent and people will be happy with you talking spanish and will help you kindly. But in general yeah, french tend to be quite arrogant if you do not speak their language properly even if you try. curiously then french people will have the worst oral english with the most marked accent.
I've worked at McDonald's in France for more than one year and what suprised me the most, was the fact that my coworkers weren't able to speak english. Even the basic sentences were too hard for them...
En quoi est-ce surprenant de ne pas bien parler une autre langue que le français en France? L'anglais, langue invasive par excellence ne doit pas s'étendre jusqu'à à tout détruire. Ne pas savoir parler un minimum de français en France par un étranger est bien plus choquant pour moi. Bonne journée)
@@liberteegalitefraternite7760 L'anglais à beau être une langue invasive, elle permet quand même à une grande majorité de personnes ne parlant pas la même langue de se comprendre. Ensuite, une personne qui sait parler un minimum français ne sait pas forcement tout le vocabulaire nécessaire pour passer une commande a un fast food ou tout simplement demander son chemin de façon claire et explicite. Dans ce cas la, je préfère, moi, prendre l'initiative de parler à la personne en anglais plutôt que de galérer a comprendre ce qu'elle essaye de m'expliquer en français pendant plusieurs minutes. Et pour finir je pense qu'une personne qui passe des vacances en France pendant quelques jours ne devrait tout simplement pas se forcer a apprendre plusieurs centaines de mots pour pouvoir communiquer avec tout le monde. De nos jours, un traducteur installé sur un téléphone peut très bien faire l'affaire malgré le fait que peu de personnes ont ce reflex. Ensuite je comprend parfaitement votre point de vue pour les résidents permanents en France qui ne parlent toujours pas français alors qu'ils y habitent depuis plusieurs années. Mais il faut comprendre aussi que le cerveau perd de sa plasticité avec le temps et qu'apprendre une langue étrangère quand on est jeune est bien diffèrent que d'apprendre une langue étrange lorsqu'on devient âgé. Bonne journée à vous aussi
Oh mon Dieu ! Les gens ne parlent pas anglais à un endroit où ils ne voient probablement pas l'ombre d'un client anglais quel scandale ! Désolé mais quand je vais en Angleterre je ne le scandalise pas si les gens ne parlent pas français.
En tant que prof de FLE, je ne suis pas tout à fait d'accord, même si la prononciation reste un facteur important. Une personne qui prononce mal certains sons, mais qui a du vocabulaire, saura employer d'autres mots pour se faire comprendre (comme dans les exemples). Alors que sans vocabulaire, hé bien, on est coincé. Pour prononcer des mots, il faut déjà les acquérir ! Savoir correctement prononcer les mots qu'on connait, c'est bien. Mais la langue et l'interaction ne se résument pas à quelques mots bien prononcés. Sans le vocabulaire et un minimum de grammaire, on n'arrive à rien. C'est d'ailleurs pour ça que les étrangers qui vivent longtemps en France sont meilleurs en vocabulaire et en grammaire qu'en prononciation. Ils savent qu'une fois qu'ils ont de bonnes bases dans ces domaines, il n'est plus nécessaire d'être vigilant sur la prononciation.
Je suis franco-tunisien, et il est vrai que quand je retourne là-bas on a tendance à me faire répéter quand je parle. Je l'ai longtemps pris pour moi (bon il y a toujours des personnes malveillantes). Mais cette vidéo m'a pas mal fait relativiser, après tout on a souvent tendance à oublier que la prononciation est tout autant, si ce n'est plus, importante que le vocabulaire. Et on fait rarement des efforts dessus, pensant être accueillis avec le tapis rouge quand on case 5 mots de la langue locale. En Tunisie d'ailleurs "poubelle" et "organe génital masculin" sont des mots assez similaires 🙃
I think that the incapacity of understanding someone's pronuntiation in your native language comes from being close minded and not being exposed to different languages and cultures. It also shows the inability to extrapolate and use the context to draw conclusions. So, I'm sorry but I don't think is a foreigner's responsibility to improve their pronunciation more than up to a certain point. When I was taking English classes the teacher was making us listen to non-native English speakers with strong pronunciation particularities in order to familiarise us with the diversity. If non-native English speakers can understand other non-native English speakers it means that the comprehension problem in your example comes from French people who refuse to make an effort.
I am french and i already struggled to understand my foreign friends speaking my language more than once and i do not believe im close minded. I think for native english speakers it is easier to understand non native speakers as most people nowadays speak english so you are used to non natives speakers of your language (even if you go on holiday in a foreign country where you dont speak the language you usually speak english, not french). As a french, living in Spain for 6 years and speaking english, spanish and catalan everyday, i dont believe i am "close minded" and not exposed to other languages but i can assure you that it is difficult for me sometimes to understand a foreigner speaking my language. It does not mean that i do not want to understand them, it just mean that i am definitely not used to foreigners speaking my language and in french yes, pronunciation is very important because you can completely change the signification of a sentence just by slightly changing one vowel. I guess if we were used to foreigners speaking french as native english are it would be easier for us.
So you go to another country and tell them its their responsability to learn how to properly have an interaction with you in a foreign language they use once in a blue moon and if they don't they are a bunch of arrogant lazy and close minded twat? First of all people are not obliged to interact to begin with and if they do try, blaming them for not understanding despite willingly taking the time to do so is a dick move. If you want to be understood talk in your native language in places where it is their job to understand foreign travelers. Don't go into the wild assuming people will understand your broken french, spanish... They might try but they have no obligation to.
I know it can be frustrating, but really being narrow-minded as nothing to do with it. French prononciation is really really tricky and subtle. Most people have a hard time understanding foreigners , especialy when in a hurry.
@@inessb6604 As a German I can say that even tho its not everybody in the world speaking German I can understand when someone tries to say something in a very rudimentary pronounciation. It is making an effort. And it is, to some degree, close mindedness. But I think for French its most about feeling superior and wanting to keep that. It has to be. And even if you cant understand it, many times the context will help out a lot. Like the example (and this happens a lot, its not just some made up sketch situation). It is ABSOLUTELY OBVIOUS that a customer at a restaurant isnt asking me for wind. That makes no f..ing sense whatsoever. So if you say youre not close minded then that simply shows that you have to be immersed into French 24/7 your whole life. Because youre writing in English thats obviously not the case. It definitely is more complicated if you dont have context but many times you do. And then it is understandable if you really want to understand it
@@hermes6910 And to add further, Parisian accent is very difficult to understand. I find it easier to understand speakers of french from french speaking african countries.
J’ai adoré votre vidéo. Ça m’a rappelé des tonnes de fautes que moi j’ai fait en apprenant le français. En voilà une: Je demeurais chez une famille française et, un jour, comme j’avais un peu froid, j’ai demandé si on pourrait baiSer la fenêtre. Sans hésitation, le père de la famille m’a répondu en souriant, « fais comme chez toi, mon brave ».
"il avait pas envi de faire d'effort sur la prononciation" voilà une preuve de plus que c'est pas une questions d'accent mais bel et bien de paresse. Franchement pour la question de l'arrogance je dirait que pour certain oui et pis pour d'autre encore une fois, c'est une question de paresse et très franchement j'ai jamais eu de soucis à comprendre un anglais qui parle français. Même si la prononciation est pas juste, il suffit de réfléchir 2 secondes et mettre les choses dans leur contexte pour comprendre. Par contre comprendre les français qui parlent anglais, mais qui ne font pas le moindre effort, là c'est déjà beaucoup plus compliqué.
Moi je peux vous assurer, qu’il m’arrive souvent de croiser des étrangers à Paris, qui me parle en français avec un accent et que je ne comprends qu’une phrase sur deux… Particulièrement des chinois, américains ou arabes ( du "bled " je précise ). Eux ont l’air d’être persuadé de bien se faire comprendre, et il parle un français basique mais correct, mais le fait qu’ils mangent trop les voyelles me les rend inaudibles, et je fais souvent semblant de les avoir compris en répondant un stupide « oui « …
I grew up around Quebecois (I think it was specifically Quebecois but the accent was closer to a Chiak accent - my mother's family is half Quebec and half Acadian/Cajun). My Mémère and Pépère spoke Canadian French before learning English when they started school. The stopped using it with their kids after their oldest, my uncle, got made fun of when he was a toddler for speaking French. I want to learn Quebecois but finding classes for any dialect besides parisian French is near impossible. I figured I'd try parisian French and visit Montreal to later adjust to using the dialect I want to know. That was a laughable failure between my being an English speaker and having picked up a little bit of the Quebecois I'd hear my family use. I REALLY struggled with pronouncing "en" the parisian way and I was using duolingo so despite it being still technically correct I couldn't continue! 🤣🤣 French is tough to pronounce and understand learning as an English speaking without the vastly different dialects; add the dialects in and it's nightmare. I grew up hearing Quebecois and still have an easier time trying to learn German, Japanese, Spanish, and Irish than I do French - any dialect of French! 🤣🤣 French is such an interesting language!
Même que je suis d'accord avec tout ce que vous avez dit en gros, je trouve que les serveurs, surtout à Paris, pourraient faire un peu plus d'effort. Pour moi, en temps qu'anglophone, le vrai horreur c'est les deux sons "ou" et "u". Je suis arrivé au boulot un jour avec un mal au cou ayant très mal dormi. J'étais en train de me masser le cou en disant à tous mes colleagues que j'avais énormement mal au cul! Vous pouvez imaginer...
Salut, je sais que c'est dédié aux anglophones et autres non-francophones mais je trouve que c'est aussi très instructif pour un franco-français like me, merci beaucoup pour ton travail.
Une situation cocasse : en Italie nous voulions commander du Marsala, aux oeufs, pas à l'ognon. Personne ne parlait italien et la serveuse ne parlait pas français. Après de vaines tentatives un membre du groupe a dit "Marsala cot cot cot" en remuant les bras comme deux ailes. La serveuse est partie comme une fusée et nous l'avons vue reproduire le geste et le son devant son patron qui a éclaté de rire en nous regardant. Une minute plus tard la serveuse est revenue, hilare, avec la commande. Nous avons été très généreux sur le pourboire ce jour.
i think it’s definitely a thing about being used to certain accents and knowing the person (or what they are trying to say). since i work in customer service by phone, i’m used to a LOT of accents and because people call for the same thing i can easily understand them most of the time
I have the bad luck (or good luck depending) of living in Turin. We are at about 120 Km away from the French border. To be honest with you, I have tried many times to study French, and the end result is that I do understand it decently, but I have problems in speaking it. I've been to France several times, with my parents or by myself, or with classmates when I was in school. I have episodes that will be staying with me forever about the rudeness and arrogance of French people. Here are a few. My parents speak a decent French - they studied it in school (unlike me who studied English), so we rarely have a problem going around. But one time at the restaurant the waiter asked me directly what I wanted or something like that (I was probably 16 so it was a normal thing of course to ask me directly), and I promptly asked my mom what exactly he said because I wasn't sure of all the words. This idiot started to laugh in my face, pitying me that I didn't understand him. Another time I was with my school mates in Paris. One of them needed to buy a film roll for the camera (yeah, you people, it was back in the early 2000 and we still had those); he got in a shop and spoke English. IN PARIS! ENGLISH IN PARIS - PARIS THE CAPITAL OF FRANCE. Of course the reply was "oh sorry I don't speak English, only French" (and this was said in perfect English - I guess this person studied exactly only that sentence, and he could pronounce it with the right intonation too!). Then I came along and I said in French what we needed, and in the end we got it together with the comment - said in French - "ahh these Italians, they are so stupid". Finally, last example is: we were in Briançon - very close to the border with Italy - and my mom went to a shop to ask for some stamps. God have mercy! She mispronounced the word "timbre". It took the guy 5 minutes to understand it, and then he laughed and corrected her pronunciation. RUDE!! And these are just a few examples. But then, at the same time, I've had French people coming to Turin and expect me to speak French to them when they needed help. I've always politely said that I speak only Italian, English, German and Spanish. I tried to give directions in the broken French I have and I was then insulted. No, sorry, I understand you are French and you must defend your country and people. But I am sorry, the majority of you guys is unexcusable! At this point, I really want to make 0 effort to speak to French people in French. If they come to my country, it is either Italian or English. And that's what's up.
French here, I am so sorry you had to experience this. No one should feel bad about his/her accent or about what you know and don't know about one's language. I experienced it living in London, it was awfull. People speaking about you in english when they wrongly think you don't understand them is on my top list of stupidity. I was actually shocked by the xenophobia I encounter as a french here. I was just living there and trying my best. But stupid people are going to be stupid, I guess.
I have experienced this many times and usually when I try to speak the French change the conversation to English. 😂😂😂 I’m now going to head over to the pronunciation video.
But it's funny, if you started the conversation in English they are less likely to help you. But I get what you are saying. I found this often happened when I lived in Quebec, and it wouldn't be so bad if their French was better than my English (then I understand) but when they responded in a thick Quebecois accent in English that I had hard time understanding, that's when it got on my nerves,.
Je suis anglophone mais on parle français et l'anglais au Cameroun 🇨🇲, j'ai vecu cette situation avec mes amis ici au Cameroun 🇨🇲 qui sont francophones 😂,,, ils se moquaient de nous les anglophones lorsque nous faissions des erreurs en pronociation mais c'est la même chose que nous les anglophones faissons avec eux lorsqu'ils parlent l'anglais aussi... 😃 😃 😃. C'est chelou ça 🤗 🤗 🤗 🤗... Kisses from Cameroon 🇨🇲
As an American who learned French (very badly) in school. I know enough to be able to order a meal or buy a ticket. People in France have always been helpful and appreciative of my very meager efforts.
I've been watching and listening to some french for fun (can't read it at all but sometimes catch myself understanding the gist from listening). I've never had this problem in Spain with Spanish, I did get made fun of a bit for speaking like a Mexican but otherwise could communicate perfectly fine because the vowels are remarkably consistent
My Spanish teacher used to say "you have to put the right emphaSIS on the right SYLLable" or something similar where she didn't put the right emphasis on the correct syllable in English
Regarding your comment about where to put the accent in the Spanish word acido. When you put the accent on the second syllable it sounds like you are saying" ha sido" which translates to "has been". This would be confusing because the meaning is so different to the word "acid".
En tant que française étant assez à l'aise en anglais, je n'ai jamais eu de mal à me faire comprendre mais j'ai toujours eu énormément de mal à comprendre les autres. Je vis même assez mal le fait de ne pas comprendre les accents des autres, même français. On m'a déjà traité de raciste alors que j'essayais justement de dire que c'est moi qui ai du mal et que ce n'était pas l'autre homme qui parlait mal (il était congolais avec un fort accent mais j'étais vraiment la seule à ne pas comprendre). Honnêtement, le "vent blond" je n'aurai pas compris 😭 J'imagine que certains font exprès... Mais beaucoup comme moi ne sont pas assez habitué dès le plus jeune âge aux accents pour comprendre.
C'est ce que j'essaye de faire comprendre dans cette vidéo mais vu certains commentaires les gens préfèrent croire qu'absolument tous les Français sont arrogants... 🥲
@@DerToasti it is a form conjugated in the present of the infinitive "to live". (Vivre : Je vis, tu vis, il vit, nous vivons,...) Maybe you think about "une vis" (a screw" but it's not the same. You only can guess it with the word before (a pronoun befor the verb, a determinant before the noun)
J'étais un étudiant à Chambéry dans l'été de 2017 après avoir pris trois cours de Français des ans avant a l'université. Donc pas beaucoup de Français pratique pour moi. Le plus difficile chose a toujours compris les gens. Mais tu parles parfait littéralement et même après tous ces années avec petite utilisation de Français je te comprends très facile. Je t'adore ta channel et à cause de toi je pense que je serai bien a écouter la langue parlée maintenant je suis prêt à actuellement deviner couramment. Donc merci encore! Et quand je reviens à France j'aimerais te sortir 😘
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So following the comment I just posted, I clicked on this and felt a lot better to the point of laughing 😂Your point about how the English language changed the sound of "ou" to the point of stupidity is something I've thought of before! If I can master that, I'm sure I've got this French thing with some practise 😆
@@jessicaelizabethdelaney7756 Yes you get lifetime access to all the lessons and exercise 😊
Thank you Elisa 🥰🥰🥰
as an Italian who worked as waiter I met many many tourists who tried to speak Italian and their pronunciation was really really bad but somehow I always managed to understand what they meant. That's because you don't have to focus on the pronounce but on the context, trust me french people: it will be easier also for you
I would wager that Italian is also a bit easier to understand, given that there are almost twice as many different vowel sounds in french as there are in italian. Italian is more visibly phonetic, so accented foreigners are likely to make more consistent errors vs. French, which is less visibly phonetic (French IS quite consistent, but it may take some time and irritation to recognize that é [été], er [parler], e [erreur], ez [assez], es [les], ai [sait], ay [essayer], ey [volleyeur], and ed [pied], all can make the same sound).
Exactly this.
@@ribos2762 why should I act like a professor of Italian while the costumer doesn't care about learning It? I would just look arrogant and the costumer won't choose my bar again. If I'm able to understand what they say I'll be happy to help them. It's not a matter of pride
@@andreatonetti9885 Tbh what he said was as childish as what you said. This Italian/French cultural war is pretty dumb in my opinion
@@nathanbegel4505 If saying that you have to understand the word from the context is childish then you should review your vocabulary
Je suis français. Quand un étranger parle français je suis tellement content que je suis très concentré pour bien comprendre ce qu'il dit. Et je comprends bien ce qu'il dit même s'il ne prononce pas bien.
Quand je parle anglais je n'ai pas un bel accent et je comprends ce que vis un étranger.
Je pense que ce n'est pas de l'arrogance mais un manque d'empathie.
Ce n'est pas tellement mieux, honnêtement...
Most times I find that foreign language speakers know more English than an English speaker knows their mother tongue. It’s much easier imo for someone to speak English and the native English speaker to understand them than vice versa. Je suis desole. I’m starting to learn French and don’t have enough grammar knowledge. ☺️
je suis tout a fait d'accord avec vous, quand j'habitais en france, il y avait des gens qui me comprennent sans aucun probleme, et ces gens etaient les plus empathiques. Mais c'est vrai que dans la langue franciais il y a beaucoup de mots dans lesquels si vous changez une seule lettre, ils signifieront quelque chose de totalement différent. faut faire attention a cela.
🙏🏻🙏🏻🥺❤ Tout le monde devrait être comme vous
Je suis du même avis. J'essaie de deviner au mieux pour ne pas le embarrasser et je les aide au niveau de la prononciation si nécessaire.
As a linguist, I feel the need to stress that it's important to find balance with this; obsessing about pronunciation can sometimes scare people away from speaking your language at all, since many people will never have a perfect accent and that is of course fine. For effective communication, of course vocabulary and grammar are much, much more important.
Yep, grammar and vocabulary + the very basics of pronunciation; not focusing only on how bad your pronunciation is (or that you feel it is...) but try to grasp the basics of it. Otherwise, you get all these French who don't even know that English stresses a syllable in every word (since we don't have that: our stressed syllable is always the last one that is pronounced in every word); and not getting it means you can't talk with people. It's like the initial scene in this video: try saying "waTER" instead of "WAter" in any English-speaking restaurant. 🤣
Hmm... I'm not sure.
Pronunciation is constantly overlooked and its importance diminished when learning and teaching foreign languages.
And then, people are not understood when they try to speak a foreign language, and they're suddenly surprised.
Well, yeah! That's because correct (and if possible flawless) pronunciation is part an parcel of speaking a language correctly (or flawlessly). Correct pronunciation is not a nice ornament to be added as an option to your language skills once you're done with all the rest.
Have you ever seen a TV programme where someone, let's say a French person, speaks a grammatically correct or even flawless English, but what they say is subtitled nonetheless? It happens all the time and for a good reason: their English pronunciation is atrocious. And that's probably in part because they've been led to believe "they shouldn't obsessed over pronunciation" and that "they'd never have a perfect accent anyway". The end result is: they can't really speak the language. So much efforts on their part wasted!
Pronunciation matters a great deal.
Yeah, it makes me want to give up. I'm terrible at pronunciation. Everyone acts like the French won't understand you unless you speak it perfectly.
@@frontenac5083 I don't hear the French pronounce this crazy language well either. The lady in the video is good though.
@@frontenac5083 Pronunciation isn't constantly overlooked it is stressed from the beginning of learning all throughout. Which is very different from being told not to get hung up on perfection, which prevents people from ever speaking. It is very difficult to acquire a completely different sound system. This video focuses upon French and the opening problem is not even pronunciation, but actually a problem in French where many words sound the same and learners see little difference between small nuances. As someone further up said it should easily be seen from context that someone isn't ordering 'wind' but 'wine'. Only an idiot would think that.
Speaking of TV programmes...have you ever seen one where someone is natively speaking English, say in Scotland, and it's subtitled just in case someone in the south of England gets confused? Any suggestion of pronunciation training in that scenario would be tantamount to insult. Same here in the Netherlands where they subtitle people from outside the Randstad as though they speak a different language. The problem is that some of the audience are dullards and hear nothing but the standard language day-in day-out and need subtitles for regional speech.
My favorite misunderstanding I encountered was with a Spanish couple that were talking about the famous singer "El toñon". I said I don't know many spanish singers .. they said "no no, he's English"... I asked a few more times... they finally started singing "Candle in the wind" ... it turned out to be Elton John 😀
Very cute!🙂
El toñon😂 I'm a spanish native speaker and when I read "El toñon" I figured out what was the singer they were talking about. I think pronunciation in English matters a lot. Something that happens with Spanish native speakers is that they pronounce everything as it sounds in their own language.
My Italian grandpa was born in Brazil, and named João, John. It has a nasal sound. He was not able to recognize he was being called over the PA in Italy, for the announcer obviously missed the nasal sound (Italian doesn't have an equivalent), and grandpa missed his boat back home. João vs. Joao. Vin vs vent? And a guy named Waldisnei was called like that under pretty much the same circumstances, and was mad when saw people being served before him, still waiting to be called. The announcer said he had been called several times, "Waldisnei", and he said "But my name is so simple to pronounce! You ignorant, don't you know the guy who created Mickey?!".
Ça me rappelle cette histoire, quand ma mère était adolescente en voyage scolaire en Espagne. Les jeunes espagnols étaient affolés qu'elle ne connaisse pas "los béatlèss", ni "Rimi Endriss" 😂
im American and i always thought French had similarities to us in our arrogance. This is one example! I went into a bakery to order “le vert macaron” in Paris. Probably not exactly right and pronunciation not good but I tried! And they just couldn’t get it after me repeating “vert” for green. Finally it clicked but it wasn’t like there were a ton of options.
Pour la question que tu as posée "Est-ce que les Français sont trop arrogants" ben ça dépend un peu quand même. Parfois j'entends des élèves faire des erreurs de grammaire qui ne rendent pas leurs phrases incompréhensibles, genre ils utilisent l'infinitif au lieu de conjuguer le verbe. Ça sonne très faux, c'est clair, mais strictement parlant on va TOUJOURS bien comprendre les phrases où les verbes ne sont pas conjugués. Et oui, même si quelqu'un dit "je aller", "vous vouloir", on comprend. Et pourtant, il y a pas mal de Français qui font semblant de ne plus rien comprendre lorsqu'un étranger fait une faute de grammaire comme ça. Et ça, c'est de l'arrogance, il n'y a pas autre mot.
Après il y a des fois où les (jeunes) français ont un sens disons "particulier" de l'utilisation de la langue de Molière qui fait réellement hésiter entre plusieurs sens pour la phrase... Donc ça ne me paraît pas insensé qu'un étranger (avec accent et grammaire aléatoire) puisse avoir beaucoup de mal à se faire comprendre même en faisant des efforts...
Je ne sais pas pourquoi ces personnes faisaient soi-disant semblant de ne pas comprendre, mais par contre, "pas mal de.." français, ce n'est pas tous les français, ça, j'en suis sûr... J'ai même demandé autour de moi...
Il arrive parfois que les français soient excédés par l'impolitesse de certains étrangers au point de ne pas leur répondre. En France, quand on s'adresse à quelqu'un et surtout quand on a besoin de lui, on commence par dire bonjour ou excusez moi. Même s'il s'agit d'un employé dans un magasin dont la fonction est de répondre au client. Pour nous, ce genre de situation ne supprime pas le respect envers l'autre.
Tout le monde ne sait pas que la politesse aux USA a des codes différents des nôtres et, parfois, les français se braquent.
@@christianc9894 C'est sous-entendre que dans les autres pays on dit pas bonjour ou "excusez moi de vous déranger" et c'est juste faux. De pure expérience les USiens qui viennent en France sont 5000 fois plus polis que les Français. Idem ceux sur internet ou sur les jeux
@@shatzinorris1417 On n'a pas la même expérience donc. MAIS LA MIENNE est celle d'un français, plus tout jeune, et qui vit dans une région où viennent beaucoup d'étrangers dont des touristes US.
I've run into this problem many times living in France and being a beginner in the language. The pronunciation is sooo subtle that in some cases I have hard time hearing the differences, let alone trying to speak myself. But I do think there might be a difference in the listeners too. I never had so many problems being understood when speaking English, Portuguese or German for example, even when I was very bad at those languages. The combination of the subtlety and the listeners' expectations makes it tricky.
The food french eat is responsible for the hearing defect.
When learning a new language and especially if you are living in that country, trying your best for a good pronunciation is very important indeed. Though when a foreigner is trying to communicate speaking your language, there is really a limited amount of similar sounding words or miss-pronunciations that can happen and there is always context to a conversation. It is not that hard to make some effort and understand what people are trying to say. You can expect them to speak your language in your country but you shouldn't expect them to speak it like you do.
A little pointer for anyone learning the french, the usual speaking speed is around 1.25× the speed of the video if you want to train in more real condition
On holiday near Nantes. My husband and I were staying at a campsite. My husband was playing pool and won the game. He shouted "Je suis le champignon!" Hysterical laughter all round!
Quelle horreur!
L'on peut comprendre facilement ce qu'il voulait dire, mais moi aussi j'aurais ri un peu de ça, puisque est une célèbre variété de plantes généralement comestibles😅.
Sinon le mot correct est .
C'est mignon. Rien de dramatique. Vaut mieux en rire qu'en pleurer 😉
Cute !
We are the champignons of the World 😊🇨🇵
They do understand, but they do not care, especially in Paris. In Berlin I lived with french people and we talked in French many times, and through them I had occasional conversations with their French friends too, and they all understood me perfectly, always. Not just in Berlin, but traveling around the world. But when I go to France, I come across that attitude many many times, when they detect a slight foreign accent they go like "I don't understand", or they directly pass away. You can tell they do understand but they get "offended" if the pronunciation is not perfect. It is called "Chauvinism".
Was looking for this comment 👌
You're right.
That is why going to paris is a bad idea.
France has a lot more to offer than that shitty city.
J'avais 14 ans quand j'ai voyagé à Paris. J'ai eu du mal à m'exprimer à l'oral parce que j'avais jamais pratiqué avec un natif.
Alors un jour je voulais acheter du fromage, j'ai demandé du fromage "salé". Il m'a dit qu'il n'a pas compris. Je l'ai encore dit en anglais. Pas compris. Après avoir répété ce que je voulais plusieurs fois, il s'est moqué de moi en disant que je pouvais acheter du sel et du fromage et les ajouter ensemble. (Il a même ri en disant ça)
Même s'il me comprenait pas, il n'avait pas besoin d'être si impoli!
@@mehreganghadiri Oh ! Je suis désolé de lire ça...
Paris est la première destination touristique du monde, les parisiens sont une espèce à part...
La majorité des Français sont très contents de voir qu'une personne étrangère fait l'effort de parler la langue et de s'intéresser à notre culture.
Et, parfois les accents sont difficile à comprendre, mais là, clairement, c'est juste un manque de respect.
Si je peux me permettre, d'où es-tu originaire ?
En tout cas, je ne sais pas depuis combien de temps tu apprends le Français mais sincèrement, ton Français à l'écrit est meilleur que celui de la plupart des Français.
I'm not the kind of person that likes to hate on any nationality, so I'm not looking for an excuse to beat the french over the head. But I just came from a brasilian channel (I'm portuguese) with an outlandish story of a french person who refused to communicate in any other language other than french even though he knew english AND portuguese.....WHILE LIVING IN BRAZIL. He was living in Brazil for 14 years and was being asked for a candle because the light had gone out, by a neighboor.
I was like loool wth. I knew from my travels French tend to be all about their language within country borders....but OUTSIDE? So i googled why french people dont talk other languages...and found this video.
French people are cool but their deadly sin is for sure Pride. But it's weird because french have explored the world too...and I tend to think of them as open minded people...so this particular thing about the languge is kidna weird.
Excellent! J'ai vécu longtemps au Brésil (je suis franco-brésilien) et il y a une erreur que tous les français font quand ils vont sur la plage et demandent au vendeur un jus de noix de coco. "Uma agua de cocô por favor". Le problème, c'est qu'en mettant l'accent sur la dernière syllabe coco ne veut plus dire noix de coco mais veut dire caca. Donc en gros ils demandent un jus de caca. Ca fait toujours rire les vendeurs mais depuis le temps, ils sont habitués et ne leur servent pas du jus de caca mais bien un jus de noix de coco.
Bruh
🤣
We had it a little different with pronouncing pineapple as avocado. Abacaxí is the Brazilian word for pineapple and Abacate means avocado. We wanted a pineapple juice but received avocado cream instead😖 not exactly what we went for😅
"Over time they got used to it". So the first wave of French tourists got what they asked for 💩?
@@ItwasyouCharley é! Eu ficava com vergonha!!
Faire preuve de bon sens semble tellement impossible pour certains, c'est profondément concernant.
Yes! I am a French teacher in the U.S. Pronunciation has been de-emphasized the past 50 years or so in foreign language teaching. Teachers either do not teach it at all or just the alphabet and basic sounds. And the teachers here also de-emphasize listening. Listening to native speakers also helps with Pronunciation. And students think it is weird to make these weird sounds so they don't do it and just use an English sound instead. And teachers here do a lot of paired speaking practice, which reinforces the Pronunciation errors and fossilizes poor Pronunciation. Plus a lot of reading of French further makes this poor Pronunciation a habit as students subvocalize as they read. And when Admin. comes in to observe French teachers, they cannot understand French, so they cannot understand that the students' French is very poor and they want the teachers to just use these poor methods. So if a teacher does try to improve the students' Pronunciation beyond the basics, it is actually criticized by school leaders. So 99% of American French students have poor Pronunciation and cannot speak French properly so a native speaker could understand them, and the Americans also cannot understand French because they have done little, if any, listening to real native speech. So, hopefully you can make some money off this complete and utter failure of the American education system.
And you also have the facts that 1/ French in the wild is quite unlike at school, like the way we eat part of words in regular speech (je ne sais pas => jsaipa). 2/ French do use a lot of slang (argot) because a lot of slang words have been accepted into daily regular French. Like at work, you won't hear "si nous allions manger ?" like it has been taught at school, but rather "on bouffe ?" or "on graille ?". 3/ French has no tonic accent unlike English, it has no tonal variation unlike Asian languages, it has no strong evident grammar to make the sentence structure easy to spot (unlike German or Japanese) and it blends the words, so all it has to turn continuous vibrations (speech) into words are the proper sounds of the language. If you don't hear the sounds because you did not train your ear, you can't make out the words in French speech, if you don't pronounce the sounds correctly, you are *very* hard to understand by French people, even if they genuinely try to understand you, because proper sounds of the letters are about all you have to understand French.
It's actually pretty impressive among roman languages. Usually, with no training, French people can understand Italian and Spanish reasonably well, because we have a lot of words in common and the words are easy to spot in these musical languages. But Italian and Spanish people with no training have a much harder time understanding French, because the words are difficult to spot.
People think French is difficult because of grammar (and exceptions to the exceptions) and vocabulary. But French pronunciation and speech are very difficult too I think. If your school do not teach it at all, it must be very disappointing to the students. The reverse is also true : as a French person, learning English grammar and vocabulary is pretty easy, but pronunciation and understanding speech is a nightmare.
@daniele.3361 native speakers are available online. Either get a tutor online or a language exchange partner.
Ah, c'est donc pour ça! C'est flagrant à la télé, par exemple. Au début, si on ne comprend pas un acteur étranger qui dit quelque chose en français, puis qu'on le comprend enfin, on voit aussi 'pourquoi' on ne comprenait pas.
Sauf avec les américains. C'est fou à quel point, maintenant, leurs sons n'ont plus aucun rapport avec les mots qu'ils veulent dire! (Sauf Sharon Stone, évidemment)
Merci pour l'explication.
Here's a strategy: muddle your accent. When I went to France -- with only two years of university-level French classes -- I tried a unique strategy: muddling my American accent. I threw a little of -- what I thought -- was a Mexican lilt with a bit of -- what I thought -- were Russian vowels. With the base American accent, my accent was so confused, that the French had no idea where I was from. They kept asking me where I was from, and I simply played coy. (I wasn't about to tell them I was American.) The fact that I'm African American just seemed to confuse them more.
This is the crux of the problem: they try to place where you are from, and there are some prejudices there. Also, I should note that I was *always* polite and grateful to anyone who tried to help me. And I *always* tried to speak in French.
👏👏👏
There are dozens of African countries that have French as one of the main languages. So they probably assumed you were from one of those countries and were confused why you weren’t speaking fluently and had an accent.
@daniele.3361 Their first guess was that I was Canadian. Some people said that that was an insult. Since I'm from the United States, I was thrilled.
how did you play coy? i don't like people asking me where I'm from because i don't want to be placed in a box (them to have preconceived ideas about me based on the origine). but i don't know how to avoid answering them
@NoelJacquerey LOL. You are definitely trolling. As you know, most Americans wouldn't bother trying to learn another language. They'd just assume that every European knows English, and then be offended when that assumption isn't obliged.
I studied French for three years. I spent a month in France. 75% of people had no trouble understanding my French but the other quarter did not, I firmly believe it was intentional. I was so annoyed with the French that I switched to Spanish. All six of the Spanish speaking countries I’ve been to have been far more gracious than France.
Even fewer French people will understand you when you speak Spanish.
@@gohumberto LMAO
Because español has less vowel sounds than française, there is not nasal sounds in español and in español everything is written the way it is pronounced. You can even read in español a paragraph aloud and you don`t understand what you read but the Spanish speakers will understand you. Believe it, or not! ¡ Aunque Usted no lo crea! Croyez-le ou non!
You all have that think that french don't want to understand while we legit simply struggle to lol
I can beat that. I minored in French in college, have studied it for twenty years, and have spent a total of a year in France. Yes, I have a strong accent, but I find that "some" French people (in my case, women) will refuse to understand a word I say while others (in my case, men) will tell me I speak it very well. In my experience it is les Françaises who will simply refuse to meet me halfway.
Le trauma moi, c'est sur le tempo... J'ai parlé espagnol en Espagne, le vendeur m'a répondu tellement vite que j'avais l'impression qu'il parlait une autre langue... Selon les régions, le rythme auquel on parle est assez différent, et c'est vrai que ce qui est une vitesse normale pour moi peut être rapide ou lent pour d'autres...
Et même au-delà de l'accent, les langues se parlent plus ou moins vites. Mais ce qui est fou, c'est que les linguistes ont montré que la vitesse de transmission moyenne des informations était quasiment la même, peu importe la langue.
Ce qui signifie que les langues qui ont besoin de moins de syllabes pour donner une info sont généralement parlé plus lentement. Cela signifie aussi que c'est la vitesse de traitement des récepteurs de l'information qui induit le rythme des émetteurs.
Ma phrase fétiche en Espagne : despacio, por favor 😄
I've had some very patient people in France speak to me and make a huge effort to understand me. Particularly one wonderful hotel receptionist who said everything twice - once in English and once in French so I could practice.
I did experience the vin blanc issue though 🤣 the poor barman had no clue until his colleague shouted over.
I've met some lovely people when I've been practicing, with some people who have overheard making an effort to say hello or good evening to me too!
Oh but come on... you are in a restaurant, what else could it be that you are ordering?! Vin and not Vent... please! So here in Italy, when somebody at the restaurant asks for "wino" (I've heard it with my own ears), then the waiter should wait 5 minutes making faces and saying that he is not understanding you? The fact is that they don't even try!!!
@@andromacha83 Amen
@@andromacha83 Why being butthurt about people not comprehending what others say right away? Does it require such a tremendous amount of energy that it cannot be repeated? I didn't realize how bothered people were about having to help another human being.
French pronunciation can be really tough to get, especially when the sounds [un / an / eu / ou] are involved, which are often the sounds French people struggle to understand if not pronounced properly by foreigners. In comparison, Italian is super easy and doesn't have difficult sounds so it's ridiculous to compare those two languages.
@@lo.cherry ... says the expert of Italian language! We do have our hard to make sounds like for example "gl" or "gh". My husband, who is not Italian, struggled a lot with such sounds and also others. But in Italy, we do try our best to make everybody feel welcome, and we go above and beyond to understand foreigners. If at a French restaurant, a poor guy pronounces "vin" as "vent", and the waiter fakes not understanding it... well then the waiter is dumb I think. Or, most likely, all French are stuck up asses who don't make the tiniest of effort. Just like those asses that come right around the border and expect us to speak to them in French. No way! You are in Italy and you either speak Italian or English. French is not contemplated!
@@andromacha83 Not being French disqualifies you from saying if it's easy or not. Implying that they are stupid or mean, that's arrogance!
I had a different experience. I once was lost on Quebec. I was nervous at first but confident in my French to ask for help. Well, I understood ZERO. I walked away realizing my French was rustier than I thought. 😢
Years later, I visited France. Same situation, I need to ask for directions. I understood the gentelman who tried to help me and he even coplimented my French! It was a moment of redemption.😂🎉
(It might have been because Quebec-french can be very different than France-french. It took me time, as a native speaker, to understand Quebec-french. XD So there's a chance that it wasn't your french skills' fault!^^)
Moi: Excuser-moi monsieur, où est la guerre? Homme: Monsieur, la guerre est fini mais la gare est là.
It’s kind of annoying tho cause I’ve been studying French for 7 years and teaching it at a high school level for going on my second year. I immediately understand immigrants who just started speaking English like this year - so idk why the same courtesy and active listening can’t be applied.
Depends. Are you doing a fast pace job? It often takes focus to get it and often times the jobs tourists are faced with are the ones where people need to focus on many things at once and so focusing on the pronunciation isn't the main focus.
Same with people walking around, they're usually going somewhere and aren't focused on just you.
@@celia1888 I am an Italian, I live in Lisbon (very touristic too) as a foreigner, and everyone makes an effort to understand my Broken Portuguese, bars, restaurant, shops ... everything ... I have rarely met a rude Portuguese person, from the touristic restaurant on the main square to the bar owned by an old nice lady. And, since I am Italian I never experienced it, but I was told by friends that even in Italy (when people usually don't speak a lot of English,) people are extremely helpful and try their best, only in Rome I've heard of bad experiences. So, I am sorry to say this, but I am afraid that what french people do is just because of a bad attitude.
@@saratrusio9728 the tourism is still very different. It's a millions of tourists difference (mostly dozens more). Now obviously with Covid things changed a bit since there were only half as many as there usually are, the numbers are now closer to Lisbon's numbers pre-covid. If this can give you an idea of how many tourists are around.
There are some neighborhoods where you'll here 5 different languages in the space of one minute and French won't be part of it.
So yeah, it takes a lot more focus. I've done the same job in tourist centered parts of Paris and normal ones, it's night and day. Even in a fast paced job like waitressing can be it almost felt like I was on holidays.
@@saratrusio9728 People during high season in Venice are just as "rude". Same in Barcelona, Spain. Go off season and they tend to be lovely. But Paris doesn't really have an off season. Used to be in Euro-travelling tourism. I hate Paris myself, mainly because of the people, but I also understand why they are that way. And a good thing to remember is that Paris is not France. It's like boiling down Italy to Rome, the USA to New York... you get the idea.
Some people of France are infamous around the french world for not being able to understand speakers of other french speaking countries. I think some them just have trouble with accents. I wouldn't worry about it if I were you.
Le problème habituel est que beaucoup de gens s'attendent à un certain système de sonorisation et qu'ils déraillent lorsque cela ne se produit pas. J'avais cette problème quand j'ai commencé à parler l'Allemand. La problème est beaucoup moins aigu en anglais, où plus d'accents sont déjà reconnu et accepté. Nous sommes plus habitué à des accents quand on entend quelqu'un qui parle l'anglais avec un accent étranger (ce qui est aussi parfois maladroit).
Ayant dit cela... Il y a des années j'étais en voyage prés de Nîmes avec une parisienne et elle a insisté sur le fait qu'elle ne comprenait pas "l'accent" d'un petit commerçant, qui était aussi français qu'elle. Donc, je pense que oui, certains Français ont une idée un peu exagérée de le "français correct". Y compris sa sonorisation.
Tu as parfaitement raison sur le fait que les Français ont plus de difficultés à comprendre ce qui est dit lorsque l'accent est prononcé.
Mais ce n'est pas tant qu'il y a "un français correcte" qu'un manque d'habitude.
Il y a une 50aine d'années, les accents régionaux étaient encore plus importants et prononcés.
Et, même aujourd'hui (je suis du sud-est) je n'arrive pas à bien comprendre quand des petits vieux du sud-ouest parlent avec leur accent. Et ça ne veut pas dire qu'on n'apprécie pas les accents. 😊
@@rollbackmotte je sais que vous voulez être gentille à vos concitoyens mais après 7 ans ici, j'ai vu des choses. Pour example je suis américaine et mon mari est français de Normandie. Il a donc un petit accent normand. Et ici dans le sud où on habite, on ne cesse pas de le demander de quel pays il vient !? Il le dit qu'il est français. Puis on veut savoir dans quel pays il a été élevé !? C'est fait exprès. Dans la France, on n'aime pas ce qui est différent. Dans le sud, mon mari est différent. Dans le nord on n'aime pas l'accent du sud. En gros, si ce n'est pas comme moi, je ne l'aime pas et je ne ferai plus un effort. Bien sûr il y a des exceptions, comme mon mari qui s'est mariée avec une américaine. Et j'ai eu des super bonnes amis dans le fac, mais en gros il y une portion qui aime la diversité et la reste qui n'aime pas.
Je suis jaloux de vous madame. Moi je suis anglais et j’apprends le français depuis presque 25 ans et je n’arrive toujours pas à le parler ou comprendre. Vous avez bien de la chance d’avoir epousée un francophone. Je suis sur que cela vous a aidé beaucoup. Quand les gens français parlent je n’entends pas les mots quand ils parlent. C’est juste du bruit. Je ne peux pa me maintenir. Mon problème c’est que je m’attends que la langue sonne différente.
j'ai été beaucoup confronté à des gens qui viennent de nombreux endroits et j'ai souvent du "traduire" entre français : marseillais incompris par des chtis, avignonnais qui ne comprend rien en Alsace. Berrichon perdu à Montpellier.
Une amie l'italienne avait appris le français à Rome et est partie faire ses études en Belgique. Elle ne comprenait rien.
Un an après, enfin adaptée, une nouvelle collègue arrive, de Marseille. L'italienne ne comprenait à nouveau plus rien. Les belges non plus d'ailleurs. Et tout ceci était en grande partie du à la façon de prononcer (en plus de certaines expressions locales)
je rappelle toujours que la présentatrice du JT d'Arte (chaîne FRANCO-ALLEMANDE !!!) est incapable de prononcer correctement "Guten Abend" ! Moi, ça ferait longtemps que je l'aurais fichue à la porte, c'est une honte.
Hello ! Je suis franco-italienne et je parle 4 langues couramment dont l'anglais, et j'ai des bonnes bases dans plusieurs autres langues. J'ai été serveuse plusieurs étés de suite. Et je peux vous dire que malgré tout mon bagage linguistique, je n'ai jamais compris lorsqu'un britannique m'a demandé du "kow-drô-oune". Je l'ai fait répéter plusieurs fois, très gênée, avant de lui demander de me montrer ce qu'il souhaitait sur le menu. Il n'a pas voulu et a continué à répéter "kow-drô-oune". Il a fini par s'énerver et par me montrer sur le menu qu'il voulait du "Côtes du Rhône" - le vin. J'étais hyper mal à l'aise et lui a dû croire que je le faisais exprès alors que pour le coup, j'y ai mis beaucoup de bonne volonté, mais je n'ai vraiment pas compris... Par contre je pense comme beaucoup de gens dans les commentaires que parfois, les Français le font un peu exprès. Vu le contexte, un "vent blond" ça se comprend... à Paris surtout, je suis effarée par l'accueil réservé aux étrangers dans les lieux touristiques.
Do you think it is specific to the pronunciation of French? Would that situation have happened in Italian or in Spanish? 🤔
@@avilesandres my two cents as a French/Spanish/English speaker, is Spanish people are better at understanding foreigners because they are used to people speaking different dialects / accents within the country (Andalusian, Basque, Catalunian, etc) so tend to be used to more phonemes.
Most regional French accents are comprehensible to us but much milder and regular than foreigners speaking french.
Also Spanish is easier to pronounce as long as you get the tonic accent right. French is definitely harder, so I sympathise.
don't worry, French people are also mostly badly welcomed in tourist places in Paris. I gained used to it while living there. Far better outside Paris, but people talk a lot less english ....Good luck ! ^^
Je viens du sud-ouest et t'inquiète, moi aussi les serveurs parisiens font semblant de pas comprendre ce que je dis
Bien résumé ! Il y a des cons bien français, mais parfois malgré toute la bonne volonté du monde, on ne peut pas comprendre (ce n'est pas la majorité des cas, pas du tout, mais ça arrive)
Je suis un Français qui passe par là par hasard... Et j'ai une chose à dire : Bon courage aux étrangers qui apprennent notre belle langue ! On l'aime, mais on sait bien qu'elle est difficile :)
La preuve, même si on passe plus de dix ans à l'apprendre assidument à l'école, certains d'entre nous font encore des fautes à l'âge adulte, notamment sur l'orthographe et beaucoup en font encore au bac, à 18 ans.
Je me plains parfois de la difficulté à apprendre l'Espagnol et l'Anglais, mais je peux toujours relativiser en pensant à ceux qui apprennent ma langue maternelle ! Mais disons que vous pouvez relativiser aussi en pensant à ceux qui doivent en plus changer d'alphabet 😅 (pour ceux dont ce n'est pas le cas).
Bonne journée !
I've worked in customer service for the past 21 years. I am French Canadian I live in Montreal. In Montreal, the island in the east it's mostly French and in the west is mostly English speakers. We have a lot of people from around the world. Personally I love it. For a little more than the past decade, I worked for alarm company emergency center and we have client all over the country. I got the opportunity to speak to people from all over the world. I always make the most effort to understand them. It's even harder for my job and people at 911 because people you talk to are often upset and or angry and or scared, and so they may even have a harder time pronounciating and enunciating words properly, but it's your duty to concentrate and try your upmost to understand. Who cares if they are mispronounciating their words. But there has been a constant in the last 20 or so years. French people from France mainly from Paris, they are the only people and I understand that a few bad apple doesn't represent the entire population. But it's really much a stereotype for French speaking Canadian who speak french to never be understood by French speaking people from France. Because of our history with France and this, there is a stereotype that French Canadian tend to think of French from France and more specificically Paris as arrogant, snobbish, and that they use too many english borrowed words but can't pronounce them properly to save their life.
The only people I have ever had issues with, in my entire life, were a very few English Speaking Canadian mostly from Alberta, they would get condescending or hostile when they detected a hint of french accent in your voice. And to be fair it goes both ways. I can't count how many time an english speaker (one of my colleague) in my company called me to call back a French Client in Quebec because they were being asshole to my co-worker with an english accent. Even people from 911 which I find completely insane and stupid (But I am used to it, most French and English speaking Canadian had at a certain point in their life experience a certain level of racism toward the other group. Personnaly I never had anything against english speakers, but my Grandma was something else, this is due to our shared history, Hostilities between French and English going back centuries, but it's not as bad as it used to be) and the other group I have ever had issue with are French from France, every time from Paris.
If you are a French person from anywhere in the world and someone says I want to buy Vent Blond and you can't make out what they are saying in a Restaurant, there isn't any two ways about it, you are an as*h*le. Simple as that.
"Racism"? No, as those two peoples are the same race... Xenophobia, maybe.
After a summer of looking forward to this, I'm now just weeks away from starting a French module at university, alongside my degree. These videos have been gold for passively enjoying the language throughout the summer. But this video encapsulates my greatest fear - pronunciation! As a 28 year old Manchester lad who has never shown any interest in other languages before, I've become very set in my ways and am really having to try to get the sounds right 😂Here's to hoping it goes well!
You'll get some laughs mate. Im broad Geordie, my Italki teacher says I sound like a Scandinavian talking French and I've been asked by a lot of people in France if my maternal language is German. On y va ;)
Don't worry, I think everyone makes mistakes in the beginning, it's normal~
I think having some knowledge of the International Phonetic Alphabet might help you understand pronunciation better, regardless of the language that you want to learn.
❤️❤️❤️
@@marcolobos2148 True, my friend
If you're hung up on your pronunciation, you'll be stuck sincerely. Speak as you can, it will come as you go. Believe me you can never speak good enough French for French people. Just face it head on. Remember it's not your first language
en tant que Italian, je me démande ce qu'il a prononcé ton frère pour ne pas etre compris alors que "quattro tiramisu" devrait etre relativament facile à comprendre, n'importe quelle prononciation
Bonsoir Elisa Je vous remercie infiniment pour cette vidéo vraiment très géniale
En tant que Espagnol, je confirme , quattro tiramisu n'a aucune possibilité de ne pas être compris.
En fait, c'est drôle ne pas comprendre "quattro tiramisù", même si on va mettre en valeur la r française 🤷🏽♂️
@@jaweedjoya4882 je suis d'accord avec toi 🤗🤗🤗
En tant que nord coréen je confirme aussi
J’aime tellement votre accent. Un de mes profs de Français m’a dit que les Fraincais ne roulent pas leurs “r” (elle était Americaine). Mais tous mes autres profs étaient francophones avec une belle accent comme vous. J’ai écouté ce video avec beaucoup de plaisir. Merci!!!
Le problème avec "ácido" (fr: acide) prononcé comme "aCIdo", c'est qu'il peut être confondu avec "ha sido" (fr: il/elle/on a été). Mais aussi si le context est très claire, je pense que la confusion est un peut exagérée.
Au fait, votre espagnol ici avait un accent argentin. C'était mignon, hehe.
tal cual! Suena argentino la forma en la que dijo ácido
en Espagne y aurai pas trop de confusion comme la "c" de acido a la langue entre les dents contrairement à ha sido (où à l'espangol parlé en amerique du sud)
@@EllisBoydRedding Siendo argentino, nunca observe confusión en esas dos palabras. La tilde de ácido está en la letra á y el acento de "ha sido" en la sílaba "si", y si bien pueden dar lugar a confusión, el lugar que ocupan dentro de la oración y el contexto hace que sea imposible confundirlas.
@@ignaciomoro1814 yes, but in that case she mentioned in the video, she put the tonic accent on "i" rather than "a", hence the confusion;
@@EllisBoydRedding oooh, sorry I should have seen the video, hahaha
I switched from German to French as a third language in "videregående" (what we call the education years age 16-19 in Norway); some girls in my class wanted people to choose it because they needed a certain minimum of students to sign up for the class if the school was going to teach it. They argued that French was much easier than German, easy grammar and you already know a lot of words from English the only slight challenge was the pronunciation.
But weirdly for me, pronunciation was not a problem at all; maybe because I'm musical I have a good ear for sounds in general; but learned all the French sounds in a few hours and most of the text-to-sound rules of French in just a few days. This is actually quite easy because unlike English; French pronunciation rules is very regular so with very few exceptions (mostly slang and dialectal words and proper names) you can always know how to say something from the spelling (but not the other way around, theres several ways to spell the same sounds). The challenge for me; as with any language is learning enough vocabulary to be able to speak anything meaningful. I'm still at a very low level of understanding and even lower at speaking French; but the little I can say I apparently sound so fluent it just gets me in "trouble" because it makes French speakers think I know more French than I actually do.
I once tried to help a French tourist that for some reason had travelled to Lillehammer in Norway thinking he could get by without speaking English (we're almost all fluent in English; but only maybe 10% of us have had any French in school); who was desperately asking everyone around him in french something about a park (one of the few words I understood of his rapid rambling was "parc"); though I don't speak much French I assumed I could understand enough to understand which park he was talking about (after all Lillehammer is not a big city so there could not be to many to choose from) if he just spoke slowly or perhaps showed me the name written down; so I approached saying fairly slowly: "Je parle un petit peu de Français..." ("I speak a little bit of french..." probably misspelled a bit) but apparently that still sounded way too fluent; because he immediately bombarded me with an even faster and completely incomprehensible barrage of French with no attempt at all to speak in any simpler terms. After a while I had to just leave him because I could not understand anything, and I was unable to make him slow down.
(In recent years I've deliberately started speaking English with a more Norwegian accent; both because it's more comfortable; and because it's better to be more fluent than you sound)
First, congratulations for your persistance and efforts to learn my language.
Then yes, I see three big odds when you know French but don't speak it fluently enough :
-the most pertinent choice of vocabulary as you want to be very accurate to your interlocutor (we have a very rich and wide lexicon and obviously some complexity comes with it),
-the best way to put your sentence in a good and understandable order (basically grammar, especially when your birth language is agglutinative instead of inflective),
-and of course the speed we French tend to hast when we are dialoguing with French-speaking foreigners, often forgetting we should rather converse in a moderate speed and more-to-the-point way to keep a good feedback.
But the phonetic and pronunciation are pretty easy to get first I agree, specifically when you're already familiar with German or another Romance language (even if French has evolved far away from Greek and Latin).
And that's a good move to keep your Norwegian accent, it has its charm as you keep a foot in your roots and it doesn't make your English less understandable at all. Just the same I'm keeping my Southwestern accent which comes from Occitan because sometimes you can't beat your nature 😆
Regards !
The fact he's expecting everyone to speak French actually speaks volumes!
I just realized my main problem with learning a language (beyond my native language and English both of which I naturally use every day) is actually that I'm an introvert and neurodivergent. Talking to people in any language is draining energy; so I don't have any drive to talk to people just to talk, so of course I don't learn much vocabulary.
Also the extreme polyglots you see on TH-cam, they are all extreme extroverts who have a natural drive to learn languages to be able to talk to more people! They enjoy smalltalk which is initially the only thing you can do in a language you barely know; so they only need to be in proximity to speakers of a language to practice; while I can go days without talking to anyone but my wife.
I learnt a bit of Oslo-dialekt and I could make myself understood in Oslo.. but I certainly could hardly get a word in Bergen, Trondheim or "Nordnorge" ! Fy faen ! 🙂
In the US, we love accents!!!
I love the way you teach, c'est très intéressant. Et vous parlez plus doucement et je veux dire merci pour votre patience 🤗
Peu après mon arrivée en France, j'ai vu un croque Monsieur dans une guinguette mais je ne savais pas le nom du plat. J'ai donc demandé et la serveuse m'a dit que "c'est un croque Monsieur"
J'ai répondu okay, "je prends le croque". Elle m'a dit "c'est un croque Monsieur" et j'ai cru qu'elle me corrigeais ma prononciation. J'ai donc bien articulé "je prends le croque" et la scène s'est répétée trois fois avant qu'un ami français m'a expliqué que le plat s’appelle au fait un "croque Monsieur". Bordel, faut savoir🙃🙃🙃
Hahahaha c'est génial ! Parfois ces petites erreurs créent aussi de bon souvenirs 😊
Pfff ouais la serveuse t'a pris la tête pour rien, parce qu'en France on peut aussi dire "un croque" pour "un croque monsieur" si on veut raccourcir et que le contexte est relativement clair. Genre si ma mère fait des croques-monsieur, elle me dit "tu veux un croque?"
ahahahahah, c'est tellement drôle ! Et cute.
Et en parlant de drôle : c'est littéralement la chute d'un sketch de Kaamelott où Karadoc (surnommé Croc) invente un sandwich qu'il appel Le Croc.
Et le roi officialise le truc : Je vous présente Le Croc, Monsieur. (il venait d'inventer le croc-monsieur)
Et ton ami français s’appelait Juste Leblanc
C'est vraiment très importante de prononcer une langue correctement (voyelles, consonnes diohtongues), puisque les personnes qui nous entendent parler, ils peuvent mieux comprendre ce que nous disons.Merci bcp pour la vidéo.
I totally agree with you, my friend
i can see your accent on your text ^^ keep up, learning languages is really not easy but worth it. love from France
@@veinfall711 Merci bcp
This lesson is SO good -- to dramatize the mistakes made by non-French speakers is brilliant. Merci pour ca, Elisa
The actual mistake is simply attempting to speak French. With a bunch of narcissists.
I either speak english to french people, or I don't speak to french people. It's that simple.
Je suis arrivé en France pour mes études il y a presque 1 mois et je n'avais pas regardé un de ces vidéos dès que je suis ici. La difference est immense entre ce qui me passait par la tête en regardant ces vidéos en Colombie... C'est comme si je n'apprenais pas le français avant de venir. L'immersion change beaucoup la perception, vraiment trop. La prononciation est toujours un problème, même si la communication est généralement bonne et mon vocabulaire est assez complet. Par contre, je trouve important de noter qu'il y a des gens qui ne font pas un effort pour améliorer sa prononciation et ils peuvent avoir une bonne communication, mais je ne suis pas d'accord avec cette approche au problème. Merci pour tes vidéos Elisa ! Tu m'as aidé surtout en sujets culturels et du français courant.
Tu geres en francais.
Le p'tit sketch du début m'a effectivement rappelé une histoire, mais avec deux français. Je suis Québécoise et ici la distinction des son nasaux est plus ''évidente'' si je peux dire ça comme ça. Donc, je travaillais dans un dépanneur (je crois que vous appelez ça une supérette en Europe?). Le dépanneur était situé dans la haute ville de Québec, donc très touristique comme quartier. Un jour, il y a un touriste français qui rentre et voilà un apperçu de la conversation:
Moi: Bonjour!
Lui: Bonjour, il est où votre paon?
Moi: Du paon, comme l'oiseau? On a pas d'oiseaux ici monsieur.
Lui: Non du paon... comme boulangerie!
Moi: AH!!! Du pain! (Prononcer avec le ''in'' le plus québécois que vous aurez entendu de toute votre vie!)
On a bien rit quand même. Quelques semaine plus tard, une situation similaire ce produit. Un autre touriste français rentre dans mon dépanneur:
Moi: Bonjour!
Lui: Bonjour, vous vendez du vent?
Moi: Ben, y en a dehors...? (En disant je me souviens du paon/pain) Ah du vin? (encore un fois, prononcer avec mon meilleur ''in'' bien québécois.)
Faque ouin, quand tu dis blanc ou blond, pour vrai, pour mon oreille de québécoise ça sonne exactement pareil. 🤣
Mommy de Xavier Dolan est diffusé en France avec des sous-titres alors que c'est un film dont la langue originale est en français...
Trop drôle 😂 sinon ça veut dire quoi faque ouin?
En vrai c'est pareil pour nous, j'avais une prof qui était québécoise et globalement je comprenais ce qu'elle disais mais pour les nasales, même sans les confondre il y avait toujours un décalage par rapport à ce que je croyais entendre, je la comprenais bien parce que je m'étais habitué et que selon le contexte on ne pouvais pas se trompé mais c'était différents c'est certain
@@barbare5191 C'est une contraction de ''Ça fait que'' notre équivalent de ''du coup'' si tu préfères.
Désolé que vous en soyez vexé. Certains des films de Xavier Dolan ont des personnages qui ont un accent québécois très fort, un rythme de parole élevé, et parfois aussi un vocabulaire québécois qui n'existe pas dans l'hexagone. Si la plupart des français sont capables de comprendre le québécois léger, cela demande pour certains un effort, et ceux là sont immédiatement dépassés dès que l'accent est plus fort ou que le rythme accélère. Quant au vocabulaire, pour le coup on ne peut rien y faire si on y est jamais exposé.
Parfois, un film est entièrement sous-titré à cause de quelques passages compliqués. Et finalement, c'est presque devenu un automatisme de sous-titrer tout ce qui vient d'en dehors d'Europe, que ce soit le Québec ou l'Afrique. Si l'intention originale du sous-titrage est justifiable (désolé, on est peut-être pas foutu comme vous je sais pas, mais en tout cas ce n'est pas du snobisme mais vraiment qu'on comprend pas), je trouve par contre que parfois cet automatisme de tout sous-titrer ce qui vient d'ailleurs est débile voire insultant quand on se retrouve avec des films ou des reportages sans aucune difficulté à comprendre des accents légers, mais quand même sous-titrés "au cas où". Ce devrait être du cas par cas.
Ma femme est hispanophone et elle prononce par exemple de la même façon "verre" et "beurre". Quand elle me dit "passe-moi le beurre" je comprends "passe-moi le verre". Ce genre de choses arrive plusieurs fois par semaine avec une personne qui vit en France depuis 20 ans ( mais qui n'a jamais réussi à améliorer son accent). Alors non, quand on ne comprend pas on ne comprend vraiment pas.
🤣c'est mignon, mais c'est drole
Hehehe, c'est marron... euh marrant !
Solution : lui laisser le beurre, le lui demander si besoin... Et surtout ne pas oublier de le lui rendre 😉
Once I was on an eastbound train out of Paris when there was an announcement, everyone out for "cinquante ans" 50 years? I can't wait for 50 years!!! No worries, it was "San Quentin".
😂
J'ai vécu en France pendant deux ans à peu près, il y a 15 ans. J'étais à Paris, en queue au guichet pour acheter un carnet de tickets métro, derrière des italiens, qui étaient en train à leur tour d'acheter des tickets. Ils avaient vraiment du mal pour se faire comprendre, car la vendeuse ne faisait même pas aucun effort pour les aider, elle était vraiment un peu arrogante, voilà! Elle faisait semblant de ne pas comprendre et lorsque je l'ai entendue dire "oh encore ces ritals", là j'en avais marre et j'ai demandé les tickets pour eux! Bref, ce n'a pas été un comportement très professionnel !
Et cette vendeuse était certainement issue de l'immigration comme la plupart des vendeurs de tickets de métro à Paris😄
@@phlm9038 je ne crois pas du tout. Elle était tout-à-fait française.
@@ninocondina2397 Et comment le sais-tu ? Beaucoup de Français ont des origines étrangères, surtout à Paris. Je crois que c'est extrêmement rare de nos jours des Français qui appellent les Italiens "Ritals". Ta Française devait avoir à peu près 70 ans ou même plus 😄!
@@phlm9038 je ne suis pas d'accord, car je connais des italiens émigrés en France depuis des dizaines d'années qui viennent encore appelés comme ça, mais ce ne sont pas des vieux que disent "ritals", au contraire. D'ailleurs, ce que je veux dire, c'est juste souligner l'impolitesse, voire la cruauté de la vendeuse.
oui, il y en a de vraiment mal polis
When you were saying aCIdo I was also confused on what you were trying to say. But when u said it Acido i was able to understand. This video was great. Im trying to learn French and it help. Muchas gracias!
you are such a clear explainer Elisa :) also your video production is sooo good.
Hello, je découvre ton contenu, c'est super. Pour infos, dans les sous-titres en anglais, les phrases qui suivent "since you were a child" (5:38 pour le timestamp) devraient être conjugées au past continuous : "you've been learning" et non pas "you're learning". Keep up the good work
«you’ve been learning » is the present perfect continuous, not the past continuous.
The problem is that French is especially sensitive to improper pronunciation. Compare that with Spanish where people can generally guess what I want to say.
Well French Canadian we always try to understand too arrogance is from french people from france 🇫🇷
That is definitely true. There are hundreds, if not thousands of words (a lot of them very basic/common in everyday language) where if you fail on single letter/sound, you will say a completely different word. While words like that exist in every language, they are so much more frequent in French.
It feels the same way for a french speaking english, in Atlanta & New York i had multiple interactions with people that doesn't try to understand, even got insulted because i didn't had a perfect english (happened in 8 months living inthe US). I also received some help from a guy right next to me that hear one of the interaction, obviouly it's not everyone.
In fact, it could be common in Paris, a city that receive 20 to 40 million travelers each year, but in other smaller cities, this type of reactions are very rare.
Yoeun Pen. That’s false. The french languages have many homonymes. If you don’t pronounce the words correctly, the meaning is totally different. So before saying non sense, try to learn french first.
Very true. Every language has words that “change” if you pronounce one sound differently, it’s how languages work. The context is so obvious sometimes, it feels a lot like French are pretending to be confused.
Oh oui, d'erreurs embarrassantes (plus ou moins) j'en ai faites beaucoup quand j'apprenais le français, mais je n'arrive pas à me rappeler des exemples.
Moi j'essaye toujours d'apprécier l'effort des personnes qui apprennent une langue, n'importe laquelle, mais il est vrai que parfois c'est difficile de comprendre quand l'accent est trop prononcé.
Je dis toujours que chaque langue possède une "chanson" ou une "mélodie" qu'il faut essayer de chanter, c'est ce qui donne l'accent à une langue. Beaucoup de personnes parlent une langue étrangère en gardant la mélodie de leur langue maternelle et ça se ressent beaucoup. La plupart du temps ceci est juste du à une sorte de honte qu'on a en imitant la façon de parler des natifs, comme si on se moquait d'eux en essayant de parler de la même façon (p.e. comme on pourrait imiter l'accent très particulier de Marseille quand on raconte un gag). En réalité, cette imitation c'est bien ce qui fera qu'à la fin on parlera correctement et avec un bon accent.
Je me suis tombé accidentellement dans cette vidéo et littéralement je ne arrête pas de regarder chaque de leux. Merci bcp Elisa, je les trouve hiper amusant et si bien utile. Nouvelle abonnée💞 .
À mon avis, ça dépend aussi des gens. En France, la majorité est exigente avec sa langue... Oh mon Dieu ! Mais dans l'Amérique latine c'est complètement différent, on aide des étrangers pour parler mieux, on le plaisait bcp!, C'est joli apprendre ensemble les langues qu'on peut parler. En plus, je suis en train d'apprendre le français et vachement c'est un peu compliqué de le practiquer ici en France et, encore plus.... Le geste que faite des français avec le son "hhheeinnnn" ohlalalala... 😐 C'est dure! Mais, merci pour être comme ça, on fait plus d'effort pour parler mieux votre incroyable et jolie langue ;)
Speaking very clearly and precisely requires listening carefully and repeatedly. I cannot emphasize how much more important pronunciation is than grammar and vocabulary combined. Thank you for this video.
Very interesting how a small detail can change what you're saying. In the case of your Spanish friend, the reason why he didn't know you were saying "ácido" is because if you change the intonation it would become "ha sido" (it has been).
(Sorry for comenting in English but my French is still too basic. J'étudie avec une appli pour portable)
《 Vraiment intéressant comme un petit détail peut changer ce qu'on dit. Dans le cas de ton ami espagnol, la raison qui fait qu'il n'a pas compris que tu disais "ácido", c'est que si tu changes l'intonation, ça devient "ha sido" (ça a été).
Désolé si je commente en anglais mais mon français est trop basique pour l'instant 》
@@Arthur-io4ey Merci pour traduire mon commentaire!!
Not in Castilian.
@@Palimbacchius But that's only one accent, so it also depends on the accent of the listener
This is a very simple / obvious yet also not so easily expressed or taught concept. Thanks for your videos!
En Italie nous sommes élastiques avec les étrangers parce que nous savons qu'il ne peuvent pas prononcer nôtres paroles correctement. Donc nous ne demandons pas la perfection.
I live in Japan and regularly experience pronunciation errors, which come form my English background. As you said in this video, in English the emphasis, and where we put stress in a word matters a lot, while in Japanese they have a pitch accent that changes the meaning of the words, and the pitch of individual words by themselves is different than when they are in a sentence with other words. It is very difficult to hear the pitch when you're used to only listening for where to put stress or emphasis, so my students will tell me when I say a word and it sounds off pretty regularly. There are a lot of words that are very short and the pitch is what determines it's meaning, because otherwise the sounds are the same. Just today a teacher said a compound word, where when the words are said separately I can understand and hear them correctly, but when they were put together the pitch accent of them changed, and it took me a little while to understand what the words were. I think knowing how the common sounds of a language are combined and how to properly say the vowels is very important in any language with vowels, but that we need to figure out what is different from our base language, what kind of thing has importance placed on it, and work to be able to do that well. I've heard that with Mandarin Chinese the sounds don't matter nearly as much as the tones, so learning those improves fluency faster than anything. And of course how languages are spoken varies dramatically based on region, which can make learning another language to any degree of fluency extremely difficult without spending time in a region where the target language is spoken to get experience using and having cause and effect relationships with the language. Just the act of failure to communicate can help teach the learner how to improve to be better understood. I've studied Japanese for over 15 years and lived in Japan for over 7, and have yet to seriously study pitch accent, but recently I've felt like I need to, to get to the next level in my understanding and overall communication abilities. I think a lot of people want to say that pronunciation isn't very important in being understood, but in my opinion the flow, the ups and downs and rhythms of speech combined with the pronunciation are extremely important to comprehension. We all get used to hearing things said in a specific way in our native languages and deviance from that is often quite confusing.
I think you are so right about the vowels! There are a lot of people who are hired to take care of Customer Service on the phone here in the US who only read cards with questions and answers on them and they do not even speak English, they just have to read the cards and listen for answers, then go to the next card, depending on the answers we give... I have SUCH a hard time understanding the people who do not know what they are saying because they only have TWO VOWEL SOUNDS which they use which are harsh and extremely exaggerated compared to what the vowel actually is supposed to sound like.
We have many vowels, long, short, and complicated by other vowels which are next to the first vowel and the consonants nearby also make a difference in how the word is pronounced.. Also we have very little nasal sounds, compared to every single word spoken by these CS people who speak Spanish when they are not at work.. It's NOT the Spanish you think you know, or were taught in school or hear here on TH-cam!
The people who have these jobs I think come from a Spanish speaking country in Central America or maybe S America -- aws I sid, they will only use 2 long vowels, and when they add their nasal intonation , the word sounds nothing like what it is supposed to sound like. Not only that, but even if you put the blame on yourself and say "I have a hard time understanding things sometimes, so would you mind to repeat that, and say it more slowly?" Instead, they say it LOUDER
Pour moi le problème a toujours été le volume de ma voix au moment de parler. Quand j’ai commencé à apprendre le français j’appréhendais les moqueries si jamais je faisais une faute, d’où cette mauvaise habitude de baisser le son de ma voix, parfois inconsciemment. C’était une torture pour moi être envoyée chercher la baguette à la boulangerie. “Je pourrais avoir une baguette s’il vous plaît “ ? Phrase trop longue et compliquée à me débuts. Maintenant je parle haut et fort! (Ou du moins j’essaye). Surtout que ça aide à mieux articuler et donc à se faire comprendre !
My problem in French (but also in Spanish and Italian too) is that native speakers DO understand my questions but then I have trouble understanding their responses.
Sameee
More of these videos please! Would like to compare similar sounds since there are so many subtle variations in French and many words sound similar.
En tant que français en Australie on ne me comprenait pas quand je demandais un croissant 😂 j'étais obligé de le dire le plus mal possible pour qu'ils captent de quoi je parle X)
Même chose pour moi (Québécois en Australie). Si on the dit pas "khrassent" ça ne passe pas
Les mots français ou transparents sont les pires. On les prononce de manière authentique, ce qui n'est effectivement pas le cas pour les non-francophones, et ça ne passe pas.
Ca me rappelle quand j'étais en Angleterre, et que j'ai demandé un muffin. La vendeuse ne comprenait pas ce que je demandais, même après plusieurs essais de ma part. Il a fallu qu'un client derrière moi s'énerve et dise le mot de manière authentique pour que je sois servi... J'étais assez vexé, bien sûr. Mais je trouve que le son du "u" de "cut" est le son le plus difficile à maîtriser.
On sait tous que l’anglais pour les français c’est vraiment dure c’est pour cela qu’on arrive pas a comprendre comment à Paris tout le monde s’est fait traiter comme la m*rda même si on commande des choses en français! Je rigolais tellement car je posais les questions en français (je sais que c’était bien prononcé car je travaille en français depuis des années) et tout de suite ils changeaient à l’anglais alors je répondais en anglais (je travaille autant en français comme en anglais ) mais ils ne pouvaient pas répondre aux questions en anglais!! Lol
Alors pourquoi utiliser l’anglais s’ils ne le parlent même pas lol
Tout le monde dit que les français sont les pires touristes et c’est vrai malheureusement lol
le plus mal? waouh, ca fait mal...
Toujours de très bonnes vidéos, merci! 👌
un ami chinois a essaye de commander un dessert dans un resto dans le sud de la France, il a voulu le dire lui-meme a la serveuse: Je voudrais une ile fontaine... J'ai ri, la serveuse a ri puis elle dit: "presque" et elle l'a corrige... c'etait mignon et c'est une belle annecdote dont on se rappelera toute notre vie... :)
Il était pas loin de déraper lol
Very interesting video. I don't know any French other than small, common words. I had no idea how easy it could be to mispronounce things and come up with much different words, even without context to help. I don't see this as a problem in English. I find that French speakers, tend to have a harder time with English, yet we would rarely have a problem understanding what you are trying to say especially through context. There are so many different accents in English, that a "French" English accent just seems to be another version, to me.
My weird pronunciation experience was in Italian, which neither me nor my traveling buddy spoke. We speak English natively. I speak conversational German, and he spoke a bit of French. Our first train stop in a small town in Italy, we hopped off the train and went searching for a bank to exchange money.
Two wonderful elderly men saw that we were kind of lost (this is before smart phones) and approached us. I came up with the word "banco"... For some reason, it sounded Italian enough to me that it probably meant bank. So I gesture, "Banco???" and the international hand symbol of rubbing your fingers together to mean "money".
These two guys looked like we were aliens. Banco?? And they debated for at least 3-4 minutes what we were trying to say. We went back and forth for easily 15 minutes with zero understanding between us. Then I magically came up with this potential phrase: "Banco d'Italia??" And their eyes lit up! BancA!.... Banca. Banca!! not Banco! Banca is correct word, and then the proceeded to point in dozens of gestures resulting in at least 5-6 different left and right turns at various corners. We thanked them vigorously, smiled, and just headed in the general direction of the majority of their hand directions.
How could a single letter change make a word completely unintelligible?!?
I grew up in San Diego, native English speaker, American. You may have heard of “ Spanglish”? They even made a comedy movie with that title. Growing up, streets and schools and cities all had Spanish names. I only had Spanish in the 1st grade, but some of it comes in thru osmosis. Anyway, the point I wanted to make , is if anyone wanted to either try or pretend to speak Spanish, you just added an “ O” on the end of the word. There were lots of make up words that were Spanish - English combos, rather than real words, but the meaning got across. All of my Latino relatives, as well as the kids in my school , spoke perfect English, without an accent. So , I totally forgot I had Mexican or Mexican - American relatives, lots of them.
Si tout le monde parlait français aussi clairement que vous, je comprendrais beaucoup mieux la parole. Merci pour cette super vidéo.
Un jour à Londres, je suis rentrée dans une sorte de parapharmacie et j'ai demandé à la vendeuse des tweezers. Parce que j'avais oublié la mienne.
Elle m'a fait répéter 40 fois, j'ai essayé toutes les intonations possible, elle n'a jamais compris.
Du coup, un peu saoulée, j'ai pris mon accent français le plus frenchy possible et j'ai dit : 'ze fing tou poul aout your hair' ! Et là elle m'a regardé et a dit '' ah, tweezers !'' avec exactement le même accent que les 30 premières fois où je l'ai dit.
A ce jour, je n'ai toujours pas compris quel était le soucis et comment elle avait pu ne pas comprendre...
If you say Acído instead of Ácido, it sounds like "ha sido", so it's a little tricky ;)
Salut :)
Salut Elisa. J'adore tes videos. Comme on a déjà te racconté, en Espagnol, "acído" peut être interprété comme : "ha sido" (a été) mais aussi come "asido", du verb "asir" (prendre), c'est à dire, "pris" or "held" in English. Cette dernière mot n'est pas très utilisé, mais le contexte a pu confondre l'autre personne, qui attendait: "ácido". Merci pour cette superbe video qui nous aide beaucoup et ¡saludos!
dame un contexto donde se puedan confundir...
I’m French but I speak several languages and the nature of the misunderstandings between them are fascinating to me. You explain it so well too!
I felt let down by the French education system for learning languages but found great apps that I use before i travel abroad. Listening and repeating is basically what kids do and it’s the best way to be understood by native speakers, so you can have a grip of the basics when you are in need.
I am SO GLAD i don’t have to learn French is sounds honestly exhausting xD
Great vid!
Yeah I had one where I was asking someone where the bathroom was. They had no clue what I was saying even when I said it multiple times. What was worse is that we both spoke English as our native language. Who's to blame, I don't know.
Saying toilette instead of bathrooms seems a good way to avoid that problem
@@ParlonsAstronomie Ladies Room or Mens Room may also work, as that is what is written on the doors,
As someone who only speaks English and doesn't plan on learning other languages, this was very helpful
If you are in the US, then you are probably well aware that regional differences, just in the US , speaking English, it can be hard to understand other native English speakers. I have certainly experienced that.
"Quattro tiramisu" est parfait mais si un français prononce "pizza" 🍕 je comprends Pisa (la ville de la tour penchée). 😊
You are amazing and so are your videos, since a week ago I started to learn French language from zero and also watching your videos everyday :D Thank youuuu
I do appreciate this video and I think it's fair enough to try and confront some of the things that learners can pragmatically try and tackle in the face of hostility. However, I have to reassure some people who may feel discouraged in France - it is certainly not all your fault or all in your mind. After a year living in France, after studying intensely for seven years beforehand, my confidence in general was rock bottom. I didn't imagine the fact that people did not want to try and understand me even when my French was at its best: my colleagues (I worked in a school) told me openly that they did not like dealing with foreigners. People in the shops verbally abused me to my face. There are some beautiful souls in France and nobody should generalise but some of this behaviour was the rule and not the exception. Many western countries have similar isolationist mindsets but in France there is a particular idea in some people's minds that a blow to an individual from various countries is some small act of anti-imperialism (ignoring that France of course is not a bastion of freedom itself). In general I think it is good to persevere and develop a very thick skin about it but my advice is to mentally prepare for this kind of behaviour as it can really get you down if you find yourself alone in the country. Focus on the many many kind people out there and ignore the immature bullying types.
Maybe I will visit Eastern Canada instead , if I want to try speaking French.
I also experienced this while studying abroad, so much so that I fell out of love with the French culture even though I majored in French. 😕 I am now learning Italian with the hope that I will fit in better with Italian culture.
@@evercuriousmichelle I’ve been studying French for a month, super passionate and dedicated. Yet, reading these comments is heartbreaking. Am I wasting my time only to be rejected by the culture? 😢
@@corrosivecub Hopefully not! Every culture has it's faults and it's a matter of if the pros outweigh the cons for you. For a lot of my classmates, the pros did outweigh the cons and so they were able to brush off a few of the negative interactions and move on. For instance, I can't eat dairy so I wasn't able to fall in love with the French cuisine like my classmates were able to. I also grew up in Texas and really value friendliness, something that the French culture doesn't value as much. My classmates from different regions, where they are a bit more reserved, didn't find that to be a hurdle like I did. I also recommend avoiding Paris since the folks there are often sick of tourists and so won't have as much patience. Here's to hoping you continue to love learning French and French culture!
You have a lovely accent. I could listen to you reading a technical manual.
Merci, Élisa, pour tes vidéos. Ils sont toujours très intéressants et utiles.
Alors, comme hispanophone, je t'explique pourquoi ton amie n'avait pas compris. Le truc c'est que en espagnol, si tu es "seseista" (comme la grand partie de hispanoamericain et aussi les français qui apprennent l'espagnol), c'est-à-dire on prononce le sons (/th/ en anglais, /z/ en espagnol Ibérique) comme /s/; et tu prononce "aCIdo" au lieu de "Ácido", on va comprendre "ha sido" (ça a été), c'est-à-dire un autre signification différent.
Merci pour tes explications, celà m'a fait me trouver plus identifiqué avec les francophones qui ne comprends pas les étrangers qui hésitent de parler le français. ❤️🇨🇵
I'm not a speaker of French or not even of English, but let me explain. This happens when you are really good at the language and the people assume that you don't make that kind of mistakes. They can't tell if you are pronouncing those words correctly and trying to tell something with those words, or you are just wrong at pronunciation. It's like, a Japanese who is perfect at everything but l/r distinction in English.
You are light!!
I think you’re right actually
Vidéo amusante ! J’habite dans une région touristique en France (Bourgogne) et je peux je vous assurer que les serveurs font toujours l’effort pour comprendre les clients étrangers mais il est vrai que quelquefois ( et l’on voit ça partout dans le monde ) certains ne veulent pas faire l’effort ou ont peur peut-être ?
I used to pronounce mon cœur, mon cours, mon corps the same way everytime lol glad I know better now
French attitude towards tourists make me avoid this country, I choose Spain instead, even though Spaniards do not speak English widely, but they are not arrogant, and they try to help you. I do not understand French attitude towards foreingers, very weird country…
Parisians and Southern French* please dont over generalise. I've never heard foreigners say this about us in the North (ch'tis) or about people in Bretagne, we're friendlier and warmer, it's easy to make friends there, but our regions are not as attractive. Btw Parisians treat us like shit too ^^
It's not a coincidence that everybody has the same "bad" experience with french but no one has it with english, for example. it's just a matter of wanting to understand the other, it's not a matter of making an effort. I do not need to make any effort to understand someone talking in spanish. i will understand you, it is very easy cause you can interpret what the other is trying to say cause is literally saying words of your dictionary lol. you do not need to have any spanish accent and people will be happy with you talking spanish and will help you kindly. But in general yeah, french tend to be quite arrogant if you do not speak their language properly even if you try. curiously then french people will have the worst oral english with the most marked accent.
I've worked at McDonald's in France for more than one year and what suprised me the most, was the fact that my coworkers weren't able to speak english.
Even the basic sentences were too hard for them...
En quoi est-ce surprenant de ne pas bien parler une autre langue que le français en France? L'anglais, langue invasive par excellence ne doit pas s'étendre jusqu'à à tout détruire. Ne pas savoir parler un minimum de français en France par un étranger est bien plus choquant pour moi. Bonne journée)
@@liberteegalitefraternite7760 L'anglais à beau être une langue invasive, elle permet quand même à une grande majorité de personnes ne parlant pas la même langue de se comprendre. Ensuite, une personne qui sait parler un minimum français ne sait pas forcement tout le vocabulaire nécessaire pour passer une commande a un fast food ou tout simplement demander son chemin de façon claire et explicite. Dans ce cas la, je préfère, moi, prendre l'initiative de parler à la personne en anglais plutôt que de galérer a comprendre ce qu'elle essaye de m'expliquer en français pendant plusieurs minutes. Et pour finir je pense qu'une personne qui passe des vacances en France pendant quelques jours ne devrait tout simplement pas se forcer a apprendre plusieurs centaines de mots pour pouvoir communiquer avec tout le monde. De nos jours, un traducteur installé sur un téléphone peut très bien faire l'affaire malgré le fait que peu de personnes ont ce reflex. Ensuite je comprend parfaitement votre point de vue pour les résidents permanents en France qui ne parlent toujours pas français alors qu'ils y habitent depuis plusieurs années. Mais il faut comprendre aussi que le cerveau perd de sa plasticité avec le temps et qu'apprendre une langue étrangère quand on est jeune est bien diffèrent que d'apprendre une langue étrange lorsqu'on devient âgé.
Bonne journée à vous aussi
Oh mon Dieu ! Les gens ne parlent pas anglais à un endroit où ils ne voient probablement pas l'ombre d'un client anglais quel scandale ! Désolé mais quand je vais en Angleterre je ne le scandalise pas si les gens ne parlent pas français.
@@Charles25192 alors non du coup car l’université juxtaposée au mcdo est remplie d’erasmus soit venant de Chine, soit de pays anglophones
Ewww . I know what goes in those burgers!!! YIKES. Vegetarian here
En tant que prof de FLE, je ne suis pas tout à fait d'accord, même si la prononciation reste un facteur important.
Une personne qui prononce mal certains sons, mais qui a du vocabulaire, saura employer d'autres mots pour se faire comprendre (comme dans les exemples). Alors que sans vocabulaire, hé bien, on est coincé. Pour prononcer des mots, il faut déjà les acquérir !
Savoir correctement prononcer les mots qu'on connait, c'est bien. Mais la langue et l'interaction ne se résument pas à quelques mots bien prononcés. Sans le vocabulaire et un minimum de grammaire, on n'arrive à rien.
C'est d'ailleurs pour ça que les étrangers qui vivent longtemps en France sont meilleurs en vocabulaire et en grammaire qu'en prononciation. Ils savent qu'une fois qu'ils ont de bonnes bases dans ces domaines, il n'est plus nécessaire d'être vigilant sur la prononciation.
Je suis franco-tunisien, et il est vrai que quand je retourne là-bas on a tendance à me faire répéter quand je parle. Je l'ai longtemps pris pour moi (bon il y a toujours des personnes malveillantes). Mais cette vidéo m'a pas mal fait relativiser, après tout on a souvent tendance à oublier que la prononciation est tout autant, si ce n'est plus, importante que le vocabulaire. Et on fait rarement des efforts dessus, pensant être accueillis avec le tapis rouge quand on case 5 mots de la langue locale.
En Tunisie d'ailleurs "poubelle" et "organe génital masculin" sont des mots assez similaires 🙃
Claudia en Francia te enseña francés ! La mejor
I think that the incapacity of understanding someone's pronuntiation in your native language comes from being close minded and not being exposed to different languages and cultures. It also shows the inability to extrapolate and use the context to draw conclusions. So, I'm sorry but I don't think is a foreigner's responsibility to improve their pronunciation more than up to a certain point. When I was taking English classes the teacher was making us listen to non-native English speakers with strong pronunciation particularities in order to familiarise us with the diversity. If non-native English speakers can understand other non-native English speakers it means that the comprehension problem in your example comes from French people who refuse to make an effort.
I am french and i already struggled to understand my foreign friends speaking my language more than once and i do not believe im close minded. I think for native english speakers it is easier to understand non native speakers as most people nowadays speak english so you are used to non natives speakers of your language (even if you go on holiday in a foreign country where you dont speak the language you usually speak english, not french). As a french, living in Spain for 6 years and speaking english, spanish and catalan everyday, i dont believe i am "close minded" and not exposed to other languages but i can assure you that it is difficult for me sometimes to understand a foreigner speaking my language. It does not mean that i do not want to understand them, it just mean that i am definitely not used to foreigners speaking my language and in french yes, pronunciation is very important because you can completely change the signification of a sentence just by slightly changing one vowel. I guess if we were used to foreigners speaking french as native english are it would be easier for us.
So you go to another country and tell them its their responsability to learn how to properly have an interaction with you in a foreign language they use once in a blue moon and if they don't they are a bunch of arrogant lazy and close minded twat?
First of all people are not obliged to interact to begin with and if they do try, blaming them for not understanding despite willingly taking the time to do so is a dick move.
If you want to be understood talk in your native language in places where it is their job to understand foreign travelers.
Don't go into the wild assuming people will understand your broken french, spanish... They might try but they have no obligation to.
I know it can be frustrating, but really being narrow-minded as nothing to do with it. French prononciation is really really tricky and subtle. Most people have a hard time understanding foreigners , especialy when in a hurry.
@@inessb6604 As a German I can say that even tho its not everybody in the world speaking German I can understand when someone tries to say something in a very rudimentary pronounciation.
It is making an effort. And it is, to some degree, close mindedness. But I think for French its most about feeling superior and wanting to keep that. It has to be.
And even if you cant understand it, many times the context will help out a lot.
Like the example (and this happens a lot, its not just some made up sketch situation). It is ABSOLUTELY OBVIOUS that a customer at a restaurant isnt asking me for wind. That makes no f..ing sense whatsoever.
So if you say youre not close minded then that simply shows that you have to be immersed into French 24/7 your whole life. Because youre writing in English thats obviously not the case.
It definitely is more complicated if you dont have context but many times you do. And then it is understandable if you really want to understand it
@@hermes6910 And to add further, Parisian accent is very difficult to understand. I find it easier to understand speakers of french from french speaking african countries.
J’ai adoré votre vidéo. Ça m’a rappelé des tonnes de fautes que moi j’ai fait en apprenant le français. En voilà une:
Je demeurais chez une famille française et, un jour, comme j’avais un peu froid, j’ai demandé si on pourrait baiSer la fenêtre. Sans hésitation, le père de la famille m’a répondu en souriant, « fais comme chez toi, mon brave ».
😂
"il avait pas envi de faire d'effort sur la prononciation" voilà une preuve de plus que c'est pas une questions d'accent mais bel et bien de paresse. Franchement pour la question de l'arrogance je dirait que pour certain oui et pis pour d'autre encore une fois, c'est une question de paresse et très franchement j'ai jamais eu de soucis à comprendre un anglais qui parle français. Même si la prononciation est pas juste, il suffit de réfléchir 2 secondes et mettre les choses dans leur contexte pour comprendre. Par contre comprendre les français qui parlent anglais, mais qui ne font pas le moindre effort, là c'est déjà beaucoup plus compliqué.
Moi je peux vous assurer, qu’il m’arrive souvent de croiser des étrangers à Paris, qui me parle en français avec un accent et que je ne comprends qu’une phrase sur deux…
Particulièrement des chinois, américains ou arabes ( du "bled " je précise ).
Eux ont l’air d’être persuadé de bien se faire comprendre, et il parle un français basique mais correct, mais le fait qu’ils mangent trop les voyelles me les rend inaudibles, et je fais souvent semblant de les avoir compris en répondant un stupide « oui « …
Excellent video Elisa...and let me say that your English pronunciation is incredible.
I grew up around Quebecois (I think it was specifically Quebecois but the accent was closer to a Chiak accent - my mother's family is half Quebec and half Acadian/Cajun). My Mémère and Pépère spoke Canadian French before learning English when they started school. The stopped using it with their kids after their oldest, my uncle, got made fun of when he was a toddler for speaking French. I want to learn Quebecois but finding classes for any dialect besides parisian French is near impossible. I figured I'd try parisian French and visit Montreal to later adjust to using the dialect I want to know. That was a laughable failure between my being an English speaker and having picked up a little bit of the Quebecois I'd hear my family use. I REALLY struggled with pronouncing "en" the parisian way and I was using duolingo so despite it being still technically correct I couldn't continue! 🤣🤣
French is tough to pronounce and understand learning as an English speaking without the vastly different dialects; add the dialects in and it's nightmare. I grew up hearing Quebecois and still have an easier time trying to learn German, Japanese, Spanish, and Irish than I do French - any dialect of French! 🤣🤣
French is such an interesting language!
The imitated scene in the beginning of the video is so precise!
Même que je suis d'accord avec tout ce que vous avez dit en gros, je trouve que les serveurs, surtout à Paris, pourraient faire un peu plus d'effort. Pour moi, en temps qu'anglophone, le vrai horreur c'est les deux sons "ou" et "u". Je suis arrivé au boulot un jour avec un mal au cou ayant très mal dormi. J'étais en train de me masser le cou en disant à tous mes colleagues que j'avais énormement mal au cul! Vous pouvez imaginer...
Salut, je sais que c'est dédié aux anglophones et autres non-francophones mais je trouve que c'est aussi très instructif pour un franco-français like me, merci beaucoup pour ton travail.
Une situation cocasse : en Italie nous voulions commander du Marsala, aux oeufs, pas à l'ognon. Personne ne parlait italien et la serveuse ne parlait pas français. Après de vaines tentatives un membre du groupe a dit "Marsala cot cot cot" en remuant les bras comme deux ailes. La serveuse est partie comme une fusée et nous l'avons vue reproduire le geste et le son devant son patron qui a éclaté de rire en nous regardant. Une minute plus tard la serveuse est revenue, hilare, avec la commande. Nous avons été très généreux sur le pourboire ce jour.
😂😂😂
Is Marsala not a wine?
@@sirstamfordraffles6557 Of course, Marsala is a sweet wine
i think it’s definitely a thing about being used to certain accents and knowing the person (or what they are trying to say). since i work in customer service by phone, i’m used to a LOT of accents and because people call for the same thing i can easily understand them most of the time
I have the bad luck (or good luck depending) of living in Turin. We are at about 120 Km away from the French border. To be honest with you, I have tried many times to study French, and the end result is that I do understand it decently, but I have problems in speaking it. I've been to France several times, with my parents or by myself, or with classmates when I was in school. I have episodes that will be staying with me forever about the rudeness and arrogance of French people. Here are a few. My parents speak a decent French - they studied it in school (unlike me who studied English), so we rarely have a problem going around. But one time at the restaurant the waiter asked me directly what I wanted or something like that (I was probably 16 so it was a normal thing of course to ask me directly), and I promptly asked my mom what exactly he said because I wasn't sure of all the words. This idiot started to laugh in my face, pitying me that I didn't understand him. Another time I was with my school mates in Paris. One of them needed to buy a film roll for the camera (yeah, you people, it was back in the early 2000 and we still had those); he got in a shop and spoke English. IN PARIS! ENGLISH IN PARIS - PARIS THE CAPITAL OF FRANCE. Of course the reply was "oh sorry I don't speak English, only French" (and this was said in perfect English - I guess this person studied exactly only that sentence, and he could pronounce it with the right intonation too!). Then I came along and I said in French what we needed, and in the end we got it together with the comment - said in French - "ahh these Italians, they are so stupid". Finally, last example is: we were in Briançon - very close to the border with Italy - and my mom went to a shop to ask for some stamps. God have mercy! She mispronounced the word "timbre". It took the guy 5 minutes to understand it, and then he laughed and corrected her pronunciation. RUDE!! And these are just a few examples. But then, at the same time, I've had French people coming to Turin and expect me to speak French to them when they needed help. I've always politely said that I speak only Italian, English, German and Spanish. I tried to give directions in the broken French I have and I was then insulted. No, sorry, I understand you are French and you must defend your country and people. But I am sorry, the majority of you guys is unexcusable! At this point, I really want to make 0 effort to speak to French people in French. If they come to my country, it is either Italian or English. And that's what's up.
French here, I am so sorry you had to experience this. No one should feel bad about his/her accent or about what you know and don't know about one's language. I experienced it living in London, it was awfull. People speaking about you in english when they wrongly think you don't understand them is on my top list of stupidity. I was actually shocked by the xenophobia I encounter as a french here. I was just living there and trying my best. But stupid people are going to be stupid, I guess.
Tbh laughing is a mechanism of descalation so its actually a good thing.
Then you got corrected for your own good. Nothing wrong, you are too sensible
C'était chouette votre cours. Ca m'a rappelé mes cours de sciences du langage. Bravo à vous ;)
I have experienced this many times and usually when I try to speak the French change the conversation to English. 😂😂😂 I’m now going to head over to the pronunciation video.
But it's funny, if you started the conversation in English they are less likely to help you.
But I get what you are saying. I found this often happened when I lived in Quebec, and it wouldn't be so bad if their French was better than my English (then I understand) but when they responded in a thick Quebecois accent in English that I had hard time understanding, that's when it got on my nerves,.
c'est fantastique!
Je travaille avec tout genre de Francophone et j'experience des nombreuse accent avec nuance
Je suis anglophone mais on parle français et l'anglais au Cameroun 🇨🇲, j'ai vecu cette situation avec mes amis ici au Cameroun 🇨🇲 qui sont francophones 😂,,, ils se moquaient de nous les anglophones lorsque nous faissions des erreurs en pronociation mais c'est la même chose que nous les anglophones faissons avec eux lorsqu'ils parlent l'anglais aussi... 😃 😃 😃. C'est chelou ça 🤗 🤗 🤗 🤗... Kisses from Cameroon 🇨🇲
As an American who learned French (very badly) in school. I know enough to be able to order a meal or buy a ticket. People in France have always been helpful and appreciative of my very meager efforts.
I've been watching and listening to some french for fun (can't read it at all but sometimes catch myself understanding the gist from listening). I've never had this problem in Spain with Spanish, I did get made fun of a bit for speaking like a Mexican but otherwise could communicate perfectly fine because the vowels are remarkably consistent
My Spanish teacher used to say "you have to put the right emphaSIS on the right SYLLable" or something similar where she didn't put the right emphasis on the correct syllable in English
Regarding your comment about where to put the accent in the Spanish word acido. When you put the accent on the second syllable it sounds like you are saying" ha sido" which translates to "has been". This would be confusing because the meaning is so different to the word "acid".
En tant que française étant assez à l'aise en anglais, je n'ai jamais eu de mal à me faire comprendre mais j'ai toujours eu énormément de mal à comprendre les autres.
Je vis même assez mal le fait de ne pas comprendre les accents des autres, même français. On m'a déjà traité de raciste alors que j'essayais justement de dire que c'est moi qui ai du mal et que ce n'était pas l'autre homme qui parlait mal (il était congolais avec un fort accent mais j'étais vraiment la seule à ne pas comprendre).
Honnêtement, le "vent blond" je n'aurai pas compris 😭
J'imagine que certains font exprès... Mais beaucoup comme moi ne sont pas assez habitué dès le plus jeune âge aux accents pour comprendre.
C'est ce que j'essaye de faire comprendre dans cette vidéo mais vu certains commentaires les gens préfèrent croire qu'absolument tous les Français sont arrogants... 🥲
what verb conjugation is 'vis' here? is it just an expression that doesn't work literally?
@@DerToasti it is a form conjugated in the present of the infinitive "to live". (Vivre : Je vis, tu vis, il vit, nous vivons,...)
Maybe you think about "une vis" (a screw" but it's not the same. You only can guess it with the word before (a pronoun befor the verb, a determinant before the noun)
I just point at the menu…..and say merci a lot…..it works great
Lol
Merci beaucoup pour cette lesson ❤️
cette leçon: "lesson" est l'orthographe anglo saxonne
J'étais un étudiant à Chambéry dans l'été de 2017 après avoir pris trois cours de Français des ans avant a l'université. Donc pas beaucoup de Français pratique pour moi. Le plus difficile chose a toujours compris les gens. Mais tu parles parfait littéralement et même après tous ces années avec petite utilisation de Français je te comprends très facile. Je t'adore ta channel et à cause de toi je pense que je serai bien a écouter la langue parlée maintenant je suis prêt à actuellement deviner couramment. Donc merci encore! Et quand je reviens à France j'aimerais te sortir 😘